I'm almost embarrassed to admit what I use.
My favorite movie collection 'program' is a file box with some 3x5 index cards arranged alphabetically by title.
I can seldom see the point of locally caching data that's readily available on the web. If I want to look up info on an individual film, I'll just go to IMDB or Amazon and read what I'm looking for.
I'm more concerned with keeping track of what I own,
and who I've loaned it to than anything else, so a title card is pretty much all I need. The only other information on the card is the purchase date and price I paid for it. The main reason I keep track of the price is to 'remind' certain borrowers how much it would cost to get a title replaced if they lost it.
Borrowed title cards get put behind a divider in the back of the box. I also attach a Post-It note to the card showing the name of the borrower and the date it was loaned out.
Recently, I've begun marking certain expensive, collectible, or hard to replace titles with a pink highlighter. I now have a blanket rule that anything that's been "pinked" does not leave the premises. I instituted that rule after two
nigh impossible to replace foreign titles went permanently missing after the nephew I loaned them to brought them to a college film party. (Nice to note that the "five-finger student discount program" has not been forgotten at some universities.)
--------
My GF came up with a technique that has worked wonders for getting things back.
Whenever somebody returns a movie to us, we make it a point to hand them back the Post-It with their name on it. It doesn't seem like much, but since we've started making a little ritual out of returning the borrower's chit, we haven't had anything not come back.
Ah psychology...sometimes it's a beautiful thing!
