Well done.

Hi Ken, You are on your way! You color coordination is beautiful.  Great Job John

Awesome! Congrats Ken!

Thank you all! The support means a lot to me!

Ken, that's really well put together and looks brilliant. Don't knock being 70 , from my point of view your a mere youth!

Len Len Thanks, Len! Just proving I may not move as fast or do things like I used to, but the brain still desires to learn.

Excellent job, and a crucial one too, because there aren't many commercial tools for cataloging one's own physical media collection.  I have a big movie collection on physical discs, and I have also made by own collection database (screenshot below).  Access is perfect for this kind of thing.


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To those who don't know me, I'm a retired IT manager who have used Access since the mid-1990s.  I was invited here by Richard in 2023 to post in the forum.  I post here occasionally, sometimes rarely.  I've never taken any of Richard courses, so I can't help with questions on the courses (which most of the questions in the forums are about).  I can only help with general Access topics.

Hey Ken, Great Job!  I wrote a personal book library database back in the Old Access 97 days for my mother. Yours is way more impressive! I had barcodes for the ISBN numbers but your pics and layout way more impressive.

Wow Kevin! 6663 Videos that's quite a collection. Kind of a busy screen but are you able to watch/launch your videos from your database? Are you using an automated lookup for the actors, genre, and summary?

Dave Dave I love the database you made for your movies. Very similar to the one I pay for yearly from Collectorz.com. I need to get better to do something like that too. Ken

Dave ,

Hi Dave, I don't watch movies on the PC (I've tried it but the whole thing is now passe to me), so my app doesn't launch movies.  I've been collecting movies since the 80s and I also have a wide interest in movie genres from all periods and countries of origin, so I've amassed quite a number of titles, which are way more than 6663.  It's a great, life-long passion of mine, which is why I'm willing to put in serious effort in creating a database.  I've used many of the existing commercial cataloging tools, from Collectorz, DVD Profiler, and many others, but they all have crucial shortcomings.  Some are also in danger of being discontinued due to the downfall of physical media.  So 10 years ago, I took matters into my own hands and started to create my own tool.

I do have a semi-automatic way to import cast and crew.  I've made a short video demonstration of the process ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF0KFen8hwI&t=7s ).  Basically I use web-scraping on the IMDb website.

Certain things can't be automated, because the info doesn't exist anywhere and has to be manually entered.  E.g., cover images of a Blu-ray/DVD that I can't find online have to be scanned and entered myself.  All the images are stored on Imgur, which provides free storage and URLs of the images that I can store in my database (SQL Server).

I've also made a web interface for my database (screenshot below) so I can access it on mobile devices.  That entails another set of workload and cost, such as ASP coding and web-hosting cost.  The whole thing is like a second job, but with no time constraints since I'm retired.

Kevin Welcome back.

Hey Kevin, Thanks you for the updated Info. it's interesting to me how so many of us find so many similar passions. I am getting ready to semi-retire in Jan 2026. I have a whole collection of databases that I want to upgrade with the techniques provided from Richard. The other day Sandra brought up her medical database and how she is using it I hope to have something similar soon for my own needs. Like you I have a media database with about 4000 DVDs some movie some tv series. What I haven't tried to tackle yet is using SQL for my back end. Look forward to watching your youtube Video. My Wife thinks I'm crazy, I can't wait to tell her it contagious! lol

Sami  Thanks, Sami.  I left for a while because I hadn't been using Access.  But now, I have something to do with it, at least for the next month or so.  

Dave  I've also recorded (DVRed) many TV programs, and no commercial tools can help you catalog those, which was another reason I made my own tool.  Not too long ago, there was no streaming and VOD, and special programs like Super Bowl, Oscars, Olympics, etc., would air once and never be seen again.  So I recorded a lot of those.  Nowadays, you can always find clips on YouTube of the shows you missed.

Collecting physical discs is now a niche hobby these days.  If you have a collection so great that you need a catalog tool to organize, then you belong to a niche of a niche.  Like many collectors, I used simpler tools like Excel early on.  As my collection grew, I realized I needed something much better.