Organize my work contacts.

February 16, 2008 8:24 AM

I need some way of organizing the business cards I am suddenly starting to collect.

After being in the real world for a couple years and attending a few industry conferences and trade shows, I've got a small collection of business cards from people I've met. Right now they are in a pile on my desk, and I'm positive I've lost quite a few. So, I think I'm looking for two things:

-A neat way to store the cards themselves, probably on a desk or in a drawer
-A good way to organize the information on my computer. Preferably something portable (on a USB stick) so I can bring the information from my personal laptop to an office computer.

posted by backseatpilot to work & money (12 comments total)

Try googling "business card scanner" if you haven't already.
posted by Daddy-O at 8:29 AM on February 16, 2008

I organize my paper business cards on a Rolodex on my desk. I staple the cards to the perforated ones that come with the Rolodex. This keeps them all nice and neat and alphabetized, and I don't lose them.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 8:30 AM on February 16, 2008

I type in the information into my PIM of choice (Palm Desktop in my case) and then throw away the cards. Why keep the physical pieces of paper?
posted by grouse at 8:49 AM on February 16, 2008

I like paper. And I like cards. So I keep all of mine in a bigso box. They're in there in time order, which is not so good for some things, but since I mostly browse in the card library and I'm not doing a search for a particular card / person, then that's great. For cards of people that I actually want to contact, I put them in the computer. But I also keep the cards around...
posted by zpousman at 9:06 AM on February 16, 2008

On the computer side, if you don't mind retyping the data, you could look at highrise by the 37 signals guys. It's a great contact manager (plus it can store details about what you talked about if you type it in).
posted by cschneid at 9:38 AM on February 16, 2008

This. It's a mini-Rolodex-style organiser just for business cards.
posted by essexjan at 10:08 AM on February 16, 2008

Or a cheaper Rolodex-brand version from here.
posted by essexjan at 10:10 AM on February 16, 2008

I am not really in the know about computers, but I always see business card scanners listed in Skymall when I fly.

As for how to organize them without a computer, I have my business cards organized in something like a miniature photo album. It's a cheap plastic thing that I bought at a campus bookstore for five dollars, but it has held up OK.
posted by amfea at 12:04 PM on February 16, 2008

From the Cool Tools website: low-tech biz card retrieval using the Poly Business Card Book.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 12:20 PM on February 16, 2008

I use a 3 ring binder and plastic business card card holders that fit in them I buy at the local office store. When put together it looks like the Poly Business card book mentioned above.

I put them in chronological order since it helps me keep track of when I met with someone, plus its a pain in the butt to keep reordering cards by any other order.

Does anyone really use the business card scanners? Every sales guy I know buys a couple and then they get shoved in the desk after a while.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 12:57 PM on February 16, 2008

Levenger has quite a few options - 1, 2.
posted by invisible ink at 2:15 PM on February 16, 2008

Cardscan
posted by sophist at 4:11 AM on February 17, 2008