For those of you who do not know me, I am Gary Salisbury of San Diego, California. I am a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, Ring 76 where I serve as a Member at Large on the Board of Directors and also serve as the club's librarian. I have been working on increasing the size of the club's library and it is now reaching epic proportions. I have accumulated over 1,000 magic books, over 2,000 magic videos, over 3,000 magic magazines, and numerous other forms of media such as audio tapes, lecture notes, etc. That, to wit, is where my question comes from.

I have had numerous members ask, "Where can I find information on so-and-so?" "Is it available in a book, video, or magazine?" I need a database that has every magic book and video produced with searchable effects. Is there such a thing? I would have thought that "Ask Alexander" might be the solution but am unsure. If I go to my local public library, I can search for titles & authors on various types of media (books, videos, tapes, etc.) but they do not go down to the detail I would like to see here.

I did not want to have to build a relational database and categorize every single trick in the book but was hoping something would have already been built. Any ideas?

Thanks for your consideration.

Well, for written stuff you can use: https://www.conjuringarchive.com/

Videos though? not sure

As dman noted, Conjuring Archive has tons of stuff from books.

I've been building an Airtable Database for tracking my own personal collection (I keep promising to release it as a template for others, but I need to write up instructions on how to use it). But happy to share that with you if you want to create your own without having to do the tech stuff (Airtable lets you build relational databases with the ease of a spreadsheet). Just hit me up via PM if you want me to share it with you -- though, as noted, I haven't written up any documentation for it yet, so you're on your own until you do.

We used to use the old hardcopy of the Tannen's Catalog. What about Ask Alexander? I haven't looked at Tannen's site lately. Maybe I will. Also, check Jeff McBride's Magic and Mystery School site.

Hi Gary, did you figure out or find what you were looking for? This topic came up recently on the Latest and Greatest forum on the EDceipt by Craig Petty thread. The need for an ultimate database to be able to reference effects for crediting is also desired by so many. No one has been able to come up with a single source.

There is this software program available but as you were hoping to avoid, each effect or media would have to be entered in manually.
http://www.edhassmagic.com/index.php