Excitement of the Most Annoying Kind

Not quite 6AM on Saturday morning, and I discover that I'm locked out of the office with all the photographic materials in it. Not locked out of the Communications Department, just the office that has the computer and working materials. Well, as I ride in with my husband who works between 3 and 4pm on Saturdays, this puts me in a bit of a quandary. Fortunately, I can set up shop in the office of my full-time job and do a bit of further research on the actual database. Last week, I had thought mayhaps a PHP/MySQL database would be the way to go. However, I realized that would also require setting up a webpage that would likely require more time to accomplish than this summer's semester will allow. Then I thought perhaps a Microsoft Access database, which would be feasible until I remembered something that Mary Cone mentioned last April when I was just getting all my capstone ducks in a row: Picasa.

Now, I can be a little OCD, even a little Frank Sinatra-ish (to paraphrase, "I'll do it...MY WAY!"), but I'm also disinclined to reinvent the wheel. So sitting here on Saturday morning, I set up Picasa on my work 'droid and, with emailed guidance from Kyle Rosenblad, I downloaded Picasa and started to sync the existing archive of photos (which will take approximately 8 hours). I'm not certain, not having worked with Picasa before, if I'll have to do the same thing on the 'droid in the Communications Department but, if that's the case, so be it. I am able to poke around in Picasa while it's syncing and noticed 1) the Communications Department has already established their existing photo archive by years (easy to work with) and 2) Picasa has a tag function.

{visualize lightbulb over my pointed little head}

Now part of the current problem which we need to resolve is long term storage and access to these photos, slides, and negatives. I confess I have been near to weeping whenever I find myself gently trying to separate photos which have become stuck together, carefully removing the rubber bands which have melted onto the materials, or delicately sliding the paper clips which have been in place for a decade from pages of negatives. So if it is possible to render these materials into a digital format and store them in Picasa with appropriate tags (which would make them searchable), this could be the best possible solution. Critical images could still be kept in photo/negative/slide format as well, but I suspect that would be a far more manageable number than at present. Also, at the beginning of this project, the possibility of outsourcing the digitization of the collection was discussed. This now seems more like a possibility, so if Mary Cone is in agreement, I can look into getting bids for this. If this appears cost prohibitive, I have looked into equipment to handle this in-house and HP has very reasonably priced scanners equipped with transparency materials adapters (http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/organize_archive_photos/tips/scanning_slides.html#5)and so photos, negatives, and slides could all be scanned and tagged in Picasa (http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/organize_archive_photos/tips/scanning_slides.html)

So, wow! What started out as a day that looked like a complete bust has actually brought me to some potential solutions!

Edit: And I just realized that if, in fact, we can do this in-house, it would actually be a little more efficient in terms of tagging, as I could upload and tag small groups of materials immediately after scanning them, determine if they could be discard at that time, and minimize the times an item is touched (I'm a firm believer in the time savings of a "touch once" system).

Logistics and Other Frightening Ideas

As of today, I have officially put my hands on all the materials. The lion’s share of the items is printed photos, some with accompanying negatives, some without, as well as slides, contact sheets with and without negatives (or negatives with and without any kind of printed image), and even a small handful of CDs with digital images (I presume – I haven’t loaded them into a ‘droid yet). My next goal is to focus on one particular group (probably faculty) and begin to determine how they should be stored – regardless of medium - with the aim of ease of search and retrieval. I’ve started a spreadsheet with headers that I think might be of value (medium, data, event, individuals, etc.), but I’m starting to think about the possibility of programming a simple database in MySQL and PHP, as that might facilitate future materials logging, searching, and report generation. Upon initial consideration, reports might seem like overkill, but say (for example) someone of significance to the school passes away, receives a major promotion, or something of similar import . Running a report to generate a list of photos that person appeared in and where they are stored might give the Communications Department an easy tool to help them create press releases or stories for various publications.

I’ve also looked over the results of the Survey Monkey survey I created and half of the Communications staff has responded. The preponderance of need appears to be for actual photographs, with negatives and contact sheets next in importance, and slides bringing up the rear. In some ways, this will make the slides easier to deal with, as they are all of pretty much the same size (aside from a few medium format slides) and slide storage could be fairly quickly calculated. On the down side, most of the slides have no identifiers, so I might have to see if I can get hold of a loupe (easy) and a light table (not so easy).

I’m also starting to think about an efficient manner of physically labeling these items. Photos can be (and some have been) labeled on the back with a brief description and perhaps a unique identifier that will link it back to the database (or spreadsheet). Slides could also be labeled this way, but the labels would have to be much smaller, possibly requiring an abbreviated description (or none at all). PrintFile has 35mm archival slide labels (amongst many other very useful photographic storage solutions), with 84 labels per sheet, so it’s definitely a possibility. They also carry archival quality general purpose labels, which would work for the individual photos. For contact sheets (with or without accompanying negatives), perhaps a larger label could be used to identify significant images and also include a unique identifier for the sheet. Negatives alone might be a stickier wicket, as even identifying individuals would be more difficult than it would on slides. I will attempt to match up orphaned negatives with photos, but failing that, perhaps it might be worthwhile to see if the Communications Department would want to invest in contact sheets for those negatives (provided it’s not cost prohibitive).

More later - as I have been writing this, my brain is incubating more ideas (h/t to LB for suggesting that I’m an incubator and not a procrastinator).