Cataloguing Assets

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Re: Cataloguing Assets

Postby VictoryWorks » Thu Feb 16, 2017 10:48 am

Effectively you need a way to store images and some associated text and be able to search said text to look things up.
My mind immediately went to Andi's last suggestion, which is some kind of photo cataloguing software - except rather than looking up "Auntie Jane's 50th Birthday" you want to look up "1960's Factory". I think the key to it will be creating your categories and naming conventions and sticking rigidly to them to make the look up as efficient as possible. It would be helpful if the software allows multiple options within categories.

Think of the things you'll want to search on; era, country, type (buildings, etc), sub-type (stations), etc. Remembering that there will probably be objects that cover multiple categories or selections.
e.g.
If you choose to categorise by decades then a building might be good for 1940-1960, or even for any era.
A simple bicycle model might be good for any era, any country, etc.

If some software has a simply tag system that allows the adding of, and searching and filtering of those tags, then you could create your own system.
e.g. "Building-Station", "Building-Industrial", "Country-UK", "Country-USA", "Country-Any", "Era-1950's", "Era-1960's", "Era-Any", "Big4-GWR", "Big4-LNER"
You could then add as many of these tags as required and the filtering would allow you to find them again.

So maybe you could tag something: "Building-Station" "Country-UK" "Big4-GWR" "Era-1920's" "Era-1930's" "Era-1940's" "Era-1950's" "Era-1960's"

The key to it would be to have a very solid category set and fixed set of tags before you begin, and only add to that very sparingly and carefully. If you want an example of what happens when you just start adding any old tags to a database take a look at the UKTS File Search Operating Company list! :lol:
http://uktrainsim.com/index2.php?form_filelib=search
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Re: Cataloguing Assets

Postby brysonman46 » Thu Feb 16, 2017 11:52 am

AndiS wrote:Of course you can insert images. But they mess up the formatting. I mean, any prolific collector will have thousands of lines (even I might have them and I live of a strict diet regarding downloads). So even the smallest thumbnail would blow up the line height big time. Now you can say it does not matter and on a second look, I could even agree. But the then the thing with the file size comes into play. I never tried it, but I guess having 1000 thumbnails in a spreadsheet can bring it to its knees. And of those buildings, I would want a decent picture, not a thumbnail.


And the way to do it is to put in a hyperlink in the cell, which links to an image database such as http://www.atomic-album.com/index.php. That way, each member of the team could maintain an account on the site and update as necessary.
The link does not upset the formatting, and is not memory hungry.
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Re: Cataloguing Assets

Postby AndiS » Thu Feb 16, 2017 1:10 pm

Good point about the URL. Now it depends on the software (spreadsheet, database, whatever) whether it is willing to call you favourite image viewer when you click on the link.

Further on Pete's hints at categories, I must say that I saw quite a few attempts to define categories (and I did not hold back my own ideas) but today, I would say that all you can aim at is a rough grouping.

The good thing is that if you do it for yourself alone, the planning committee is not large, so you only must make up your own mind, which is hard enough in such cases.
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Re: Cataloguing Assets

Postby Rockdoc2174 » Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:07 pm

This would be an enormous task for all of us, I suspect, and building something that is easily searchable is not simple. I would spend a lot of time working out your categories and subcategories beforehand because they will become your keywords for searching. Back in the dim and distant I worked in a department that had several thousand test reports, going back several decades, that they wanted to catalogue. The reports would be microfilmed and a computer-based reference system built up so that the appropriate report could be easily found. The aim was to prevent retesting of items that had been done before. That sounds daft but some of the kit we tested could be built from a kit of existing parts and we only needed to test any new parts, the original certification continuing in force.

This would save time and money, in theory.

Up to then, each engineer kept his own copies of the reports so he could do his own searches. We knew, through experience, that different companies called similar items by different names so what one called a roof-beam might be a canopy from another manufacturer, for example. They might also change over time. A database was designed by the in-house IT bods - who were not engineers - and the info was inputted by undergraduate students during one summer break. They were also not people who knew the kit we tested at all, never mind intimately.

And we couldn't find a whole lot of stuff for months. In the end, one of the engineers had to be taken off his normal duties and go through the database file by file, which took ages and must have cost a fortune.

It's a variant of the carpenters' maxim, I suppose: "Measure twice, cut once." This needs to be right the first time or be close to useless.

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