Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with catalog

Do I Need a Dead-Tree Catalog, Too, or are Electrons Enough?

webhund — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:52:31 -0800

In 2010, what role does the printed "mail-order" catalog play in small retail businesses who have an on-line store as well as a brick-and-mortar shop? How much does it contribute to either new sales or existing customer retention? I'm working on a business plan for a new retail shop that will have 200+ items in its product line. Our plan is to have both a small physical store and an e-commerce store online. In writing up the business plan, the question of a printed catalog has come up and so now I'm trying to understand both the economics of it (production cost, postage, increased sales, etc....) as well as the role that a printed, paper catalog would play in our marketing plan. It appears that MeFites love their dead-tree catalogs. Unfortunately, my googling turns up a lot of direct-mail marketing hype noise and not much in the way of helpful, real-life usage information. If you have a small business that produces a printed catalog in addition to your online marketing efforts, how does it affect your bottom line, directly through sales to new customers or indirectly as part of customer retention, triggering new orders, etc...? How do you produce it? How and to whom do you use/distribute it?

I want MusicThing!

timepiece — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:27:51 -0800

I am hoping to find an equivalent to LibraryThing, but for my music. That is to say, I don't need to share the actual music, just the catalog/metadata of what I have. I would particularly like to get a visualization of my collection, like the tag and author clouds available on my profile at LibraryThing. I would love to find somewhere on the internet where I can upload my MediaMonkey database, and get an artist cloud and a genre cloud. And possibly stats on year, label, bpm, composer, duration, bitrate, etc. Also, sharing playlists would be nice. But secondary.

I saw a similar question, but he's talking about serving the actual music. I'm not particularly interested in that, although I wouldn't mind being able to upload/backup my music elsewhere. But I don't want to run a server 24/7. I just want people to be able to see what I have.

I found something almost right at Racks and Tags, but their entire mindset is oddly album-centric for a site that's supposed to be about MP3s. Most of their data appears to come from filename and path, which I found an odd choice for a site names racksandTAGS. I prefer to keep my not-very-big collection in genre folders, since I have a lot of singles. And, when Racksandtags makes an artists cloud, prominence is determined by number of albums, not number of tracks (another odd choice).

Anyway, does anyone know of a site where I can share what music I like, without sharing the actual music?

I need to organize all these books.

sugarfish — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:28:25 -0800

I have about a thousand books and a burning desire to reorganize them. I'm getting rid of my current bookshelves -- an Ikea Expedit and the several others I've had to buy since I bought my house -- to move to shelves that I can put along the wall. The Expedit was a room divider in a previous house and it's not working for me anymore. I figure while I've got all of the books off the shelf, I ought to cull (again. I do every year) and somehow make a database with everything I keep. This will help me avoid buying the same books over again. Plus I like the idea of having all that information in one place. I figure that my collection will only get larger from here since books follow me home.

So how do I do this? I have this vague idea that I can take pictures of the barcodes of my books with my iPhone camera and populate some magical database that way. Did I make that up? What about the CueCat? Where can I get one of those?

I have a Mac running Leopard and want to do this on the cheap.

Bonus question: I'm thinking of organizing everything alphabetically by author. Anyone want to convince me to use LoC or the Dewey Decimal system?

(I saw this question but it's from a while ago and I don't have MS Access.

Best Software (Free or Cost) to Catalog Divx Movies on a Mac

snap_dragon — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:42:44 -0800

I am looking to catalog my DVD library (mostly of DivX movies). I own an IMac. Is Delicious Monster the way to go? I want to be able to simply enter the title of the movie and have it come up with the real box art and keep it in A-Z or numerical order. No more no less. I emailed customer service and they never responded so I am consulting the Metafilter Oracle on this one. If there is anything cheaper or free, I am open to that, as well. Until then....a loonnnnnnng Excel spreadsheet. Thanks for your time and have a good Halloween weekend, folks.

Name That Model

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:35:43 -0800

What's the name of the grey-haired lady who models in the Lands' End catalog? She wears her hair in a chin-length bob. I can scan a page of the catalog, if that will help.

A drop in the river

Toekneesan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:08:23 -0800

How many books (titles, not editions or book pages) are available on Amazon? I'm looking for the number of titles Amazon currently lists. I'm not interested in how many they've sold or how many total products the site has. I don't care if they're in or out of print, new or used (though a breakdown of those categories would be awesome), I'm just looking for how many titles are listed on their US site. Google produced bupkis, Amazon's Media Center, even their annual report does not seem to mention the number of titles listed. Anyone got an educated guess or better yet, a cited figure?

Move my archive of awesome to the cloud?

ooklala — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:09:45 -0800

How can I organize my archive of awesomeness which has mostly pictures? I have started an archive, much like Adam Savages creative projects archive, of awesome random stuff, like interesting images I find, or links or songs, etc. Currently this archive is a folder on my desktop ("archive of awesome"). To organize the items, I have been writing in the metadata (spotlight comments) about everything. I'D like to move this archive to the cloud, whilst keeping the process of adding things to the catalouge simple. What service can I use for this?

REQUIREMENTS:
currently, all pictures, mostly weird ones that I get to make points for friends and such. I plan on adding text clips and links.
I use a mac, and would like something ideally that combines a desktop software and a nice website.
It must be easy. If it takes more than a few seconds to add to it, it will probably end up being too cumbersome.

I want to get them the toys I used to dream about.

ocherdraco — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:28:47 -0800

Help me find a toy catalog from my youth. Here's what I remember:

the catalog had lots of toys made out of simple cloth and wood: waldorf dolls, interlocking blocks shaped like people, "architectural" blocks with arches and turrets, etc.

we got the catalog when I was in grade school, so sometime between 1990 and 1998

in addition to the indoor toys, there were things like pogo sticks, balls with windsocks attached to them, and various frisbee-like things

there were also art and science kits—I remember a soapmaking one, a perfume making one, and a papermaking one

it was rather expensive

it sold toys made by the catalog company and toys made by other companies (I'm pretty sure it sold Klutz books, for example)

the catalog was a smaller trim size than normal catalogs, probably about 5.5" x 8.5"

The reason I'm asking is that I always loved looking through that catalog when I was little, and now that I have young cousins, I'd love to buy them gifts from it. My mother doesn't remember what it was (as she rarely bought things from it) and her catalog drawer was long ago emptied out.

Any ideas?

Guardians Poster?

charlesv — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:34:06 -0800

Seeking a fantasy poster from 1993-ish. Between 1991 and 1995, I spent a ton of time playing WFRP. Of course, that also led to things like subscriptions to White Dwarf, which led to me getting tons of catalogs selling things like miniatures, expansion sets and fantasy posters. The one catalog in question was, I think, 6x4, and relatively thick, with a really good selection.

There was one poster in particular, advertised on the back cover, that I thought was awesome. My mom took a look and said "it's nice, but it's not art" (she is snobby like that). Unfortunately, I lost the catalog and never got to order it. After 15 years, for some reason, I cannot get the image out of my head. Over the last 15 years or so I have often looked in different catalogs and searched the internet for a copy but have not been able to find it. It is one of those fantasy posters that is both cheesy and haunting at the same time, and seems intensely relevant to folks that are immersed in the roleplaying world.

It was called, I think "Guardians," or perhaps "Watchmen."

Here's the scene, as I (almost certainly mis-) remember:
Dawn (or maybe dusk) at a faraway, lonely seaside. The left side of the poster is sea. The right side is the land. A line of stone statues, looking Sphinx-ish, guards the empty beach, extending along the beach from close to the viewer off into the distance. A lone elven warrior stands atop the statue closest to the viewer, gazing out towards the sea.

Has anyone seen or bought this poster? Where did you get it? Is the catalog still in existence? Do you think it is still available for purchase?

What does a trailing zero mean in a Dewey decimal catalog?

saguaro — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:30:07 -0800

Hey Librarians! Why is there a trailing zero on this Dewey number? I've asked the available meatspace librarians why Tim Wendel's book The New Face of Baseball is cataloged at 796.3570, and the best they can come up with is that it's some topical designation. (The worst so far was, "Good question, troublemaker, I'm not a cataloger.") OK, so if that's it, which topic does a trailing zero indicate? If that's not it, what's going on here? Is it extraneous? FWIW, there's one other book in this collection with the same catalog number, and I can pull up more in the google.

How do I track my DVD-Rs?

tommorris — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:18:20 -0800

Is there any good, free UNIX/Linux software you can suggest for keeping a searchable index of removable media? I have a large collection of backed up files on DVD-R (about five or six hundred volumes). I have been using a proprietary and rather crufty application called CDFinder. My Mac laptop has become rather less stable recently (and I haven't got enough money for one of them nice new MacBooks), so I've made the leap to a netbook running Linux. This is the one application I can't find a decent equivalent for.

Ideally, I want an application that will maintain a database of all the metadata about the files on burned CD/DVD volumes. That metadata will obviously include the file names, creation/modification dates, but also ID3 data for audio files and the equivalent metadata for videos, photos, PDFs and all the other stuff I haven't really thought about. Search speed isn't tremendously important - it doesn't bother me if it takes fifteen seconds to do a search.

One of the things I would like would be for the data to be in an open format, and for the search tool to be usable from the command line (so I can use it over SSH).

I have done some Googling, but all I can find are the sort of things record collectors would use to keep track of their albums. Not what I want: I basically want UNIX's metadata-aware 'find' or 'locate' commands for unmounted volumes.

I've been thinking about building something like this myself as a fun little open-source project over the Christmas holidays. If someone has a suggestion of an existing project that would do what I want that is free, open source and preferably not tied to any windowing environments (command line ftw!), I'd be greatly appreciative.

Finding proper fit in catalog/online shopping

frobozz — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:37:21 -0800

Is there any way to come close to guaranteeing a proper fit when shopping for clothes online/in a catalog? I would like to be able to buy more clothes online - more bargains, more styles, more choice in general than local retailers, etc. Buying pants without first trying them on is usually ok. But nearly every shirt or sweater I've ordered online has been a dismal failure - one retailer's XS seems to be another's M, things blouse out in ways not shown in the photographs, etc. Since finding things that fit me in stores is time-consuming enough (I guess I don't have a very typical body-type), I guess I was optimistic to think sight-unseen shopping could work at all, but I'm wondering if there's any sort of trick or insider knowledge I should know before giving up on online shopping entirely.

Personal Cataloging Categories

i_am_a_fiesta — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:43:27 -0800

I am interested in creating a pseudo-scientific catalog of personal traits, both quantitative and qualitative, but concrete rather than subjective. Some categories I thought of are: countries or states visited, body measurements, identification numbers (like driver's license, social security, credit card, etc). What are some others?

What are the world's most useful dead-tree catalogs?

cadastral — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:23:14 -0800

What is the iconic (or just "your favorite") dead-tree product catalog (listing of merchandise for mail-order sale) for your hobby, industry, or trade? I get a lot of inspiration and project ideas from those huge, cinder-block-sized industry-specific catalogs that most every industrial supply company puts out. I really like the feeling of having these things on the shelf for when I need... something to fix a particular problem, but am not sure at all what that something is or what form it might take.

I want more of these catalogs. Hard copies. On my bookshelf. I want to know the inside scoop on all of the thousands of vocations and hobbies about which I know nothing. I want to know what the go-to catalog is for model railroaders, scrapbookers, field geologists, rock-climbers, steamfitters, tailors, hydroponic gardeners, blacksmiths, glaziers, restauranteurs, casino-operators, robotic-arm builders... just, everything.

By way of example, I love love love the Grainger catalog (catalog order form). It's filled with amazing things. I'm not shilling for them whatsoever and I couldn't endorse their product or their service anyway, having never ordered from them (I usually use it to get my ideas, and then I try to buy local from a similar, smaller supplier close by). The B&H photo and video catalog (catalog order) is another favorite (same deal, never spent a cent with them... I'm real big on keeping my money local).

So eager to see what y'all got. I've always been so awed by the disparate fields of knowledge and expertise that are brought together by MeFi. I am very interested in your little corner of experience and interest... and I thank you so much for sharing it with me, if you'd be kind enough to do so.

Library catalog software

ian1977 — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:00:51 -0800

In order to continue putting off packing for an upcoming move, I am looking for software for cataloging home libraries. What would be ideal is some sort of web-based application where I can enter in the author and a few characters of the title and it will scrape the internet for the rest of the information (ie, genre, year published, etc, etc). Even cooler would be the ability to just enter the ISBN number and have all the fields filled.

Then at the end I would like it all to export to Excel.

Is there such a thing? Does anything come close?

How do I nicely organize my library of 80 gigs of MP3s?

Nelson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:07:05 -0800

How do I nicely organize my library of 80 gigs of MP3s? My goal is to get my new Sonos system working nicely and presenting a tidy library of music. Ideally with cover art. It'd also be nice if iTunes would work reasonably well with my music collection, but iTunes is so awful I'm willing to write it off.

I've got 80 gigs of MP3s I've accumulated over the last ten years. They're all organized neatly in directories like "Genre / Artist / Album Name / 01 TrackName.mp3". The m3u tags, though, are a mess, with lots of variations and mistakes. And I have no cover art.

For years I've played my music in WinAmp or via a Squeezebox by just walking my nicely organized directory hierarchy. But newer music software seems to prefer to use m3u tags and categorize things by Artist, Genre, etc. And since my m3u tags are a mess, the resulting catalog is a mess. I can still play stuff via Sonos by walking a directory hierarchy, but it doesn't work very well and I feel like I'm missing out.

I've seen various software products that try to scan your mp3 files and try to correct m3u tags, remove duplicates, download cover art, etc. Do any of the Windows apps work well? Alternately, I still have most of the CDs in a box somewhere. Should I just send them all to a ripping service?

What is the best way to publish a part catalog to both print and web?

colecovizion — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:32:57 -0800

What is the best way to publish a part catalog for printing and the web? Here is what our data looks like:

* Over 10,000 part numbers (Parts are categorized by family/subfamily/series)
* Hundreds of part drawings (in EPS and GIF)
* Parts are added/edited/deleted frequently

Currently, we have a giant InDesign file were all of the data is "hard-coded" into it. Likewise, our website is hard-coded (no database backend). The main difference is that the pictures are in vector (EPS) on the InDesign file and GIF on the website.

I'm thinking that a database should be at the core of both of these publications so that we can update one location instead of two. If this is the case, what is the best software to link a print publishing program (such as InDesign) up to a database? The closest thing I've found is Corel Ventura. If a database isn't the solution, what other options do I have?

Thanks!

Is there an easy way to manage extensive amounts of .eps & .ai files (Adobe Illustrator) into a .pdf catalog format?

cheero — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:37:55 -0800

Is there an easy way to manage extensive amounts of .eps & .ai files (Adobe Illustrator) into a .pdf catalog format? I often buy vector pack cds that come with vast amounts of eps/ai files but there is almost always a single .pdf file that has a catalog of all the files in one for easy browsing. Is there a tool that does this automatically?

Catalog Name??

Misciel — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 06:25:46 -0800

I'm going nuts trying to remember the name of the (fairly common) mail-order catalog that's still in existence, but started out as PBS' gift catalog about 15 or so years ago. Help!!!

Help me find this great home electronics catalog company, last seen by me in the late 80s...

healthyliving — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:56:20 -0800

I'm trying to remember the name of a really great home electronics company who I believe was catalog only, that I last knew about in the late 80s, when I ordered some dbx brand bookshelf speakers, and denon cd and amp (which I still own and are running strong to this day!) The catalogs came to my parents house in Santa Barbara, and they had all this really well selected gear, with both narrative and technical descriptions. The narrative felt like an enthusiast, but not snobby high end enthusiast. The company's name was, I believe, two syllables, something like Redken, but I know that's not it. Any idea what company I'm talking about, and if they still exist?

How do I catalog a soundtrack?

pantsrobot — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 10:04:00 -0800

How do I create/catalog a soundtrack? While listening to some songs, I'm often struck by how perfect they would be accompanying a scene in a movie/play/whatever. This has happened many many times and I would like to start making a list of these songs and scenes.

For example, I feel that Benny Goodman's version of Sing, Sing, Sing would be awesome playing in the background during a chase scene or a high-energy montage. I write this down. After a couple more of these thoughts I'm left with a messy list of songs and potential scenes.
Are there standard tools to organize this list? Is Excel the answer? Somehow a searchable list of tags?

help me index my backup media

mattr — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 10:36:44 -0800

Is there a smart way of indexing/cataloging my offline media? This has been partially asked before (I can't work out how to establish a link in here) - but the links that were in the post (diskbase), were mostly dead (and I didn't like 'Cathy' much). There is of course more inside. I have 40 or 50 DVD's which serve as my backup media - full of a variety of files (mostly MP3s, videos and pictures) - I'd like to be able to put each one of these into my drive and for some software to index the files and make a searchable list of them.

I'm using a PC and I don't want to bring them back to 'online' media (hard drive etc) if possible to do this. I don't access the files often - but particularly for music I'd love to be able to search and find 'offline' files as well.

I don't need to index the text inside documents - most of my filenaming is pretty good.

Bonus points if the application that can do this is a) free and b) cool.

PIRGThing

arcticwoman — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:25:18 -0800

I need to catalogue my non-profit's library of books and videos. We want it to be accessible for students and faculty to easily see what we own and what is currently available for borrowing. I have been looking at LibraryThing, and am pretty impressed, but I can't see a way to incorporate our films, to give each item an id number, or to mark what is currently borrowed or available. Are there ways for me to do this, or would another site/software be better?

Catalog photograph shoot

bristolcat — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 11:44:17 -0800

Our art department is shooting its own photographs for our catalog this year and we are facing the challenge of taking high-res shots of beach towels and tapestry blankets. We had played with the idea of building a giant light tent after having little success with using flash umbrellas. We want as much detail as possible, down to the loops on the terry cloth. Any tips? Are we on the right track with the giant light tent? Any ideas for building a cheap light tent? We are all kind of photography-challenged so ANY help is appreciated. Thank you!

Designer Imposter!

Sinner — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 09:11:11 -0800

Help me impersonate a graphic designer! I know it’s kind of insane, but as early as this afternoon I may receive the proverbial offer (well, assignment) that I can’t refuse, and I’m wondering if anyone might be able to offer some fake-it-till-you-make-it tips for this sort of project (a short catalogue for a half-dozen or so boutique products). See, the thing is, I'm not a designer, although I have some experience with Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop. I’m most interested in a list of ten or fifteen things that you talented designer folks do over and over again that seem impressive to the uninitiated, but that are simpler than they appear to we of the untrained eyes. Books are also fine, but due to the potential immediacy of this, the shorter the tutorial, the better. Here’s the big picture: I’m the editor at a small start-up. Freelancers of varying skill levels handle most of our design work, but they only come around when needed. Due to budget constraints, over the past year or two I’ve taken on an increasing amount of lower-level design work (in Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop) to help cut costs. Still, I know my limits and am always the first to try to farm out work that I’m not able to do. Today, however, my boss’s boss (the owner of the company and someone with whom I have virtually no day-to-day interaction -- he barely knows my name) asked me for help on an out-of-the-office project. Someone of some relation to him, blood or otherwise, is going to be selling a boutique retail product, for which a logo already exists and which he thinks requires a sort of portfolio. This is not something I would normally feel comfortable doing. Nevertheless, my discomfort is outweighed by my fear that telling him that I’m not qualified to do this will make him question whether I’m suited to remain in my role at the company. So I said I’d give it a shot, but hedged my bets by telling him that 1) there are “really sophisticated people out there” who will charge well up into the hundreds, 2) my work for our company doesn’t require me to have that "really sophisticiated" level of expertise, 3) I will do something on spec, with no up-front financial commitment from him. Again, I have some practical experience and know how to use the tools on a basic level, but my job rarely requires me to make anything with any real aesthetic appeal. I’m looking for quick-and-dirty tips from pros ("use a lot of radial gradients" or "don't use a lot of radial gradients" more than “take a class at a local college.” (I should also reiterate that I’m keenly aware of the fact that design is a difficult field that one doesn’t pick up overnight – if I’m able to squeak by on this one project, it’ll be by luck and/or the grace of God, but it won’t magically make me a designer.)