Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with catalogue

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.

Conserving and sharing art (naïve question).

jet_silver — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:19:09 -0800

A piece of art given me some years ago might be of historical interest. How do I get in touch with someone who might want to take a picture of it, or catalogue it, or whatever? This is really two questions. I was given this watercolor by the artist's son-in-law twenty-five years ago. It is not a picture I would sell. It might have escaped detection since it was handed around a bit and wound up with me in a very informal way, so anyone looking for it wouldn't know to contact me. There aren't any appeals for people who own the artist's work to get in touch with so-and-so in a Google search for the artist's name (Yngve E. Soderberg). How would I know if someone were looking for examples of his work to catalog?

Given that a lot of hits for the artist's name are art auction houses, should I have the work appraised? The painting's value isn't of much interest to me, but are minor works insured such that they can be restored? It's a lovely work (to my untutored eye) and it has a special significance for me.

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.

Barnett Newman's Abraham

eisenkr — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:46:17 -0800

I've been searching for a couple of years for a print of Barnett Newman's painting "Abraham," but no amount of Googling has helped. Does anybody know where I could buy a print of the painting or a catalogue that contains a good reproduction? The painting appears on page 4 of this pdf

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.

Glossy mag looks for newsheet money.

ninazer0 — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:50:29 -0800

I need to photograph some items to be sold online. I want the pix to look as professional as possible and would appreciate any tips you may have re composition, framing, lighting etc. How do I get the glossy mag look for this stuff? I have a Canon Eos 400D Digital SLR. My lenses are an 18-55mm and a 75-300mm. I have bugger-all in the way of lighting (a variety of homeware halogen and fluoro lamps plus plenty of natural light) and cannot affort to buy any new equipment. I have plenty of props, backdrops and set-dressing stuff. I have one portable tripod and a ladder. The only flash I have is the one on the camera, alas. I have Photoshop CS to help clean up the mess.

The products in question are a motley - sushi knives, paella pans and Moroccan tagines. The knives and pans are shiny and catch the flash too much so I'm trying to work with alternative lighting. The tagines are easier, but I still can't get the photo to really "pop".

What are the trade tricks I need to learn?

How do I store/catalogue digital photos in a workplace?

tobtoh — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:37:30 -0800

I work in a (university) residential college and we have an archive of digital photos of College events that is growing exponentially. What software can I use to catalogue/store all these photos? As you might imagine, a residential College has a lot of events that happen each year, and at every event, you will have numerous students/staff taking photos. A small subset of these photographers copy their photos to our server for the College's historical records and/or publicity. Even though it's a small subset, we still have thousands of photos and this is constantly growing. Currently, the photos are stored in a directory on the server (with subdirectories for each event etc). This used to acceptable ... but it's really proving ineffective as the number of photos increases.

What I am after is something like Picassa or Adobe Lightroom ... some software package that can maintain, store, tag, catalogue, and search our photo library.

Here's the catch ... I need it to work with multiple users on multiple computers. Is there any software package that does that? The likes of Picassa and Lightroom (from what I have read) only really handle individual use - they aren't designed as collaboration tools.

So ... any suggestions? The work environment is Windows based. However, happy to hear OSX and Linux suggestions as well. Thanks.

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?

where is my ikea catalog?

caelumluna — Sun, 14 May 2006 09:13:50 -0800

How can I find old ikea catalogs? I searched everywhere (Archive.org, google) for old ikea catalogs, but they are no where to be found. I believe there is someone there like me who already archived these nice documents and maybe uploaded them to a site.

How can I organise my mass of digital photos?

dance — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 12:34:11 -0800

I've got a directory filled with the digital photos I and friends have taken over some eight years. It's a disorganised mess with no coherent, standardised naming format. I'd like to: -remove duplicates -sort, rename or place in folders images based on EXIF data or content I'm on Mac OS X but could possibly gain access to a Windows box if necessary. Any ideas?

Does anyone know of an online collection site like DVD Aficionado or Guzzlefish for books?

Robot Johnny — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 14:13:43 -0800

Does anyone know of an online collection site like DVD Aficionado or Guzzlefish for books?