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Tool suggestions for Art History Database?
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Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 3, 2013 at 01:24 PM
Susanne wrote:
>I am even looking at possibly using MyInfo or Surfulater - but will need
>to make a decision soon, before the quantity of information makes
>assimilating it all too boring to contemplate ;-)
Surfulater is pretty good with clippings from both web (though I haven’t tried with Chrome), screen(shots) and other docs, and you can attach additional files. Items can be linked to from other apps. And there is the chronological view, which is a timeline.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 3, 2013 at 06:32 PM
Susanne, along with my best wishes for 2013, let me first say that I very much enjoy your daily art posts and appreciate the work that goes in them :-)
I see several complementary solutions to your issue, none all-encompassing but I believe that you won’t be sacrificing too much whichever root you take.
First of all, I would suggest that you create a Google+ contact with your Evernote mail address and include it in the circles with which you share your daily posts. I have found no easier way to keep track of my G+ posts. You can of course do the same with the Zoot mail address (if you have linked a Gmail account to Zoot).
The above solution will not copy the full postings to email, just the first teaser lines, as Google only sends a notification to mail accounts. That is not a huge problem, as I believe that the name and years of each artist are usually at the top of your posts. The notification will keep the link to the original post so you can click back to it at any time for full details.
To maintain and organise the full posts, my alternative suggestions would be:
- Evernote: I believe that it is the tool that will cope best with the growth in database size. The sync works great and acts as an excellent backup. You can create any hierarchical structure with tags and it could help you organise artists in complementary taxonomies, e.g. movements, techniques, special characteristics etc. There is a free plugin that shows entries on a calendar http://www.moreproductivenow.com/evernote.html Main disadvantage of Evernote: chronology will be limited to the posting date.
- MyInfo: main advantage over Evernote, the custom metadata colums which should make it easy to organise chronologies etc. Main disadvantage: capture might not be as convenient.
- Surfulater: grabbing material from your browsers, including Chrome, should be a piece of cake and its tagging is powerful. However, it has no quantitative fields so your chronology will be limited to the posting date.
- Zoot: I have not worked extensively with the most recent version so I have no idea about its user-friendliness. That said, its metadata/search capabilities should be unmatched.
- Last but not least, if you are considering a DIY solution (as Access was mentioned), you might want to take a look at Brliiant Database http://www.brilliantdatabase.com/ discussed here in the past.
Posted by Patrick Rentsch
Jan 3, 2013 at 09:43 PM
Hi,
maybe you want to have look at http://dirt.projectbamboo.org (Digital Research Tools).
There you can find tools like Omeka, http://omeka.org , or Exhibit, http://www.simile-widgets.org/exhibit3/ , which might be helpful for your project.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 3, 2013 at 10:24 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>- Surfulater: grabbing material from your browsers, including Chrome,
>should be a piece of cake and its tagging is powerful. However, it has
>no quantitative fields so your chronology will be limited to the posting
>date.
Sorry to have to correct you Alexander, as I’m sure you know a lot more about Surfulater as I do, but just today I’ve discovered that you can change the posting date to any date you like in Surfulater, so the chronological tree can be used for creating a timeline.
Recently I’ve decided that I will start reading the help files of my favourite applications from cover-to-cover, as so many times I discover some fab features like this one for software that I’ve been using for years… While at it, I learned something else about Surfulater today that I’m too embarrassed to even mention… :)
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 4, 2013 at 08:52 AM
Dr Andus wrote:
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>However, it has no quantitative fields so your chronology will be limited to the
>posting date.
>
>Sorry to have to correct you Alexander, as I’m sure you know a lot more
>about Surfulater as I do, but just today I’ve discovered that you can
>change the posting date to any date you like in Surfulater, so the
>chronological tree can be used for creating a timeline.
True, I should rephrase my point: “your chronology will be limited to one date per item”. I understand that Susanne wanted to keep both the chronology of the artist’s activity/birth/whatever, and of her own posting. So one can have any of the these, but not all. In a tool with custom fields, one could have several dates per item.