Flippity-Flop

These days I just can't seem to make up my mind: FMP or Access. FMP Advanced has that groovy web-publishing thing now, which was enough to convince me that I should make our (temporary) Image Repository in that format. But of course there are compatablility issues, what with me being the ONLY person on campus that uses the software. No problem, I can publish it in kiosk mode. Sweet! Now my faculty can enjoy my database without the department investing in 900 gazillion license agreements. Oh yeah, without the server edition, only FIVE people can use it at once. That would be great if I could put everyone on a schedule, and I don't see that happening.

So Friday I had an epiphany: why not use Access? Really, most of the reasons I had against it were just personal preference. When I thought about it logically, it is the right choice for this project. Since this database will be shared, it's best to use a program that is supported on campus and that everyone basically has access to (he-he!).

Again, it's just a temporary solution, until we get a proper delivery system. So I will make the most of both worlds: I will keep my backend in FMP, and the "front end" in Access.

Now I just need to relearn Access. Ugh.

Nugget

Hey!

So this is my work blog. I noticed that there weren't too many out there about Visual Resources, and instead of blathering on and on about such things in my personal blog, I decided to have another one devoted to the ins and outs of the life of a Visual Resources Curator such as myself. I'll try to keep this fairly professional, but not too stuffy, because that's not really how I roll. Hopefully it will find an audience of like-minded, OCD-types such as myself, who enjoy playing with slides, cataloguing art images and learning how to be IT people and Database Administrators without the benefit of those salaries.

In September, I will have been VRC here for 11 years. I claim in no way to be an expert in my field, for many reasons, but mostly because our profession is evolving at an astounding rate. This is certainly not the same job that I was hired for! But that's a good thing. Change is good. Technology is good. It's not easy, but it's good.

We (and by "we" I mean the collective Visual Resources Library "we," which consists of me, and the ever-changing cast of occasional student helpers) maintain a collection of approximately 130,000 slides of art images that are used for teaching art and art history courses at our university. Of those images, I have digitized around 21,000. As of yet, we don't have an efficient delivery system for the digital images, but I'm working on that (we'll discuss this later in another post). It is the dream, the vision, the seemingly elusive goal.

So in the meantime, I just keep on scanning (and photoshopping, and databasing....)

Back to work,
Nugget