How to catch up?

[vakkotaur]

Well, now that I've resumed work on the COLT the question is how to go about it. As can be seen from looking at the index, there are a few gaps. They are: All of 1995, August-December 2000, All of 2001, March-December 2002, and all of 2003 so far.

I could try to do it in order and work on 1995, but then I don't touch anything recent for a while. Or I can try to work on a recent year, like this one. Or I can skip around and do something from each year, slowly progressing on all of them.

I like the idea of progressing on all, but it's also slower going in a way. As no year finishes up quick, it's a bit harder to see progress. That is, it'd be nice to say "2000 is done" or "1995 is done" than to just say, "Well, some of each is done and the gaps are smaller now." I suppose I should concentrate on the recent stuff. After all, 1995 waited this long, a few months more isn't going be all that different. I'm open to suggestions. I could work forward, backward, skip around, or whatever. If one way makes more sense, let me know how.

I think I have decided, however else I go about things, that when I travel and use the laptop, it'll be mainly to work on issues from 1995. One faire has been cancelled (postponed, but postponed faires have a tendency to postponed forever) so that's one less bit of travelling. Of course, it also means I have the weekend free to do non-faire stuff.

Also, the issue index (and the title index) pages are getting rather large. I'm not sure I could split them up without causing some awkwardness in navigation, alas. I'm leaning toward having a line of links of years that would jump to that year in the issue index, and doing a similar thing with letters for the title index. I've seen it done elsewhere and it's not an unusual thing. I've not really been a fan of it, but can see its usefulness. I might do that to the title index first and see how (or if) I like it. (Gee, and that avoids actually working on an actual comic issue. Oop.)

Comments

[pharwarner.livejournal.com]

The whole issue of backcapturing while cataloging is a little difficult to deal with. In my backcaptuting exercise, I've found it most important to prevent any new gaps for appearing by dealing with all new items as soon as I get them. In order to fill gaps, I start at the beginning, and then work forwards chronologically.

Another way to deal with gaps in the catalog is to quickly produce an entry level record for an item. Just record the most important information about the book, the things that will be referred to most often by those interrogating your system. When that's done, you can then go back again and complete the records fully. This also gives you a couple of goals to work towards before ultimate completion of the catalog.

Pretty soon the end come into sight!

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

As you can see in my next post, I've settled on keeping up with new releases. But for reasons of how the new index will work, will be skipping around a little beyond that.

The partial fill idea is something I've considered. Actually, all the issue files are there up to December 2003, though the "future" ones don't have real artist and title information in them yet, of course. They just aren't all finished. I decided some time ago not to put in active link to uncompleted files. That seems like a cheat and might make it easier to ignore and put off. Also, I'd want to note that incompleteness in the index file and that would bug me perhaps too much.

Before, when I had only one gap, I would the recent issue, then one at one end of the gap, then one at the other end of the gap, and then the next recent issue. Or at least I tried to do that. I don't think I'll taking quite that approach now.