Defining the Collection

Defining a New Collection

To set up a new collection, pick Create New Collection from the Collection Manager’s control window. This will bring up the following dialog box:

The Collection Manager lets you specify the kind of collection for which you are creating a database. This choice determines the initial set of fields that will be created. Since you will be able to add, modify or delete fields from your database definition, the choice you make here is only a convenience: The program tries to start you off with a set of fields that make sense for the kind of collection you will be cataloging. In most cases this will reduce the amount of additional setup (defining new fields, modifying existing fields or deleting fields) that you will have to perform.

If the kind of collection you are working with doesn’t match any of the choices in the drop-down list, just choose Generic, which will start you off with a simple set of fields that are applicable to almost any collection database; you can then add to this initial set during the next phase of the setup process.

After choosing a collection template type from the drop-down list and clicking OK, the following dialog box will be shown, though the list of field names will differ, depending upon which template you chose in the prior step. The illustration shown here reflects the “Generic” template; other template choices will provide additional fields.

Choose a name for your collection (or use the pre-selected name, “My Collection”).
Select one of the three currencies ($, €, or ₤). Currency-value fields in the database will be assumed to be in the chosen currency.
Select one of the two measurement units (cm. or in.). Dimension fields in the database will be assumed to be in the chosen units.

Note: These three choices can be modified later, after the collection has been set up. The choices of currency and measurement units only affect labeling in the display of your collection data; they have no other effect on the functioning of the database. If you want to use a currency or dimension units other than what is offered in the choices here, you can define your currency/dimension fields as simple “number” fields (rather than as “currency” or “dimension” fields), and their values will be displayed without currency unit or dimension unit labels, and you can also enter a specific currency/dimension label directly with the value, when entering data into a numeric field (e.g. “NKr 1000” or “250mm”).

The information in your collection is organized into a set of fields. Unless you specify otherwise, the set of fields will be the ones shown in the Define Collection window. However, you can customize the fields to suit the needs of your collection. Click the Modify Fields button, to bring up another dialog box, if you want to:

Change the name of any field.
Change the data type of any field.
Delete any field (because it doesn’t correspond to data that you want to maintain for your collection).
Add additional fields.

See the description of Modifying Fields for a full description of how to change the field definitions for your collection database.

One of the field data types is “image”. An image field contains the filename (and location) of a digital image file (typically a JPEG [.jpg] file, though any of the common forms of digital image files can be used). The Collection Manager displays image field data as images (both thumbnail and full size). For example, if you are cataloging a baseball card collection, you might have scanned images of the front and back of each card in your collection, and you might want to include two image fields, front image and back image, as part of your collection database. If you store all (or most) of the image files for your collection in a single directory on your computer, then you can simplify the specification of the image filenames by defining an Image Directory for the entire collection. Then, when entering the image file names, you will only need to specify the simple filename (e.g. “123.jpg”) rather than the full pathname of the image file (e.g. “c:\mycollection\images\123.jpg”). Click the Specify Image Directory button to define the directory where your collection’s digital image files are stored. Or you can leave the image directory unspecified, in which case full pathnames will be needed when specifying filenames for an image data field.

For full information on images and the image directory, see The Image Directory.

At this point the initial setup for your collection is complete, except for telling the Collection Manager where you want your collection to be stored. Click OK, and you will be prompted to specify a file location and filename.

Notes:

The filename you specify should have an extension of “.xml”. (The Collection Manager stores the database for a collection in a single file, using what is called “XML” format. This is a file format widely used to store structured data. It is a text file format; the contents of an XML file can be viewed in any text editor. An XML file can also be displayed in a web browser. Note: Do not modify this file in an external program, as any changes you make to it may cause it to be unreadable by the Collection Manager.)
You will not have to remember the name or location of your collection file, as the Collection Manager will remember this information for you.
You will be able to make changes to the setup of your collection database, even after you have begun adding data. The choices regarding your collection database (field definitions, currency/measurement-unit choices, collection name, and image directory location) can all be modified at a later time.
The size of the collection file depends upon the number of fields and the number of data records in the database. However, even a collection of 1,000 records is unlikely to require more than about 2 megabytes of storage. Therefore disk space is not likely to be a problem, unless you choose to store your collection on a diskette or other very low capacity disk.

Once the setup for your collection has been completed, it is ready to be used. Click Show Collection from the Collection Manager control window. The collection window will be shown, though it will be empty (except for column headers), since you don’t yet have any data in the collection. If you already have collection data in a computer readable form, read about Importing Data into your Collection. If you don’t have data to import, you can begin adding records to your collection through the data-entry screens of the Collection Manager. To find out how to do this, read about Adding Data to your Collection.

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