Defining a New
Collection
Recollector provides two ways to create a new collection:
1. Create a collection from a template. The template specifies which fields will be automatically defined for your collection. You will have the opportunity to modify this initial set of fields. A collection made from a template does not initially contain any data. Data is added subsequently, either by importing from an Excel spreadsheet or from a tab-delimited text file, or by data entry using the customized data input screen that is automatically created for the new collection.
2. Create a collection from on a pre-existing Excel spreadsheet or tab-delimited ASCII file. In this case the set of fields will be derived from the columns found in the spreadsheet or file, and the collection will also be populated with the data from the spreadsheet or file.
This section of the User’s Guide describes the first of these two methods: Creating a collection from a template. To read about the other method, go to the section of the User’s Guide on Creating a Collection from an Excel Spreadsheet or a Text File.
To set up a new collection, pick Create New Collection from Recollector’s Control Window. This will bring up the following dialog box:
Make sure that the first choice (Create a new, empty collection) is selected. Click the Create collection button. (If you want to use one of the other two choices – creating a collection, including data, from an Excel spreadsheet or a tab-delimited ASCII file – read the section of the User’s Guide on Creating a Collection from an Excel Spreadsheet or a Text File.) You will then be asked to select a template for the new collection:
Recollector lets you specify the kind of collection that you are creating. This choice determines the initial set of fields that will be created for you. 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 creating. 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. These are default choices for currency and dimension fields. If you want to define a field for a currency or dimension not listed here, you can append, in parentheses, as part of the field name, the desired unit label. So, for example, if you want to have a currency field named “Price” in Norwegian kroner (“NKr”), you would change the name of the field to “Price (NKr)”. Similarly, if you want a dimension unit in feet (for example, for rug sizes in a rug collection), you could name a field like this: “Length (ft.)”. However, if your currency fields and date fields use one of the provided defaults shown on this window, you can simply pick the desired default units, and then you will not need to append a unit label to the field name.
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/audio/video”. The field contains the filename (and location) of a digital file. Typically this is a JPEG (.jpg) file for images, though most of the common forms of digital image files can be used. (The program does not support images in JPEG200 format.) Audio or video files are supported in any format that can be displayed with Windows Media Player. Recollector handles the display of images in both thumbnail and full-size format. 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 (and/or audio and video) files for your collection in a single directory on your computer, then you can simplify the specification of the image/audio/video filenames by defining an Image Directory for the entire collection. Then, when entering the file names, you will only need to specify the simple filename (e.g. “123.jpg”) rather than the full pathname of the file (e.g. “c:\mycollection\images\123.jpg”). As the last step in creating a new collection, after specifying the name for your new collection database file, you will be asked if you want to specify (and create, if desired) the image directory. If you choose to leave the image directory unspecified, then full pathnames will be needed when specifying filenames for an image/audio/video data field.
For full information on images (and audio or video clips) and the image directory, see The Image Directory.
At this point the initial setup for your collection is complete, except for telling Recollector where you want your collection to be stored. Click OK, and you will be prompted to specify a file location and filename. You will also be asked if you want to specify an image directory at this time. You can do this now, defer it until later, or leave the image directory undefined. (See the section of the User’s Guide about The Image Directory for a description of the dialog that lets you define the collection’s Image Directory.)
Notes:
- The filename you specify should have an extension of “.xml”. (Recollector 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 Recollector.)
- You will not have to remember the name or location of your collection file, as Recollector 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. A new window will open, showing the collection, 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 Recollector. To find out how to do this, read about Adding Data to your Collection.
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