News from the SCD Community

SCDDB Collections Q&A

# SCDDB Collections Q & A

I wrote this in January 2013 to introduce the idea of collections on
the SCDDB “dancedata-friends” mailing list. Since I've been working on
collections recently, it seems like a good idea to give the article a
more prominent place.

**Q. What are “collections” and what are they good for?**

A. The idea is that you tell the database what stuff you have, and the
database then lets you restrict its operation to deal only with that
stuff.

%%!MORE

**Q. Why would that be useful?**

A. Imagine you're a dance teacher planning your next lesson. When
searching for dances with a specific formation, there's little sense
in having to look at lots of dances that you don't actually have
instructions for.

**Q. Are collections only for dances?**

A. No – collections are going to be able to contain publications,
dances, albums, and recordings. (At first, anyway. Tunes might also be
useful for musicians but we won't go there quite yet.)

**Q. Why bother with dances and recordings – won't dealing with just
publications and albums be enough?**

A. In theory, yes. In real life, people tend to amass photocopies (or
PDF files) of dance descriptions, and – using web sites such as the
iTunes store – it is now possible to download individual tracks from
some albums. Also, some dances circulate as leaflets without having
been formally published, so they are not part of any publication in
the database and would be impossible to add to a collection in a
system that only dealt with publications.

**Q. Will I have to go to the database page for every single dance,
publication, album, and recording that I have in order to add it to
the database?**

A. Hopefully not! While it will be quite possible to add individual
“items” to a collection, there will be a way of giving the database a
list of items to add in bulk.

Generally, adding a publication to a collection will add all the
dances in that publication (and the same applies to albums and
recordings). So you will only need to add “loose” dances
individually.

**Q. How is “bulk adding” supposed to work?**

A. The current idea is that you will be able to download a CSV file
containing the database IDs, names, and useful additional information
(such as a book's publisher) for all the publications or albums in the
database. You can then use a program like Excel or OpenOffice Calc to
“import” this file and flag all the items that you actually have,
before “exporting” it to CSV and re-uploading it to the SCDDB web
site.

Adding dances could work the same way, but a 14,000+ line Excel sheet
might be a bit unwieldy (the same applies to recordings, to a lesser
degree). We'll have to see what people are prepared to put up with, or
whether anyone has a better idea.

**Q. I used to use Alan Paterson's DanceData program to keep track of
what I have. Will it be possible to “import” that existing data into
the web-based database?**

A. Perhaps. I haven't looked into it yet.

**Q. What about Patty Lindsay's “GhillieTracks” program? Will it be
possible to “synchronise” GhillieTracks's idea of what I own with that
of SCDDB?**

A. Perhaps. I shall have to talk to Patty about this. (I don't know a
lot about GhillieTracks.)

**Q. I have a list of all my dance books together with the number of the
shelf where each book is stored. Will I be able to store the shelf
numbers in a SCDDB collection?**

A. Yes – every item will have a free-form “comment”/“additional data”
field that is designed to contain that sort of information. You will
need to come up with your own conventions for what goes in there.

**Q. I have lots of dance descriptions as PDF files on my computer, and
also lots of MP3 files. Can the database know about these and help me
organise them?**

A. We're considering storing URLs with collection items, which could
also refer to local files. (If you use several computers to store
items you will need to arrange for the file names to be the same on
all of your computers for this to work best.) At first you will
probably be responsible for entering your own file names into the
database, although someone could write a program to scan your hard
disk and do this automatically.

**Q. How will collections show up on SCDDB's web pages?**

A. The current idea is to add a “collection selector” to the
“Navigation” box in the right-hand column. This would let you pick “no
collection”, one of your collections, or “any of your
collections”. From that moment, the database will restrict its
operations to the items (albums, recordings, dances, or publications)
in that collection – until you select another collection, “no
collection”, or “any collection”.

On the detail pages for items that are able to be part of a
collection, there will be a list of all of your collections that
contain the item in question, together with any additional data or URL
that you entered.

There is also going to be a “Collections” page where you can look at
your collections, add new collections, or delete existing ones if you
need to (among other things).

**Q. Why would I want to have more than one collection?**

A. Suppose you have lots of music on your PC and part of that music on
your iPod. This lets you keep track of what is on either. Or consider
that you're teaching a workshop abroad and can only bring so many
books. If for whatever reason you need to be able to re-plan your
lessons it is convenient to have the use of a temporary collection of
exactly the material you brought with you, instead of having to go
through various paper books manually.

**Q. Can other database users look at my collections at all?**

A. Not at first. Generally, collections can only be accessed by their
“owners” – the people who originally set them up. In the future it may
become possible to let other users look at your collections, or even
change them.

**Q. Why on earth would that be useful?**

A. Consider the case of a shared “club laptop” where teachers can add
new CDs that the club bought, or new dance descriptions that they
downloaded from the Internet.

You could let other local teachers look at your collection of
resources and vice-versa. That would make it easier to lend and borrow
publications because you don't need to ask the other teachers whether
they have X, and they don't need to go check.

Finally, consider the way some dance clubs, or federations of dance
clubs, operate for the purpose of holding regular dances. There could
be a pool of dances or publications that are eligible for social
programmes, and that pool could change over time. A shared collection
would be one way of managing that pool conveniently for all its users.

**Q. All right, this sounds somewhat useful. When can we expect to see
this in the database?**

A. Hopefully soon, but of course with spare-time projects such as
these it is difficult to make concrete promises. In the meantime, feel
free to suggest improvements or additional features that you might
like to see.

· Posted by Anselm Lingnau · 26 August 2013 16:00 (last edited on 17 April 2023 1:39)