Does anyone use excel to catalog their collection? How do you keep track of it all?

[debrasoon]

Amazing

[astrid]

Originally Posted by Stray59

Astrid and all -
Sorry for taking up this much space on a post, ...
I created this for the museum collection that I am assisting with. I created this with the thought of having all the basics and some more in-depth observation available to all the staff and to also keep and inventory control.
...

Wow! What a wonderful list! I'll have to add a few categories to mine because this is really great!

It doesn't matter if you take up this much space on a post if the space you've taken up is composed 100% of awesomeness!

[Stray59]

Astrid:
Oh, yeah - I just shed awesomeness all over the place - my partner is constantly complaining about having to shovel it out of the house every day - LOL!!!.
Actually, when I interned in a college research lab I found I had just enough OCD to need EVERY bit of pertinent info on my data collection sheets, so this kinda comes natural or maybe "nerd"-ural.
Actually I had to devise a sheet that anyone could pick up and easily add to or take info from, as the greenhouse has rotating crews of employees and volunteers and I wanted them to have all the info at their fingertips.
I refined it a little bit more - adding a blank for the "Tribe" that the plant belongs to along with "Viral testing date" and "Viral test conducted" and "Deceased / Destroyed" date in order to keep inventory correct.
It is hard to believe, but one of the largest problems they have, especially with miniatures, is people steal them from the collections. Something comes up "missing" every few weeks - they have to come up with some way to "pleasantly" monitor and better protect the collection. Which gave me another field to add - "Missing from collection", sadly enough.
Glad you saw some things you could use - my years of nerdiness are finally paying off!! YEA. It was almost worth spending so many of my school days stuffed in a locker with my underwear in a perpetual state of "wedgy".....well, maybe not, but close!

[cathyeignus]

this is just like ORCHIDALBUM that i use on my mac.
sorry for the misname earlier. ORCHIDALBUM is an app that is easy to use.

[Stray59]

Cathyeignus:
How wild - I just sat in my easy chair, laptop in my lap, and started itemizing all the info that I could think of that I would want and then started trying to put it in an easy-to-use format. This may very well change in the future, depending on what the volunteers and employees need added or use the most.
It's cool to know that there is an app for that - but anymore there is a app for everything, so it shouldn't amaze me. I grew up when phone were permanently anchored to the wall and the only "mobility" you had was the length of the coiled cord between the handset and the phone base; also when the only "Notebooks" we had included a spiral wire binder, so even though I try to keep updated with all the new tech, my immediate default mode is to just create what I need - then find out someone has done it for me in an app form! Oh well, to me it's more fun to "DoItYourself" so.....
Thanks for the input - I am going to check out the ALBUM app and see if I can interface the two! That would be really cool......

[Mainwaring]

I use this software to keep track of my collection.
hmmm, apparently I can't post links to other pages.

But search on Google for Ricci's Orchids page and you will find a link to the software

It is super great and free. It is really easy to use and manages everything. Bloom times, light, water and photos. A very good help for your orchid collection.

[estación seca]

A spreadsheet makes it easy to add columns when certain data become important to us. It is a little harder to do this with a database program.

Those of us with control issues generally prefer doing things ourselves. We want to track things others don't think important and we don't want to look at stuff we don't use. I would guess chemistry majors fall into this class? What do you think, Astrid?

[DMT]

Hi Everyone,
Glad I came across Astrid post last month because I didn't want to hand write everything, so I keep putting off catorgorizing my collection. So downloaded Excel for iPad, perfect. Along with your catagories, I added one yesterday, disease. Again, Thanks I feel now I will have a better understanding of what the orchids are doing. DMT