Welcome to this Order From Chaos Online Tutorial. Since 2012 I’ve been exploring how to organise, digitise, show, share, bring to life, preserve, and pass on our physical and digital objects; and this tutorial is intended to draw out the lessons I’ve learned and recorded in the pwofc.com web site.
The tutorial takes the form of a series of units, each one providing a few screenfulls of main points with links to supporting posts elsewhere in this site (it’s not possible to link exclusively to specific text within a post).
The Contents List is below.
U1. Welcome – this post
U2.0. Scope & Terminology – Introduction
U2.1 Scope & Terminology – Order From Chaos
U2.2 Scope & Terminology – Collections
U2.3 Scope & Terminology – Digital Technology
U2.4 Scope & Terminology – Understanding today in the context of yesterday
U3.0 Why do it? – Introduction
U3.1 Why do it? – Why do we keep things?
U3.2 Why do it? – What problems arise as collections build up?
U3.3 Why do it? – What are the pros and cons of organising your collections?
U3.4 Why do it? – Why use digital technology to organise your collections?
U3.5 Why do it? – Why bother exploiting your collections?
U4.0 Approach– Introduction
U4.1 The basic approach – with no digital support
U4.2 A model of OFC activities
U4.3 Examples of OFC projects
U4.4 Points to bear in mind
U5.0 How to do it – Introduction
U5.1 How to do it – Define what & why
U5.2 How to do it – Plan
U5.3 How to do it – Sort & organise
U5.4 How to do it – Digitise – Introduction
U5.4.1 Digitise – Technology requirements
U5.4.2 Digitise – Titles, metadata, indexes and labelling
U5.4.3 Digitise – Choosing to retain or discard
U5.5 How to do it – Store
U5.6 How to do it – Use
U5.7 How to do it – Exploit
U5.8 How to do it – Maintain
U6.0 OFC in the future – Introduction
U6.1 The future of OFC items and collections
U6.2 The future impact of recent developments
U6.3 The future impact of AI
U6.4 A summary view of the OFC future
Unit 6.4 is the last unit of this OFC Online Tutorial