Indexes and Lists maintain information about each item in a collection. For me, an Index is distinguished from a List by also specifying a reference number for each item. I maintain indexes for several of my collections, and a List for one of them. Most of the indexes are substantial with several different types of information (Fields) and large numbers of entries, as can be seen from the details below:

1. Photos and Videos (25 fields, 2116 entries)
2. Mystery Books (24 fields, 121 entries)
3. Personal Books (24 fields, 301 entries)
4. Family Books (24 fields, 28 entries)
5. Work Books (24 fields, 4 entries)
6. Writings (Publications) (5 fields, 68 entries)
7. Writings (Work Reports) (4 fields, 98 entries)
8. Electronic Trophy Gallery (Trophies & Certificates) (3 fields, 42 entries)
9. PAWDOC (6 fields, 17,372 entries)
10. Mementos (49 fields, 1203 entries)
11. Computer Artefacts (49 fields, 178 entries)
12. Other Display Case Items (49 fields, 9 entries)
13. Loft (15 fields, 537 entries)
14. Stamps (6 fields, 60 entries)(this is the LIST)

It will be clear from the above list, that I think indexes are worthwhile. This view has come about primarily from my 40+ year’s-experience with controlling the 27,000+ documents in the PAWDOC collection; and continues to be vindicated as I manage the numerous other objects represented in the above table. Indexes undoubtedly take time and effort to create and maintain, but without them I wouldn’t know what I have or where to find things.

Having said that, I have deliberately avoided creating indexes for two of my collections – Music and Letters. The reason being that I preferred instead to use the folder names as a substitute. This can be very effective for a limited number of entries, since searching entails simply looking down the folder list: my Music collection has 142 folders each named with the relevant artist, and my Letters collection has 79 folders each named with the relevant person’s name. Of course these are effectively indexes with only one field. I suppose you could include more information in the folder titles to simulate the multiple fields in an index – but that would require discipline to maintain a standard format and to include all required information reliably. It would also produce much longer folder names which are more difficult to quickly look through and which may result in path name limits being exceeded for individual files. For these reasons, an index is probably a better bet for collections for which you wish to capture multiple fields of information; but, when such information is not required, a simple folder list is an effective approach which eliminates the time and effort involved in constructing and maintaining an index.

If an index is required, the trick is to minimise the effort needed to be spent on them, while ensuring that they provide the information that you want. In PAWDOC, I tried to achieve that by minimising the number of fields (to just 6) – and I believe this has been successful. Another thing I tried out in PAWDOC was to include different types of objects in the same index (rather than having separate indexes for each one), but enabling them to be clearly identifiable using the Reference number. For example, ordinary documents were given a reference number like PAW-DOC-2378-03, while 35mm slides were given a Reference number like PAW-SLI-106-01. The distinctive Reference Number had two purposes: first to be able to identify all the objects of a particular type; and second to know where a particular type of object was physically placed – either a filing cabinet, bookcase, or, in the case of the 35mm slides, a ring binder.

I have applied these learnings in the indexes to my other collections. For example, the four Book collections (items 2-5) are contained in a single overall Book index because they are all the same types of objects which require the same set of fields. In another example, though, there is no such rationale: items 11 and 12 (Computer Artefacts and Other Display Case Items) have been included in the Mementos index despite being rather different types of objects. This came about because I needed to create the index for these two items relatively recently and was faced with the choice of constructing one or two completely new indexes or of using an already existing index. I took the line of least effort and just added them into the Mementos index. The fields in the Mementos index were adequate; and I have deliberately specified Reference Numbers to distinguish these two additional other types of objects (eg. X-037-01) from the Mementos objects( eg. PAW-PERS-0647-01). I decided to use the ‘X-…’ Reference Number construct for both the ‘Computer Artefacts’ and the ‘Other Display Case Items’ collections because both are associated with the display case. However, I am still able to distinguish between ‘Computer Artefacts’ and ‘Other Display Case Items’ by the contents of the indexes’ Facet field which explicitly identifies a ‘Computer Artefact’.

The somewhat ad-hoc approaches described above are not the best way of structuring indexes, and would not do for very large-scale indexes with many different users; however, they do illustrate the flexibility that indexes afford the individual collector. Indeed, I am rapidly reaching the conclusion that, for me, the most efficient approach is to minimise the number of different indexes I have to manage, by combining as many of them as possible – even if this entails having some fields which are not used by every type of object represented in the index. The benefits of doing so are:

• Less complexity: Fewer indexes to access, organise, and manage.
• Easier searching: Clearer choice of which index to search; the ability to search more items from a single index; and less diversity in approaches to searching.
• Better maintenance: Backing-up activities will require less effort and, therefore, are more likely to get done when there are fewer indexes (and therefore fewer separate collections of digital objects). The same may also apply to undertaking Digital Preservation Maintenance work

In summary, digital technology enables indexes to support multiple different collections, thereby making it easier and more effective for collection owners to access and look after their collections.

In this digital age we now have digital objects to collect alongside physical objects. Perhaps the type of digital object we are most familiar with is the electronic document which we create or receive and  store on our computers. Computers are widespread and collections of digital documents are commonplace. I have many among my 6 categories of document collections: Finance and Legal, Household, Healthcare, Writings, Personal, and PAWDOC. Another type of digital object that many people are familiar with is digital correspondence in emails and messages. Huge numbers of people maintain collections of these things on their computing devices or in remote cloud storage. My own Letters & Cards collection contain many such items; and, in another correspondence category, I have a collection of some 1500 email exchanges with my wife while I was undertaking a long commute with an early start. Another type of widely collected digital objects that I have is digital photos: this type of collection is now a universal phenomenon since the photos are both taken by, and stored on, digital phones.

All these collections of different types of digital object have a number of things in common: they all have file names of a similar structure, all contain standardised metadata, and can all be stored on the same device and be accessed in the same way; they can all be moved or copied to other digital devices; they can be sent to other people in emails or messages; they can be shared with other people in web sites and social media systems; and they are backed up using similar processes, and often to the same backup storage media. Such flexibility enables digital objects from different collections to be brought alongside one another and to be dealt with in the same way. While similar capabilities are available to physical objects (for example, by placing objects from different collections on the same shelf), digital technology provides a wider range of standard functions which are mostly easier and quicker to use than those in the physical world.

A second, key, feature of digital technology is that it can create digital copies of physical objects and bring them into the world of connected digital collections. The digital copies may not always be exact replicas of the real-world objects, though much depends on the type of object being digitised and the method of digitisation being used. Scans and photos provide excellent facsimiles of written material such as documents as I have discovered in the assembly of my PAWDOC collection of work files. However, for three dimensional objects such as the Sinclair ZX81 computer in my computer artefact collection, a single image provides only a partial view, and the multiple images that I have taken from different angles that are included in the collection, still don’t provide the real-world experience of viewing and handling an object in-the-flesh.

There are more expensive, and harder to use, 3D technologies which can give a more realistic impression but these are not widely used. Despite this, the digitisation of physical objects does enable such items to enjoy the flexibility and ease of use of digital functionality, and even enables physical collections to sit alongside or to be combined with digital collections. I have taken advantage of this and digitised the physical items in several of my collections including Paintings and drawings (87 objects), Doodles (about 160), Photos (about 5000 objects), Music (over 140 albums ripped from CDs) Mementos (about 1300 items), and Letters & Cards (over 1900 items). Note that all but the first two (Paintings and Photos) of these collections are hybrid collections with both physical originals AND digital originals.

At the extreme end of the practice of digitising physical objects, lies the very final action of destroying the physical object that has been digitised. This has the advantage of eliminating the need to store and look after the physical objects, and is often applied to physical document files. I did this to produce my Digitised Books collection (240 books scanned) specifically to save space (as well as wanting to explore the concept of an electronic bookshelf). Such physical collections then become true digital collections in their own right albeit with objects that are, in conceptual terms, neither physical, nor purely digital, but sitting in a class of their own.

In summary, digital technology has not only introduced a new type of object, but it has facilitated a connectedness between different digital collections; and it has enabled physical collections to enter the digital world and to also enjoy that connectedness.

Storage for physical collections can require hugely different amounts of space – everything from a huge barn for classic cars to a small box for a collection of tiny sea shells. In my case, the range is from a bookcase full of 120 mystery books to a couple of folders for a few hundred chocolate wrappers. However, it seems that whatever is collected, owners often run out of space as the collection expands. In fact, the space that is available often dictates how much is collected and how it is stored. For example, our physical photo collection is stored in standard slip-in photo albums around 25cm high. I elected to stick to this size because some of the bigger photo albums we used to have simply wouldn’t fit on the shelves of a standard bookcase. Using this standard size, the whole collection of over fifty albums sits together on a bookcase in the lounge. Physical photos that were bigger than about 20cm high are held in a folder in the loft and represented in the albums by scanned versions reduced in size. In a similar vein, the adjustable shelving in my study bookcases is set to ensure the maximum number of shelves given that just one shelf is high enough for particularly tall books; and the books are ordered to enable the tall books to sit on those high shelves. In yet another example, one of the shelves in my study tallboy wasn’t high enough to take the folders I was keeping my postmark collection in, so I sought out some ring binders that would fit and moved my postmark collection into them.

Such space constraints are probably the main drivers for where and how physical collections are stored. However, two other factors do come into play. The first is a desire to keep all objects in a collection together and in some kind of order. Hence, for my mystery book collection, I have the books ordered roughly by topic – Atlantis, Egypt, Bible, Mayans, Freemasonry etc. – whereas my Personal book collection is ordered by author and date of publication within author. The other factor is access; I want to be able to get to my collections as quickly and as easily as possible. Hence, I try to keep most of my collections in the bookcases and tallboy in my study; and just about all of my available space is used.

The storage of the digital versions of my collections is not nearly as constrained. True, there has been a problem in the past about available space, but I haven’t been bothered by this since I bought my current laptop in 2018 with a 1 Tb Solid State drive. The items to be stored are all files, and they are all stored within the standard hierarchical Windows folder system. The files are of various types and sizes but that doesn’t really make much difference. It is a simple matter to create and delete folders and to move files from folder to folder at will. I can choose to keep several collections together in a single higher-level folder; or to keep each collection in a separate folder at the highest level. Wherever they are, speed and ease of access to them is about the same.

The final phase of this journey examines my own collections to establish if there are relationships or commonalities between them. The first step in this process was to identify all my collections – not a simple or quick task. However, I was aided by the CONTRAB list of collections and by the diagram of THE BOX – both described in earlier posts. I simply put all the collection names from these two sets of material down the left side of a spreadsheet, and each different room/area in my house and garden in a separate column along the top. Then I took the contents of each room in turn and marked which collection names they belonged to. For example, one of the bedrooms contained Books, Furniture, Linen and Soft Furnishings, Wall Hangings, Lamps, and Clothing & Accessories. Having done that I summarised what objects each collection name contained. For example, the collection name ‘Books’ had books of various different types in 12 rooms/areas. Then followed a rather laborious process of rationalising and renaming the collection names to satisfy my own thinking about what collections I possess. The outcome was a list of 92 collections in the high-level categories shown below. Note that collections belonging solely to my wife are excluded, but collections owned jointly are included: hence household goods and the like appear on the list.

• Decorative objects – 5 collections
• IT and Audio-Visual items – 5
• Toys and Games – 3
• Books – 10
• Pamphlets and Magazines – 5
• Documents – 6
• Family history – 4
• Correspondence- 3
• Pastime collections – 13
• Household Goods – 24
• Garden and Outdoor Goods – 8
• DIY Goods – 3
• Personal Apparel and Care – 3

This  exercise revealed the first insight I shall explore – that of Collection Consciousness:  becoming aware that some items constitute a collection, naming it, and becoming clearer about what it contains. The Decorative Objects category provides a good example. This includes the Ornaments collection which contains ornaments of all shapes and sizes residing in all parts of the house. I would not normally think about all these objects as a collection in their own right. However, the fact that they do logically fit together was clearly brought home to me when I was clearing a house and photographed a large selection of ornaments to see if family members wanted any of them. The Household Objects category provides many similar examples including the collections I named ‘Furniture’ and ‘Mirrors’. These categories not only illustrate how individuals can become conscious of a collection, but also provide an example of the thinking that goes on in that process: in the CONTRAB collections, larger, wall-hanging, mirrors could have been perceived as pieces of furniture; however, there were also smaller mirrors on stands to sit on a surface, and it seemed less logical to classify these as ‘Furniture’. Hence the establishment of the separate ‘Mirrors’ collection.

This small sequence of perception and thinking illustrates how people may become conscious of collections and decide what they include and what they should be called. It is all very subjective, highly dependent on the individual and current circumstances; and liable to change for the sake of expediency. Another example illustrates just how subjective this process can be: I’ve had a working toy steam engine set with a boiler and four appliances since I was a young boy.

It’s been sitting in the lofts of my various houses for over 40 years, and I’ve never considered it to be a collection. However, when I encountered it in the course of this exercise, I decided I wanted to see it as something in its own right, and rationalised that the four appliances were a collection of appliances. Consequently, the ‘Steam Engine Set’ is now a collection within the ‘Toys and Games’ category. I can see how this might be considered a dubious categorisation and that logically it should be part of the ‘Children’s Toys’ collection – but I want to see it as something in its own right so that it can be dealt with separately from ‘Children’s Toys’ which may just get randomly disposed of at some time in the future. This awareness of what I might want to happen to a collection downstream was also a factor in the 10 different collections in the Books category. Four of these collections – Mystery Books, Personal Books, Family Books, Work Books – all sit together on the bookcases in my study, and could have been classified as a single collection. However, I have clear ideas of what I want to happen to these different collections and so have placed them into separate collections. For example, having completed some work on my collection of Mysteries books, I anticipate selling it; and I hope that the Family book collection will be passed on down the generations of my family. A final example illustrates how sometimes the perception of a collection may simply be the result of trying to rationalise where to fit individual objects into the overall category structure that has been created in the mind. This concerns a category I have named ‘Laundry equipment’ and includes the objects washing machine, tumble dryer, Iron, wash basket, and plastic laundry basket. At first, I had the bedroom wash basket down as a piece of furniture, but that didn’t seem quite right. I also had the washing machine and tumble dryer as part of kitchen equipment. The resolution of this conundrum was to create the ‘Laundry Equipment’ collection. The implications of the observations for the relationship between collections is simply that the relationships, if any, are built in the owner’s mind. However, all these examples relate mainly to Accumulation-type collections, and have occurred during the very unusual process of defining all the collections within all of an individual’s possessions, and therefore may not be generalisable. Though, I suspect that they may well indicate the sort of thinking that goes on in the more commonplace dealings that individuals have with their Amateur Collections, Files, and Archives.

The iPad Transfer and CONTRAB discussions in earlier posts have inspired me to consider how collections could learn from each other or even be combined. This might be achieved by the following five step process:

• List collections
• Allocate Collection Type and Physical/Digital to each collection
• Allocate Practices to each collection
• Identify Collection/Practice combinations that you wish to explore for two or more collections
• Explore possibilities for Collection/Practice combinations

These steps are described in more detail, and with examples, below. 1. List Collections: Here is an example set of seven collections: Music, Silver, Memorabilia, Friend Emails, Family Archive, Computer Artefacts, Stamps. 2. Allocate Collection Type and Physical/Digital to each collection: Create a table with the collections in the left-hand column, and then populate a further two columns with Collection Type and whether the collection is primarily of Physical or Digital objects, as shown in the example below. Before specifying Collection Type, bear in mind the following: Accumulations are sets of objects that are collected out of functional necessity and made use of in some way or other. They are often undocumented and are rarely thought of as being complete or incomplete. Items tend to be acquired somewhat randomly without being part of any long-term plan. Amateur Collections are created when owners decide what they want to collect as a hobby, and then seek out and assemble appropriate pieces at their leisure. Items tend to be deliberately sought after, and owners often investigate aspects of the objects and become knowledgeable about them. Amateur collections may also be documented in some way or other. Files are collections of factual information assembled on a specific media, and retained to refer to and/or use later. Files often incorporate some form of labelling or indexing to help users find items within them. Paper-based documents are often collected in Files. Archives are collections of objects which have been moved from their original locations and placed into long-term storage. Archives often contain old things and may not be looked at very often. 3. Allocate Practices to each collection: Add another column to the table in which to specify any Practices that you intend to perform with each collection. Use single words where possible.4. Identify Collection/Practice combinations to be explored Go through the Practices and pick out any that occur in more than one collection and that you think might be similar or combined in any way. Number each instance as shown below. 5. Explore possibilities of sharing solutions for Collection/Practice combinations: Create a table with each of the numbered Practices in the left-most column and the collections in which they occur in a middle column. Then detail the way in which each Practice will be performed and/or supported across the collections in which it occurs, in the right-hand column as shown in the example below.I intend to try out this approach when I undertake the next phase of this journey – to investigate all my own collections with respect to features common to some or all of them.

To further explore the differences between CONTRAB’s four different Collection Types, I made a subjective assessment of the actions I was aware had been taken on each of the categories of object**. This identified 25 different Practices, each of which was performed on a varying number of the categories. For example, the Practice “Placed together to know where to find them and use them” was performed on 29 of the categories, and the Practice “Clean items with special fluid to ensure they continue to look good” was performed on only two of the categories.

** For this exercise it was necessary to break down two of the categories to lower levels as their components used different Practices: Bridge Artefacts (Bridge Booklets, Bridge Magazines, Bridge Books, Bridge Cards, Bridge Trophies, Bridge Scoring Pads); and Garden Goods (Garden Furniture, Gardening Equipment, Gardening Chemicals, Soils and Composts, Plants in Pots). Including these breakdowns, 65 categories were employed in this investigation of Practices.

All 25 Practices and the number of categories they were performed on, are listed below.

The above table indicates that Accumulations and Amateur Collections can utilise many of the Practices. Indeed, the same may also be true of Files and Archives but the small number of Files (4) and Archives (1) in this sample preclude any conclusions being drawn. What the table does demonstrate, however, is that a wide range of Practices are performed on collections, and that some Practices are more common than others. The table is by no means an exhaustive list of Practices: a wider study of many more collections and owners would undoubtedly identify more practices, and would provide a clearer indication of their usage by different types of collection.

One item of note in the table above is that there were 7 categories for which no practices were identified. All 7 were Accumulations – Furniture, Lamps, Clocks, Mirrors, Garden Furniture, Plants in Pots, and Unused Goods. However, the fact that no Practices were identified for these items is not particularly significant; it just indicates how ‘quick and dirty’ this exercise has been. No doubt a more detailed study would have identified practices associated with each of them. However, there is one characteristic common to each of these categories that may provide an explanation as to why no Practices were immediately identified for them: most consist of items that may be placed in a distributed manner throughout house and garden. Even the Unused Goods (for example, unwanted gifts such as boxes of soaps etc.) were found in a variety of rooms in the house. Such categories of items are perhaps not perceived as collections until gathered together.

Four different types of collections were identified in the CONTRAB collection: Accumulations, Amateur Collections, Files, and an Archive. Accumulations are sets of objects that are collected out of functional necessity and made use of in some way or other, and the vast majority (46) of the 56 CONTRAB categories are of this type. These are things like Household Goods and Clothes – things that are just collected in the normal course of life, and that are relatively commonplace. The other ten instances of CONTRAB collections are listed in the table below.

Amateur collectors decide what they want to collect as a hobby, and then seek out and assemble appropriate pieces at their leisure. In this case, the Silver collection (of salvers, dishes, jugs, spoons and the like) was characterised by a diligent documentation of the markings on the pieces to identify dates and makers; the collection of Dried Flowers (in two boxes nearly 1 metre in length) was assembled to support a hobby of flower arranging; the blue Wedgewood pottery was displayed as a group in the house; for the Sea Shell collection a wooden cabinet with 16 drawers was custom built; and the Matchboxes were stored, unused, in a labelled box.

The four CONTRAB File categories are easily recognisable as such: three are of Documents and one of Brochures and Pamphlets (though a more general definition of a File could be ‘a collection of factual information assembled on a specific media, retained to refer to and/or use later’). Finally, one Archive appears in the list – a collection of objects which have been moved from their original locations and placed into long-term storage. This is a collection of old family papers – birth, marriage and death certificates, identification papers, and the like – going back over several generations and stored in a special small leather case.

These examples illustrate why Accumulations seem less remarkable than the other types of collections: Amateur Collections, Files and Archives are simply less common – and more unusual – than mere Accumulations of clothes, furniture etc.. Having said that, the increase in paper documents in the last forty years, and the emergence of the mass storage of digital documents stored on personal computers, in the same period, has perhaps made the File category just as unremarkable.

The documentation of CONTRAB was a large complicated exercise, and the allocation of Collection Types to each category was made in the heat of the moment. However, on reflection and in retrospect, the following qualifications are worthy of note.

It will be evident from the above that specifying Collection Types – and even deciding whether a group of items are a Collection at all – is NOT an exact science. However, neither is it of any great importance other than a) assisting in organising a set of collections, and b) contributing to our analysis and understanding of the Collecting activity. I subscribe to the view that a collection is anything that an owner considers to be a collection (which, I might add, may involve just one item); and that, if collection types are to be employed, then the important thing is to allocate them as consistently as possible.

As described at the beginning of this journey, the second investigation I’m carrying out is into my mother’s collections. She sold her house earlier this year before going into a Care Home, and my involvement in clearing the house contents has given me a unique insight into all her possessions. Of particular use has been the photos I took of various collections of objects (glassware, for example) in order to ask if any members of the family would like to have any items. For the sake of clarity and brevity, I am naming this overall set of items the CONTRAB collection (selected because my mother used to play Contract Bridge) and shall only refer to it in that way going forward.

This post will outline the overall contents of CONTRAB, in terms of the categories of items it contains, and the number of items in each category. Subsequent posts will discuss the types of collections that the categories fall into; and what practices were associated with the CONTRAB categories.  A final post will record what implications for combining collections have emerged from this examination of CONTRAB.

CONTRAB is the collection of objects belonging to an elderly widower who has downsized her house. It consists of 8972 items in 56 different categories. However, before exploring the make-up of these  items, the following key points need to be remembered:

• These are point-in-time numbers. A substantial number of items will have been discarded in the downsizing move. Figures from even earlier than that, and Lifetime Total figures, will be substantially higher.
• The categories into which these items have been placed, have not been defined by the owner, but instead by a relative. The owner may well have specified different categories and used different criteria to place items into those categories.
• 3448 of the 8972 items are photographs. This indicates how misleading the absolute numbers can be. Consequently, greater emphasis has been placed on percentages. In some cases, the photo numbers have been excluded entirely from the calculations.
• Sometimes groups of items have been counted as a single item, thereby underestimating item numbers. For example, the needles and pins in the overall collection of sewing equipment have not been counted individually. Indeed, there are several items in the sewing collection that could have been counted in a number of different ways. Another example of how choices have had to be made is that it was decided to count a pair of shoes as 1 item not 2. Despite these qualifications, the numbers in different categories do give an indication of scale.
• In some cases, too much work would have been involved to undertake a detailed accurate count, so a guess was made. This is what was done with the sewing equipment.

The 56 Categories into which the items have been placed are shown in the figure below, together with percentage totals both including and excluding photos.

The largest category, excluding photos, is Household Goods. This wide-ranging category is further broken down in the table below.

The figures in these tables speak for themselves: if you exclude the large number of photos, well over 50% of the items consist of either Household Goods and Documents. However, that is perhaps unsurprising. Of greater interest is the types of collections that these categories fall into: 46 are Accumulations, and, of the other ten, five are Amateur Collections, four are Files, and one is an Archive. The following post describes these different types of collection in more detail.