Author Archives: admin

Figuring on playing to your Age?

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Recently, a couple of people at my golf club have spoken to me about playing a round with a gross score that was equal to or lower than their age. One had just managed it, and the other would have done if one hole hadn’t been closed. Over the years several people have told me about their desire to achieve this feat; and I would certainly like to – though, being realistic, I’m probably not good enough. Anyway, these conversations got me thinking that a measure indicating how close you are to achieving it might be quite easy to calculate and maintain in the automated scoring and handicap systems that we use these days. It could simply be the gross score minus your age. To take account of courses having different par ratings, the score could be multiplied by course-par divided by 72. So, the formula would be: Gross Score x (Course Par/72) – Age. It could be called the RoundAge number (capital A to distinguish it from roundage which apparently is a local tax paid by a ship for the ground or space it occupies while in port). For example, if a 75-year-old got a gross score of 82 on a par 72 course, the RoundAge would be 82(72/72)-75 = 7. If, by some miracle, the golfer had a stellar round of 74 gross the following week, that RoundAge would be 74(72/72)-75 = -1. The RoundAge could be calculated for every card recorded, and averaged over each year to provide a longer-term graphical view of progress.

20 Years of Loft Experience

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In a previous Loft post I concluded that I didn’t need an RFID capability. So, with that question out of the way and having explored most aspects of operating a Loft system over the last 20 years or so, I’ve decided it’s time to draw some conclusions and to move this journey onto the Kcompleted list.

Key facts and figures

First, here’s a summary of the design of the system, the contexts within which it has been used, and some approximate overall statistics about its use in the 20 years between 2005 and 2025 (note that estimates have been used to compensate for errors and omissions in recording – see errors section below).

  • The system involves placing numbered Items or Containers into labelled Positions. All Positions, Items and Containers have an entry in an index.
  • Lofts in two different houses have been used – both affording 32 different Positions between the rafters.
  • During the period there have been two adults living in the house, 2 teenagers growing up and leaving home, and one elderly relative staying for 6 months in the course of moving. All these individuals have contributed to the loft’s contents.
  • About 469 items were indexed of which 352 were removed after an average stay of about 5 years. The 119 items currently in the loft have been there for an average of about 9 years.
  • About 91 Containers were indexed of which 57 were removed after an average stay of 8 years. The 35 Containers currently in the loft have been there for an average of about 13 years.
  • Just 16 of the items and 10 of the Containers which were indexed when the Loft system was first setup in January 2005, continue to be present in the loft after 20 years.

What to keep and where to keep it

Although this journey has focused on Lofts, the findings can be applied to any domestic storage area – a garage, a spare room, an outhouse etc. The investigation has been about using such spaces to store items which are not in day-to-day use but which a householder wants to keep. Deciding what to keep and what to throw away is central to this activity, and I think I’ve usually erred on the side of keeping. However, I’ve also found that over a period of years I’ve changed my view on some things and disposed of them. So, a periodic review of the contents can be worthwhile.

There are some general criteria which I’ve realised are worth considering when deciding to store things in a loft, a prime one being, will it go through the loft hatch? Others are: If the object is of great sentimental value wouldn’t it be better on show in the house than buried in the loft (for example two inscribed tankards)? If the object is useful, wouldn’t it be better somewhere accessible in the house (for example spare stationery items).

I’ve also found that sometimes I’ve tended to keep things in the loft longer than needed simply because they are difficult to dispose of. For example, pieces of an expensive shelving system which we are unlikely to ever have a use for, but which we can’t find anyone who wants them and which seem too good to simply take to the dump. For such objects, I think it’s probably better to take a decision than to procrastinate for years – though that’s sometime easier said than done. Some disposal problems can be purely practical such as the need to cut up over 100 CD data disks – a task which I spaced out over several days because it hurt my hand using the heavy-duty scissors.

Of course, in a family household the items being stored may belong to different individuals. In our case about 58% of the items were owned by myself and my wife, about 36% by our children, and the remaining 6% by an elderly relative. Of course, we experienced the typical problem that parents have when their children move out – getting them to remove all their belongings. We still have some things that we believe are worth keeping but the individual is reluctant to take.

Designating Containers and general packaging considerations

The system I’ve been operating requires the objects being stored to be designated as either Items or Containers. Containers might be empty (like suitcases), or contain other Containers (such as a small suitcase in a large suitcase or a small box in a large box), or contain one or more Items. Items may be one individual thing (like a card table) or a collection of several things (such as 100s of music CDs). When I initiated the loft system, I tended to separate Containers from Items quite rigorously. For example, the box of old Rolling Stone and Boy’s Own magazines was indexed in two parts – C7 for the cardboard box they were in and Item 10 for the magazines. Now, some 20 years later I have removed the Container C7 from the index and relabelled the combined box and magazines as Item 10: the reasons being that a) the box is only ever going to be used to house the magazines, b) looking up the reference on the Container label just tells you what the container is, but having a combined item number on the label on the box enables you to find out what is being stored, and c) managing two index entries when just one will do is just extra unnecessary work.

I recount these details as I’ve realised that deciding whether to combine container and item or to keep them separate is important because it can help to minimise effort and maximise usefulness. The rule of thumb I now apply is that if the contents are to be indexed as a single Item, and if they are likely to stay in the loft for several years, then I combine the Container and the Item, and index and label it as a single Item. An addendum to this is that if one Item consists of several objects of the same type it is probably more effective to store it on its own: that way it will be easier to manage and to find.

Regardless of the above deliberations, I always try to enclose Items in some sort of packaging to avoid them getting dusty and/or eaten by rodents. Over the years I have used suitcases, cardboard boxes, tubes, shoe boxes, plastic bags, long transparent solid plastic containers, and long bags that carpet comes in. Some of these have been indexed as Containers and some have just been made an integral part of the item. The Items I have stored without any covering are usually pieces of furniture (like a coffee table, wallpaper table, or kitchen chairs).  Generally speaking, I’ve found it best to store Items with minimum folding or rolling because over the long term those characteristics temd to become embedded in the objects concerned. I have facsimiles of two old copies of The Times rolled up in a tube, which have to be held or weighted down to stop them from rolling up again when they are being read. I’ve also stored large sheets of bookbinding cardboard upright in a cardboard box leaning against a rafter, but over time the box and the boards bent. All of these items would have benefitted from being stored flat.

Managing the organisation of the physical objects in the loft

It is important to clearly label the Positions where the Containers and Items are to be placed. The Positions should be clearly differentiated from each other so there is no ambiguity (I use the loft rafters as the delineator) since it is the Position numbers that enable the Items to be found. Containers and Items should not be placed across two or more Positions except in special circumstances (for example, I have a large number of spare empty boxes which are indexed as a single item but which fill 3 separate positions).

I write Container and Item labels on both sides, and I place them so that their labels are showing and closest to the front of the position. To facilitate this, I take care not to stack too many Items or Containers on top of one another or behind each other. This also helps to minimise the number of Items/Containers that have to be moved to access the one you want. If an Item consists of more than one object I package them together with a single label; however, if the objects are not packaged together, I give each one the same label with the same information. Of course, it is important to label an Item or Container with the correct label as specified in the Index.

I have found that, over time, Items consisting of large numbers of the same things (particularly packaging Items such as a box of small boxes, or a collection of boxes) may get very disorganised and need sorting out. In doing so I take the opportunity to discard unwanted items, and to organise the objects in such a way that they are easy to see and access.

Managing the Index

I personally think that an Index is essential when operating this kind of loft system. Having tried operating an index on both a laptop and a mobile phone, I would definitely advise having one on a mobile phone I would definitely advise having one on a mobile phone since it can be taken with you and used on the spot when you access items, change their positions, and make changes to their contents. A variety of suitable database apps are available (see my earlier posts on this issue), most of which will enable you to specify whatever fields you want. The fields I am currently using are: Description, Type, Item Serial Number, Container Serial Number, Position Serial Number, Item Category, Item Owner, Item or Container condition, Container this Item or Container is placed in, Position this Item or Container is placed in, Date this record was created, Container Security Status, Date removed from loft, Photo. I believe a photo is essential – and, of course the app should enable you to use the mobile phone’s camera to capture the image.

I try to ensure that every object in each Positions is included in the Index – unlabelled objects may get forgotten about and effectively lost. I also try to ensure that all changes to Containers and Items are reflected in the Index; and, indeed, the flexibility of the Index makes it easy to accommodate such changes – you just have to be diligent and remember to make the changes. However, being the humans that we are, we sometimes forget, and we often make mistakes – as described in the next section.

Errors in operating the Index

I’ve made many errors in the course of using our loft system, and perhaps the most common has been simply not updating the Index when a change has been made or an Item has been removed from the loft. This problem is often exacerbated when other people (such as offspring!) who are not so aware of the system or committed to its upkeep are involved. However, even when I have remembered to make changes, I have sometimes updated records incorrectly. Indeed, I know I have actually created some Index records with incorrect information, though, so far as I know, I have only duplicated an Item number once.

In short, unless you are super diligent, you will probably make some mistakes in the course of operating a loft system. Therefore, it is useful to do a stock check from time to time – maybe every five years or so. Doing so also provides a useful opportunity to reassess whether you do actually want to continue to keep storing some of the items being checked.

General Approach and Best Practice

  • Find an Index app for your phone.
  • Specify the storage area and the positions within it.
  • Index the positions and label them.
  • Try to enclose Items to be stored in some container or packaging to prevent dust and rodent damage.
  • Record every Item being stored, in the Index.
  • Where items consist of many of the same objects and are to be stored for the long term, combine the objects and their container into a single Index Item.
  • Include a photo of every Position, Item and Container in the Index, but keep a separate set of Photos elsewhere in case you need to change apps (exports are usually available in transferable csv format which is unlikely to include photos).
  • When changes occur to the physical Items and Containers, make the associated Index changes immediately on the phone.
  • Undertake a stock check every 5 years or so and while doing so consider disposing of unwanted Items or Containers.

Conclusion

I’ve found our Loft system to be a very useful and effective way of storing the large number of things that we don’t need on a day-to-day basis. However, it does take time and effort to set up; and it does need diligence to keep the physical space in order and to keep the index up to date with the changes that are made. The mobile phone has made operating such a system a much more practical proposition.

Preservation Maintenance Plan LITE template

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Addenda to ‘Preservation Planning’

In 2021 I published v3.0 of a set of Preservation Planning templates which were designed to enable a rigorous Preservation regime to be applied to large collections of digital documents and their accompanying hardcopy material. However, in my recent investigations into the combination of collections it became apparent that a simpler and quicker approach would be more appropriate for multiple smaller collections with less complex formats. Therefore, a new Preservation Maintenance Plan LITE template has been produced and initially tested on two sets of 10 collections each. Further testing will be done over preservation cycles in the coming years, prior to issuing a version that can be said to be fit for purpose.  In the meantime, the current version is available for use at the link below.

Preservation MAINTENANCE PLAN LITE Template – v1.0, 09Sep2025

A Lite Touch

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In the previous post I identified a need to understand the additional digital preservation requirements of the overall combined set of collections. To investigate this, I listed all the individual collections in a spreadsheet and noted some points which have a potentially significant impact on preservation work, including:

  • Does the collection have an index? (if there is no index there is no way to check the inventory – the items themselves define what is in the collection).
  • Does the collection have digital items with or without physical equivalents, and/or physical items with or without digital files? (when an item exists in both digital and physical form, there is more preservation work to do).
  • The number of digital and physical items (there is substantially less preservation work to do on a folder of 30 digital items, than there is on a collection of 500 digital items of which 175 have physical equivalents).
  • Whether there is any duplication with other collections (If a collection is part of a larger set of objects which already has a Preservation Plan, there is no need to specify a separate Preservation Plan for it).

Having populated this Preservation Asessment spreadsheet with its long list of 38 collections that might need Preservation work I was filled with some dismay as I’ve now had several years of implementing Preservation plans on many hundreds, if not thousands, of objects: it’s time consuming and exacting work. I knew that I needed to minimise the time and effort on this new set of preservation activities if it was going to be workable and successful. Furthermore, I also realised that for many of the collections on the list I was not really that concerned about the long term: they were accessible currently – many without needing an index, required little intervention, and might be of little interest many years hence.

With these thoughts in the back of my mind, I went through the list deciding what preservation work, if any, was to be done on each collection. Fortunately, 8 of the collections either already had a Preservation Plan or were part of one of those which had; I discounted another one altogether as it only had one insignificant digital file; and another seven were part of another collection on the list. I also combined 3 of the remaining 22 collections into a single overall Healthcare collection (because there were fewer than 90 files across them all), and 2 of the Book collections into a single overall Physical Books collection (because I knew the two would need to be done together). Finally, I added one other collection to the list – my other general laptop folders which I concluded would also benefit from being under the control of a preservation plan. Consequently, I was left with 20 collections to define Preservation Plans for. This was far too many to be practical, and, in any case, the more I looked at the digital files involved, the more I realised that they mainly consisted of pdf, jpg, png, doc/docx, xls/xlsx,, and ppt/pptx formats – not very problematic. For the most part, an eyeball check would be all that was necessary to identify doc, xls, and ppt files that needed converting to docx, xlsx, and pptx respectively, so the detailed 16-step process required in my comprehensive Preservation Maintenance Plan template would be overkill. I needed to create a LITE version of the Preservation Plan with fewer steps and capable of addressing multiple collections. What I came up with were the following 4 steps:

  • Populate a ‘Changes’ section with the significant changes that have occurred to the collection and its digital platform between the previous maintenance exercise and the maintenance you are about to carry out.
  • Populate a ‘Hardware and operating system strategy’ section with the strategy you envisage for the future.
  • List the collections you want to undertake Preservation activities on in a ‘Contents & Location’ section together with the specific actions you want to take for each one (for example, ‘Check file extensions’ or ‘check inventory’).
  • Record a summary of the actions taken and associated results for each collection, in an ‘Actions taken’ section.

With this structure in mind, I separated the 20 collections into two groups – one which included substantial numbers of physical objects, and one which consisted mainly of digital files. The result was two Lite Preservation Plans each dealing with 10 collections (it’s just coincidence that each have the same number of collections).

The actions specified for each collection were established by assessing what I wanted to protect against for each collection and how much effort I was prepared to make. Six different types of possible actions emerged:

  • Check file formats: Check that the current file formats will enable the files to be accessed in the future, and if not make changes to ensure they will.
  • Check Inventory: Check that the index entries have a corresponding physical item and/or digital file, and rectify any inconsistencies.
  • Ensure physical docs are up to date: Ensure that the physical documents are the latest versions.
  • Ensure Index is up to date: Ensure that the latest additions to the collection are included in the Index.
  • Ensure Digital collection is up to date: Ensure that the latest additions are all included in the digital collection.
  • Ensure Physical collection is up to date: Ensure that the latest additions are all included in the physical collection.

The two Preservation Plans fully populated with the results of the preservation work carried out on them can be accessed at the links below:

Objects Preservation Maintenence Plan Lite dealing with 10 collections

Files Preservation Maintenence Plan Lite dealing with 10 collections

The preservation work, as specified and recorded in both plans, took approximately 20 hours over about a week. This included filling in the Plan documents with the results as each collection was tackled. Overall, the main actions taken were:

 1,976 .doc files converted to .docx: 1,937 of these were converted in bulk using the VBA code kindly provided by ExtendOffice (see https://www.extendoffice.com/documents/word/1196-word-convert-doc-to-docx.html). The remainder were simply opened in Word and saved as .docx files. (a few of these were originally .rtf files).

150 .xls files converted to .xlsx: 141 of these were converted in bulk using another set of VBA code provided by ExtendOffice (see https://www.extendoffice.com/documents/excel/1349-excel-batch-convert-xls-to-xlsx.html), with the remainder being opened in Excel and saved as .xslx files ( a few of these were originally .csv files).

564 files deleted: 464 of these files were in an iTunes folder – and I no longer use iTunes. 36 were CD case covers/spines which I created in an application I no longer have – and the CD covers are all now printed out and in place on the CD cases so I no longer need these files. Most of the remainder were odd files which I no longer have a use for. As is apparent from this description, such files tend to be from folders containing more general material rather than specifically collected and indexed items. Many computers probably have an array of such unneeded material.

Around 9 new items added: 7 of these were added to get a collection up to date, and the others were the two new Lite Preservation Plans which were included in the Backing-up collection.

2 Hardcopies updated: One was a physical A5 ring binder of the addresses in my address database; and the other was my Backing-up and Disaster Recovery document which I print out and keep a copy in my desk drawer. It’s really a bit of an effort to update such documents regularly and so they often get out of date. Having a scheduled Preservation Plan does help to keep them relatively current.

The next cycles of these two Preservation Maintenance Plans are now scheduled for 2027 and 2028 respectively: I can now relax, confident that I have done as much as I wish to future-proof the 20 collections that they deal with.

I have included most of my workings in this post largely to help me be clear of what I did. However, the details are of little consequence to readers interested in undertaking digital preservation work on their collections. They only serve to show that you can call anything a collection, and that you can cut and dice collections any way you want. The key point is that, using this approach, it is feasible to exert a measure of preservation control over a large number of collections, including the files on your computer, with relatively little effort. If you try this out, you may find this Preservation MAINTENANCE PLAN LITE Template helpful.

Published!

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Events have moved on apace since my last post three weeks ago. For a start, the publication date moved in stages out to 7th August before coming back in to the 4th August, and the Waterstones web advert which had vanished, reappeared. Then, suddenly, on Saturday 28th June we received an email from the Production Editor saying that the book had been published with information available at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-86470-4. We have subsequently received a Congratulatory email from Springer and this together with the website information provides a revealing example of how academic publishing is now operating.

The Congratulatory email includes advice on how to ‘Maximize the impact of your book’ and offers use of ‘a suite of bespoke marketing assets to help you spread the word’. Also included was a link to a PDF version of the published text. The Springer site advises that the ebook (£119.50) was published on 27June, the hardback (£149.99) on 28June, and that the softback will be published on 12July 2026 (price not yet specified). The site also provides a list of the book’s chapters, each of which can be opened to reveal the summary abstract we had been asked to provide, and the full set of references together with any digital links we had included. Each chapter can be purchased separately for £19.95, or one can take out a Springer subscription for £29.99 a month entitling you to download 10 Chapters/articles per month (which, interestingly, would get you pretty much the whole of Collecting in the Icon Age!). Those with appropriate credentials may also be able to login via their institution and get content for free if the institution concerned has come to a separate arrangement with the publisher.

Since hearing that the book has been published, I’ve been working on the supplementary material we are providing in the pwofc website. This includes a single document containing all the references each with an appropriate web link. In searching for such links over the last week I’ve noticed that in several cases, extracts from our book are already appearing in the hit lists. Furthermore, I discovered that previews of many pages of the book (including the whole of chapter 1) are available in Google Books ‘displayed by permission of Springer Nature. Copyright’. All this in less than 7 days since publication.

Two things stand out to me from all this: first, there is a surprisingly large amount of information available for free about the book. It is probably not sufficient if you really are interested in the subject – but you can get a pretty good idea about what the book contains. Second, there is clearly a focused effort to monetise the publication in every possible way.

Now that we’ve achieved publication, I don’t intend to provide any further running commentaries on progress. The material we are providing to supplement the book is in the Icon Age Collecting section of this website, and that is where we intend to conduct any dialogues about the book that should arise.

Welcome to Icon Age Collecting!

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Hello. Welcome to this set of materials in support of the book ‘Collecting in the Icon Age‘. There are four main items – all listed below and available in separate files that can be downloaded and viewed on your own device at your leisure. We would be very happy to engage with people who are interested in asking about or using our material. To make contact just provide a reply to the relevant post. We need time to moderate the replies, so please be aware that they may not appear on the website for a few days. However, be assured that we will get back to you one way or the other.

To get to the material you’re interested in, click on the relevant item below:

  1. Questionnaire – answers to questions asked about some of the research materials, which were used to derive the practice hierarchy.
  2. Practice Categorisation – a spreadsheet ordering the practices identified from the questionnaire answers and assessing the impact that IT has had on them.
  3. Practice Hierarchy – image files containing the process hierarchy in single diagrams for both the pre-Icon Age and in the Icon Age.
  4. Expanded References – a single document listing all the references in ‘Collecting in the Icon Age’ and the locations in the referenced texts which are being referred to.

Expanded References

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The references in the book ‘Collecting in the Icon Age’ (citia) are at the end of each chapter and without the page number of where the referenced text is located. This Expanded References document combines all the references together into a single, alphabetically-ordered set complete with the number of the page they appear in citia AND the relevant location in the referenced work AND part of the text being referenced, for example, “p268 in citia: p75 (The application of…)”.

p268 in citia is the page number in the book Collecting in the Icon Age                            p75 is the page number of the work being referenced                                                (The application of…) is the start of the text being referenced.

An internet link to the referenced text is also provided where available.                    Printed errors in the citia text are identified in the expanded references document in italics prefaced by ‘NB’.