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I Need a Reliable Art Supply Store Online.

Need to Move and Store Vast Trove of Art in Organized Fashion

  • What's the easiest, cheapest way to barcode thousands upon thousands of world-heritage-level works of art before they go into storage? A friend is executor for the estate of a great deceased painter who was incredibly prolific. There are tens of thousands of works, large and small, and next week it all gets moved into a storage facility in another state. Most works have catalog numbers, and they're at least trying to build a database via software called ArtBase. But, aside from that, there's no preexisting organization scheme and no tech. The painter was in his 90's, working on his own. Stuff is in drawers, stacked against the wall, some cataloged, most not. It's not chaotic, but not far. And they're going to need to efficiently access individual pieces in storage later. I want to reemphasize that the movers are coming NEXT WEEK. There's not a lot of time. I'm thinking they should use barcodes. The work flow, I'd imagine, would go something like this: 1. Shoot a hasty iphone photo of each work 2. Enter in catalog info if available 3. Create a barcode number 4. Spit out label and affix to the work 5. Load out and drive 6. Differentiate the storage area into hundreds of zones 7. Scan each work as it's brought in, adding zone info 8. Store with bar codes as visible as possible (added bonus...if we place labels carefully, it will help assure all work is stored right side up....which makes things easier down the road). So, please: 1. quibble with or add to the above work flow 2. suggest software and printing systems. Note: it may just be too ambitious to get every single work barcoded and photographed. If so, the fallback would be to barcode, photograph, and track every box/bunch/cabinet/pile of work. I may be popping back into the thread as my friend mulls it all over and thinks of problems. If this is interesting to you, or if you're feeling extra kindly helpful, please bookmark this so you can return over next few days and continue updated discussion.

  • Answer:

    It is cheaper to buy preprinted barcodes and a scanner than barcode generating software and a printer. I've used http://www.bcuinc.com/'s offshoot, http://www.weprintbarcodes.com/ and they were fine - answered my questions, set up an order quickly and got the barcodes to me quickly. We used sequential barcodes and put the name of the company on them. You'd put the barcode on the item, scan it into an excel sheet, fill in the item number and description, photograph (saving photo with barcode number as name) and then move to the next item.

Quisp Lover at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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no rigorous scheme will be applied. Those are the parameters, and suggestions outside those parameters (about how it really ought to be done) aren't useful. Humbly disagreeing, and I'm not sure if you or your friend are talking about the cataloging/metadata or not, but this is really a case where as much effort as possible needs to be put into this area right now, despite the potential for chaos and pain, in order to avoid potentially enormous archival headaches later on.

carter

A note about choosing barcode labels, in my experience there are 3 things you need, particularly for long term storage:A label that sticks onto the item and doesn't peel off easilyInk that doesn't fade or rub offA barcode that will scan reliablyUnless you use quite large labels, you will generally only get 2 out of those 3 properties. We eventually gave up on barcodes and just used labels with a simple character prefix + number. That also has the advantage you can photograph items next to the label, stick the label on the box and you are done.

Lanark

FWIW, I am an archivist and prior to that was an art historian and worked at a major US art museum. I have a lot of experience processing artists' papers and preparing condition reports for works on paper ( and more limited experience with paintings). Archival practices, regarding description at the aggregate level, doesn't really work for individual art works. However, I think that there is a compromise. I'm assuming that since there are thousands of works, including some in drawers, this collection includes both finished works, and studies, including sketches on paper. Perhaps you could use individually catalog the major finished works and catalog the studies and sketches in batches. Feel free to MeMail me if you have any questions. Good luck!

kaybdc

Agreed, it ain't gonna happen efficiently via mere stop-gap measures. But I'm not sure they'll even go for my stop-gap. So I'm trying to offer the best-possible proposal given circumstances. Thanks for reading/replying!

Quisp Lover

That's okay Quisp Lover, no problem ;) I think I was actually trying to address this part of the question: And they're going to need to efficiently access individual pieces in storage later. Best of luck with your friend's move.

carter

gyusan, ok, I understand the first sentence. You do photography at the archive you work in. Got it. The photography would take as much time as the bar coding; I'm starting to think it's equally unviable. And if we organize only in batch form, there's not much sense photographing (though photographing batches/boxes might make sense). It'll be a shame to let go of the idea of photographs for the database. But based on what you said, and what I'm starting to realize, yeah, I think that's going to have to not happen. Shame.

Quisp Lover

That was to Gyusan. I can't prevent you or anyone else from wasting their time and this thread's space by scolding the parameters of my question. I realize you mean well, but it's non-useful. Thanks for all suggestions fitting the stated conditions.

Quisp Lover

Me, or gyusan ...?

carter

That's what I'm starting to think, yeah (it was my fallback option in the OP). Please clarify your first sentence, though.

Quisp Lover

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