What's New at ZAPP: Storage and A/V Organization

Hey folks. First allow me to mention, depending where you view this, the text and image may look disastrously scattered. I apologize for this. I am just not that good at universalizing the html code. So I haven't been cataloging zines for a little while now - sad, I know - because I've taken on some new tasks. On Wednesday January 20, I began reorganizing the ZAPP storage closet. Oh don't you just wish you had my job? Pictured at the left is the first stage of this project.

The brown cabinet on the left was a disaster waiting to happen. It was bowing out at the center and thus the shelves resting on pegs at that point were extremely hazardous to the safety of its users and the condition of its contents. So I had to lower the shelf and prop it with various materials including a 2 x 4. Sketchy. I knew this tall obelisk of doom had to be removed.

Oh how I wish I could show you the rest of this tragedy. Oh and it gets worse! Accustomed as I am to employ "questionable" methods for the removal of to-be-trashed materials, I tore this thing apart. After all, this would make it easier to remove. Low and behold, the inner base of the cabinet was festering with MOLD! EWW. I couldn't believe my eyes. Phew, crisis averted.

What you see on the left here is the open space that remained in its wake.

Now here I am, carrying the new shelf from the Hugo House Member's Library into ZAPP. Once again, my stubborn will as usual far exceeds my physical capacities for sure enough, my back was a bit sore afterward. Also, as I'm sure you can notice, this shelf is not the only thing that rests over my shoulder. Look a bit more to the right and you'll see a bust of Mr. Richard Hugo himself; watching ominously as I single handedly dismantle his coveted Member's Library. He must be turning in his grave over this sad twist of events. Dearest Richie, I promise this was not my decision, I will be sure to pour the proper amount of libations in your honor.

Once I got the new shelf unit in, I had to make some more adjustments. Yes, this archivist is not afraid to get a little dirty. So I thought it best to remove the toilet seat and to cover the bowl with that faux marble panel behind me. This way, the items stored above it will not wobble over the seat and the remaining water in the bowl will not interact with the storage items as easily. Hopefully we can get both the toilet and sink removed altogether. We'll see. Thanks Brian, for the lovely shot. =)

Ah! The finished product (well, stage two anyway). Isn't it beautiful? I've been telling everyone that this space will soon be a pleasure dome - just you wait, I'll make it happen.

Below you see this cute little frog I found and I just had to give him a place to live. You see, he really likes his mail art, which is what lives inside this trunk that I decided to put on top of the new shelf for ease of access.

Aside from this project. I have a bit more of a serious project going on - more for the Hugo House in general as opposed to ZAPP specifically. For some time, Hugo House has been recording audio and video of the various events it holds - most often its Literary Series - onto mini DV tapes. I believe there are some other events that are recorded onto other mediums such as CDs and DVDs. I am in midst of developing a preservation plan for the materials based on my research for Vera's audio materials. The Goals are as follows:

Determine the size of the collection and how much it is expected to grow.

Determine standards and best practices for preserving the existing collection and expanding it.

Determine standards and best practices for its wider distribution.

When I make some major breakthroughs on this project I'll be sure to notify you all. Until then, thanks for reading!

Vera Photo Archives Tour - A Fun Weekend Project

Dear Readers, (the few, the brave, the proud)

I know its been quite a while since I've posted here and you all must be wondering what is happening as of late, well... that will have to wait. Ouch - total buzz kill, but hey it rhymes. Ok ok I promise when the work eases after the completion of my Audio Report and its presentation on February 24, (ooo a teaser!) I will at least try to put together some back entries based on my daily notes heretofore. Until then, I thought I'd share with you all (visually) a little brainstorm session I had about how best to organize Vera's show photos. Every time I come up with a method of organization and ruminate on it for a while, I start to find problems with. I think I've created and destroyed some 2 or 3 versions at this point. Well, here's my latest and I think its the best one so far. So I thought it would be fun to give you all a step-by-step tour and my justifications for it as we go along.

First, I use a Mac - as should everyone - so I could not exactly replicate how it will look on Vera's computers which are PC (gasp!), but this should give you the idea. So we start here in the Archives folder and you see the various archives elements: The Four Ps. For our purposes, we'll be looking at the Vera Photos element.

Here you can see that all photos are organized by year: simple enough. We'll be looking at some 2010 photos.

Inside you can see that photos are now broken down by month. This is just for the sake of example, its likely that various years will not have photos for a whole month - tragic to think. In that case, there will be no point in creating a folder for a particular month only to have it unfilled. We're going take a look at January.

So here we are in January: bitter, cold, gray, and white - just as you would expect. I decided that it would make the best sense to divide up the photos by band name with the date they played and an indicator for who was the headliner of the show. Otherwise, naming a folder like "2010-01-07 Show" is just too general and "2010-01-07 Whatever headlining band" will often be misleading. The latter because very often photographers do not shoot the headliner (as was the case with me). We don't want to name a folder of a whole show by its headlining band only to have end-users going in there and not finding what they were looking for.

Now, I really like Mac's folder highlight feature: its more visually pleasing and facilitates easier browsing. Assuming Vera's PCs offer the highlight feature, we can easily employ it to group together related folders (even though you can tell which one's are related by looking at the dates, this feature just makes it easier!) for each show then, all we need to do is alternate between gray and white. Seems simple enough. Next, we're going to take a look at the Baby Panda folder because I just so happened to be the photographer that evening. I know I know my extremely creative example "Band A" seems so much more exciting, but thats not what I invited you here today to learn about.

Here we are in the Baby Panda folder. You can see here that I've created separate folder one for me =) and one for a hypothetical second photographer. Now, one might object (as I originally did) that this would be extremely daunting for the Admin/Archives Intern to have to split up a single photographer's photo donation into different folders - forcing them to struggle to identify which band is which, if for instance, a single photographer shot (murderer!) the whole show. On the contrary, assuming we get all photographers to sign a release form, this form will provide a space for the photographer to specify which band(s) he shot. So, all the Admin/Archives Intern will have to do is refer to this release form. We're going to take a look at some of my photos because I think I'm so much better than Photographer X.

Ah yes, finally we're down the file level - the unctuous essence of it all. Here is how I'd like files to be named. Its simply common sense to at least have what the picture is of and to order them chronologically as they were shot. Even though very often Camera's will include a time stamp, I decided that its necessary to include the date in the file name. As you can see, my camera was mistakenly offset to 2009 rather than the correct year 2010. We simply cannot trust everyone's camera to always be on the correct time. Next, I'll give you the total perspective of the folder level.

Is your brain melting yet? Just for fun and to look at something even more boring than the infinitely exciting folder structure of the photo archives, I'll share with you a couple of favorite shots from this show.

Here we have Paul Gonzenbach former frontman of Oakland, CA's Jim Yoshii Pile Up performing for his new solo project Baby Panda. And next (to borrow the words of Jon Stewart) we move on to our "Moment of Zen"....

My dear friend Josiah Feinberg and cousin of Paul, playing drums in midst of his Enthousiasmos with the Muses of the Drums! A classic shot I must say so myself.