Archiving/Categorizing slides

[GB1]

I have a lot of slides and negatives, and its getting increasingly difficult to find a particular one. I need a better system of categorizing them.

Does anyone have any information of the best way to do this? Or, know of any software that might be able to help here?

TKS

Gb

[another view]

Try this one, it sounds like what you're looking for. You can search by several different data fields, print labels (on regular Avery forms) and attach a thumbnail image. I used to use it, but couldn't keep up with scanning. If you have a scanner that you can get a stack loader for it would be pretty easy though.

http://www.nscspro.com/

[Outdoorsman]

I have a lot of slides and negatives, and its getting increasingly difficult to find a particular one. I need a better system of categorizing them.

Does anyone have any information of the best way to do this? Or, know of any software that might be able to help here?

TKS

Gb

I use slide sleeves for 3-ring binders. They hold like 20 or 25 slides each page. I am also in the process of sorting mine. I'm going to group each one by subject, in generalized terms. I have one binder for surfing, one for sunsets/sunrises, one for people, one for waterfalls, etc. Then when it comes to particulars in each binder I'm grouping like subjects together. My nephew and niece will be grouped, I'll arrange the sunsets by location or maybe color. It depends on what characteristics each image has that makes it memorable (to me). That way I can think, "Oh, where's that slide of my brother surfing Pebble Beach, the day when everyone got a few really good tube rides?" and I can look in the Surfing binder for the pages of tube shots.
Negs are not easy to sort by themselves. You will need contact sheets with numbers that correspond to the pages of filmstrips. I have my B&W negs arranged this way, since there's not too many of them. My color negs are too numerous to even bother with. I'll get into that when I have a broken leg or something.

[Franglais]

I have a lot of slides and negatives, and its getting increasingly difficult to find a particular one. I need a better system of categorizing them.

Does anyone have any information of the best way to do this? Or, know of any software that might be able to help here?

TKS

Gb

I keep my negatives and unmounted slides in sleeves in a ring binder. The films are numbered sequentially. I keep my mounted slides in big boxes, numbered S01, S02 etc., sorted by subject.

I use an Access database to keep track of all this. The Access database also includes an Events table copied in my the notebook I use to record things. There is also a table that records which Event is on which film.

I'm in the process of scanning the whole lot and putting it in ACDSee (I figure I still have 8 years work left).. All the images are identified by film number + frame or slide box number + slide, and stored in folders by theme or subject. I use ACDSee to put the taking date in the EXIF data of each JPG.

Its pretty easy to find anything.

Charles

[GB1]

Thanks everyone!

I'll consider everything. The NSCS Pro software sounds interesting, and might be worth a try. I've already started grouping by general subject (mountains, ocean, models, etc) in binder sleeves, but hadn't considered sub-categorizing them. I've considered creating a little database to hold the data, but figure it'll take a lot of discipline to update every time I develop a roll. Doesn't look like there's a way out of that, even if I use the mentioned software.

Looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me also.

GB