Product: EndNote 2 Macintosh

Author: Ted Polumbaum, Photography
Cambridge, MA

Contact: ted_polumbaum@bmugbos.com

I'm a photographer who went from CP/M and 256Kb of memory to a PowerMac with 144Mb of memory. I had this lovely, simple way of filing color slides and black and white film by subject, with retrieval by key words, using "And-Or-Not" Boolean logic.

How to transfer this, and build upon it, with my new machine? The company which had produced my 1980s-brand marvel had vanished from the face of the earth.

The first problem was finding a database system, Boolean based and simple enough-- simple because most of the popular ones are terribly complex. Not that EndNote 2 is not capable of the most complex input-output. But, thankfully, it can be easily adapted and stripped down. Under the excellent, patient guidance of Ezra of Niles' Tech Support, I was able to accomplish my goals.

I chose the "Artwork" Reference Type, moved it to first place (left), and stripped it of all categories except "Author," which I changed to "Subject," and "Title," which I changed to "Keywords."

A typical entry looks like this:

Reference Type ARTWORK
subject
B22 CHINA Palaces and Temples
keywords
Lama Temple Jade Cloud Temple Temple of
Heaven Summer Palace tourist fatigue Coca Cola
souvenir shop child grandfather old man peeping toms
B B22

The letters, B 22, refer to the file drawer and sheet number where the slides are stored.

The first part of my task, to transfer the old CP/M files to EndNote, was accomplished in but several minutes, once the protocol had been worked out, with the help of Ezra. I now have three databases formulated in the above EndNote manner: one for colorslides, one for black & white film, and one combining the two. I have, so far, some 30,000 slides, laid out in 20-slide pages, in the color category, and perhaps half that number in black and white.

A bonus is the ease with which new entries can be inserted into the database, speedily, at any time.

Ted Polumbaum is a veteran professional photographer specializing in editorial and corporate assignments. He currently is photographing Public Works trash collectors on a project funded by the Puffin Foundation and the Arts Council of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lives.