This is an ad-hoc solution for a common problem for historians: synchronizing archival photos with notes. It's terrible to come back from the archives with hundreds of unlabeled photos, alongside typed-up notes that (sometimes) reference things being "photographed," with no way to find them.
There's been a lot of effort put into getting historians to use elaborate databases to manage their images. No sane person is going to waste time adding metadata when they get back; so the game then becomes about creating a database that will organize photos best.
I think this strategy is crazy. Historians don't need photo databases, because most are already taking some form of notes. (I think?). These notes generally identify folders, boxes, and significance to precisely the degree necessary.
So instead of asking you to maintain notes in one place and a photo database in another, this is a solution that simply, when you get back from the archive, puts thumbnails of photos directly into the part of your notes they describe, with links to full-size images.
As long as you take even cursory notes (writing the name of each box and folder as you open it), you'll have the necessary information for citation straight out of your notes by reading them in a web browser.
Here's what it looks like in the end. I took some notes on the "Nixon correspondence" folder, and then snapped a picture of the 1962 (?) Nixon family Christmas card. Then I moved on to a new folder and took a picture of a new image. The program neatly deposits the images just below whatever notes I took. (Technically, it deposits thumbnails: then you click to see the full image.)
This solves that problem by using a constantly-updated git repository to track the exact time that each line was edited, and exif metadata stored in camera files to track the time each picture was taken.
For each photo you've taken, it finds the lines edited most closely in time, and drops a thumbnail in beside them with a link to your full-size archival photo so you can see what photos go with what notes.
It may be adaptable for others who, like me, are:
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Compulsive savers of documents (several times a minute), or willing to script something for your editor that will make you one.
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Taking archival notes in markdown or some other plain-text format.
It's currently set up to work with a gitit installation, because I was
trying that out in my last archival trip; but any any other markdown
to html flow for browsing your notes would work reasonably well. The
script matchPhotos.py has variables that define where pictures are stored and
how the HTML links should be prefixed that may require some fooling
with: there's a --dry-run option when you run to make this easier.
Since the whole thing relies on version control, there's no risk of irreparably messing up your notes in the save version by trying it; you can just check out one of the old commits if something goes wrong.
- Synchronize your computer and camera clocks.
- Put the directory with your markdown notes under version
control. (Run
git initin it, basically, if you haven't already). - Run
./commit(orperl commit), and keep it running: this will continuously commit your changes to the git archive in the repository. (Note: right now, you'll have to change the directory name in there. - Type in notes and take photographs as you normally would:^[Except for the warnings below] save your files often, most importantly every time you put down or pick up your camera. If you can script an autosave function, all the better. Since your files are being committed to git every three seconds, there's no real risk if you know how to use git well.^[(The problem with this, of course, is that no one but no one knows how to use git well.)]
- Load your camera's SD card and find it
- Run
python matchPhotos.py --help. This will tell you how to specify an import directory (the SD card), a markdown directory, and some other useful options. - Compile your markdown to html; there should now be thumbnails that link to full pictures in your notes.^[If, like me, you're using gitit, you may need an additional commit here.]
leveldband its python module to cache exif descriptions and lists of photos that have already been assigned to documents.- GitPython. But, ridiculously, not the main repository, which has a bug: you have
to check out and install
vitalif's fork at the moment
to get a patch for a problem with the main trunk's version of
git blame. Just typemake GitPythonand this will all happen for you. At some point there should be another release of GitPython which you can just use.
This will break under some circumstances, so I'd only do this supplementally to however you usually track photos. (Although, if you're like most historians, that may be nothing at all).
Among the things that will break it:
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It uses the present state of the text (
git blame) to determine which lines were edited, so if you edit a line but then change it again an hour later, the script won't know that line should have a photo tagged to it. (Inserting the commits back into the history directly would be nice, but I can't quite figure out how to do all the conflict resolution.) There are a lot of things that might do this: I happen not to do most in the archives. Things that might change a line, and therefore make it invisible to you history, include:- A universal find-replace
- Spell check
- Group-indenting a batch of lines.
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If you don't save constantly, strange things may happen. A sudden jump from paragraph 88 to paragraph 20, for instance, may result in some pictures that you intended to follow paragraph 88 instead being put before paragraph 20. The solution to this is to save more often. (Even if its just a couple returns at the end of the section you just finished.)
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If the process that constantly commits to git stops, it won't know where to put them. (Obviously).
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Your camera clock and computer clock must be synchronized. If they're off by more than a minute or so (or if you work really fast), the photos may get out of sync with your notes.
That said, it's worked seamlessly for me so far.