I haven't organized or scanned my new cels in about 2 years. I literally have dozens of cels and drawings sitting in temporary files and boxes. I know it's going to take hours and hours when I finally have time to work on it. Because of how the files are, if I have a file of multiple series and I need to add a cel to one in the middle of the book, I have to take out all the other cels in order to shift everything down one page. I can't really enjoy my collection because it's so disorganized. I look at it and feel a sense of creeping dread.
I'm seriously considering hiring someone to help me organize and scan. I'm not sure if I should ask around for bored neighborhood teenagers with nothing better to do on a weekend, or try to find an adult somehow. Has anyone else ever paid someone else to do stuff like this? I'm just a little overwhelmed - my own fault of course. I shouldn't have let it get this disorganized, and it's just so frustrating.
Hector the Collector loved these things with all his soul,
Loved them more than shining diamonds, loved them more than glistenin' gold.
Hector called to all the people,"Come and share my treasure trunk!"
And all the silly sightless people came and looked...and called it junk.
Just send them my way and I can get to scanning them!
Seriously, though, I hate scanning quite a bit. But I have found a fun way to get out of it. I'll do some of my wife's chores in exchange for her scanning. A win-win situation!
definately dont ask a kid to scan them... they might damage them.... and seriously kids do not know the meaning of organization! im serious! i work at a library (where you know organization is life) and we ask the kids to help us with anything (organizing numbers, letters) and they dont know how to do it!!
if i ever ask them to do anything and i look at their work i seriously want to scream!
*sorry, rant overwith*
anyways...
good luck with getting someone to help you!
just a thought, what about asking a relative to help?
I think you should gather all the cel collectors in the area and throw a cel book scanning/organization party. Offer food, drinks, and lots of cels to oogle and sort. You'll get the work done (or a great part of it) and not be bored at the same time.
"If ifs and buts are clusters and nuts, we'd all have a bowl of granola." -- Stephen Colbert http://ix.rubberslug.com/
Well I am not sure how to approach the organizing of cels (I am no better on my end, everything is in random places) but this is what I do when I get something new in the mail.
As soon as I get something in the mail, I dump it in the scanner right away as soon as I get home. Once the images are scanned, I organize the images on my PC and put the web friendly scans of my new cels in a "to upload to RS" folder. Takes 10 mins of my time and save me so much hassle in the long run.
Well there are professional general organizers. They might be able to help, although moving might not be something they have experience in. Might want to google locally though and see if any are around. Random kids seems like a bad idea for fragile stuff.
kamidake wrote:I think you should gather all the cel collectors in the area and throw a cel book scanning/organization party. Offer food, drinks, and lots of cels to oogle and sort. You'll get the work done (or a great part of it) and not be bored at the same time.
This sounds like a cool idea. Just make sure they dont eat while handling your cels
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Anime runs my life. I'll leave it to anime to where my life leads me. -EoP Anime I have Seen Slippery slopes of hellish Ice.
The Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
-I, Robot (Asimov)
I got into this same situation when my scanner broke for a while (then I didn't have time to scan for a while after that), and I was tempted to ask my husband/friend to help me get it all together.... But in the end I realized that:
1) No one else was going to be able to know what order *I* wanted the pieces in my books. More than that, there was no way for me to tell them because I sometimes make calls of "_____ has to be next to _____ even if it's out of my usual order". So if I had someone else book them, I would probably just wind up having to redo it myself ANYway....
2) With pans, where scans need to be lined up, a pasting job that looks fine to one person might look like hideous scan seams to me. Once again, I'm sure there would be more than several cases where I would wind up rescanning them myself anyhow....
3) No matter what the situation, no one else is going to handle your cels the way you would, even another cel collector. Also, only you know where all the weak spots are.... the little tiny tear that you have to watch out for when booking, the background that sticks out just a wee bit more than the page, etc.... I DEFINITELY would not have someone handle them who is NOT familiar with cels. If you MUST have someone else help, I would make sure it's another collector.
In the end, my call for my own collection was to just break it down into managable "clumps" and do it myself. If it helps as a suggestion where to start, I sorted unscanned/unbooked items by series first, then started on the SMALL piles first. (You feel like you got more done. ^_^) Then I sorted the unbooked items into "easy to book" versus "I have to move 20 cels to book this ONE", and I booked the easy ones first.
For series where I would have to move a LOT of things, frequently I just emptied the whole book, ordered the things the way I liked, then rebooked them. Another saving grace for me was the way I book things, which is to leave empty pages every couple cels, particularly in books where I'm actively trying to add pieces -- this is something I recommend to EVERY collector, even if it means you have two books instead of one. Having the extra space when you don't have extra time is a godsend. ^_^
Good luck. You have a lot of beautiful cels on your site already, I would love to see an update. ^_^
