Tag Archives: disaster recovery

Conservation, Disaster planning, Technology

There’s An App For That

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I am always on the hunt for useful tools. The other day I had a large number of books and I needed to record the bar codes and transfer them into an excel file. I don’t have a laptop at work, but I do have an iPad. I searched the app store and found “Bar-Code.” It looked like it would do what I needed so I downloaded it. Within a couple of minutes my project was underway.

First, I scanned each bar code with the iPad camera:

photo 1

Each bar code is scanned as an image and is transcribed on the right-hand column.

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When you are done, you have the choice of what to do with the data. I chose to email the list to myself so I could put it easily into an Excel file.

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Using this app beat writing down all the bar code numbers and retyping them into a spreadsheet when I got back to my office. It saved a lot of time. The free version, which I used, does not save the data once you email it. I believe the paid version of this particular app will allow you to save your data.

I think this app, or a similar one, could be very useful during a disaster situation when you needed to track items going offsite for freezing. You could scan each item going into a crate, then send each crate’s inventory to yourself as an email. I think I would make each crate a separate email in case the network or app crashed unexpectedly. I would hate to record hundreds of bar codes then have the network crash or an email not go through for some reason.

What apps have you found useful in your preservation or conservation duties and how have you used them? Please share ideas in the comments section.

Conservation, Rubenstein Renovation

The Great November Flood: Almost Back To Normal

For those playing along at home you will remember that we were flooded a few weeks ago due to a construction incident. Today we are almost back to normal. Our new floor was laid, waxed and buffed this week. Yesterday and today we got the supplies back in the supply room.

supply room restocked
Supply room restocked.

Clockwise from upper left: The brand new shiny floor was quickly utilized by Marco, Todd and Jim from LendLease. They put our shelving back and helped move the large heavy supplies back on the shelves. Thanks guys!

I finished putting away the smaller supplies this morning. The upside to this incident is that we got to get rid of a lot of stuff we didn’t need and freed up some space. We just need to get the floors cleaned and we will be back to normal. Sort of…

Photo 2 (2)
The temporary photo doc and dirty room combo.

In the next few days they are tearing down a wall in the photo doc room in order to remove the old elevator shaft. We have had to set up our photo doc station in the dirty room until that room is rebuilt and a new floor put down. It’s a tight squeeze but at least it is temporary. The hoe-ramming of bedrock on the other side of our wall starts on Monday. If you come see us, please be patient, we may not hear the doorbell on the first ring.