Notice in the second image that you can view the data as both an attractive form and a standard spreadsheet. Starting with the Home Inventory template, I created this database for a Japanese print collection in about 30 minutes: The templates can get you up and running in minutes. It comes with nearly 30 nicely designed templates, including Home Inventory, Contacts, and Digital Media. The sure beats dragging around a file cabinet!Ĭould there be a more appropriately named product for your Japanese print collection? But seriously, Bentō is the most user-friendly database software I have ever found. Better yet, when traveling, you can take your entire database with you on your laptop or a compact disk or flash drive. You can print attractive reports to show to other people or the send info in an email message. adding a different translation of an inscription) without the fuss of whiteout or erasers. You'll have quick access to detailed information ('fields'), like the print's title, artist, publisher, original and current values, condition, a nice big photo, dealer contact information, publication history, and any other information you want to record. Why bother? The advantages of keeping records of your Japanese print collection in a database are many. Read the great article 'Getting started with Bentō' by Jeffery Batters in MacWorld magazine (Dec 2008) for a more detailed introduction to databases at. you can either look at the list of messages in your inbox or you can click on a message to see its contents). A database also has 'layouts' or 'forms,' which are different ways to view the records (e.g. each message has 'To,' 'From,' 'Subject,' 'Date,' the message body, and sometimes attachments). What's an electronic database? A database is a nicely packaged collection of information, like the library's online card catalog or your email. My two favorite choices are Bentō and FileMaker Pro. To some extent, it boils down to just a few tools that are highly scalable, letting you decide how much time you want to spend cataloging your collection and how detailed you want your catalog to be.

You might quickly run into limitations if you go with a method that's too simple, like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a photography collection program, like Apple's iPhoto. There are multiple ways to keep an electronic inventory of your art collection, but some ways are better than others. (right click this link and save to your desktop)ĭOWNLOAD THIS HANDOUT AS AN ADOBE ACROBAT PDF FILE DOWNLOAD THE SAMPLE BENTO DATABASE PICTURED BELOW

Filemaker pro templates library