Janet Kaiser on mon 22 may 00
Dear Helen,
I am sure most Clay Arters (CA) appreciate the generous effort you are
putting into listing all the many fellow CA sites, plus the thought you are
giving to ways of archiving the material you have gathered.
I hope I do not sound discouraging or unappreciative, but, it is a little
like attempting to reinvent the wheel...
Russel Fouts http://www.mypots.com has a very comprehensive listing, all
nicely sorted already.
Andy Clift's Clay Station is well on its way to being a great resource. Bill
Geisinger aka Kilnman http://Kilnman.fhda.edu/linksceramics.html has a
terrific list along the lines of what you are attempting.
For folk specifically interested in tiles, Tom Colson's TOTW Tiles on the
Web http://www.tiles.org is also a great place to start...
I mention those Clay Art sites which I often use in the way I believe and/or
presume you envision your list.
What anyone starting to make a compendium has to take into account, is that
we are all getting really lazy about ploughing through URLs. A short and
snappy description of what the site is about has become absolutely
indispensable. To save searching down lists jumping from one subject to
another, categories also become essential. Then one has to decide whether to
keep them alphabetical or not... All sorts of planning decisions!
I am only pointing these things out, because I know from experience, exactly
how great a task you have set yourself and how frustrating it could become.
It is not only the compiling, but the updating and checking which eats the
time. URLs can change pretty often and dead links are a major pain on
archived lists which cannot be updated.
Before you get really stuck into this project, perhaps it would be wise to
rethink your strategy first? Would a site based listing not be better after
all? Just a thought... We would all hate you to be wasting precious potting
time for ever and ever!
Best wishes
Janet
The Chapel of Art, Criccieth LL52 0EA, GB-Wales
Home of The International Potters Path
TEL: (01766) 523570
WEB: http://www.the-coa.org.uk
EMAIL: postbox@the-coa.org.uk
Helen Bates on wed 24 may 00
Janet,
You are quite right, it would be a big undertaking, and I am aware of at
least some of these sites already on the internet. Really, I wonder if
someone would just like me to upload my entire clay bookmarks to them,
since they are somewhat more organized than the collection I've been
skimming from the various Clayart posts.
The only attraction of having the URL's sent as a post to Clayarts is
that they could somehow be made searchable in the Clayart Archives. But
actually, they aren't that useful in their present format, are they, and
if someone wants to search the archives for a specific potter's address,
they can likely do that now.
So, folks, what to do? Go on in the simple way I have been, try to
organize the collection somehow, just forget about it (after one more
upload to the list in early June)?
I do find I am potting more, just recently, than I had been, but
frankly, I like to surf the web and I like to play around with e-mail,
so I don't mind sometimes spending quite a bit of time doing something
like the URL compilation.
That said, I am not a computer expert, as far as knowing huge amounts
about the software on various sites, or how to automate the collection
of information. I'm not sure if I care to take on a major
responsibility for keeping information on potters, even just the Clayart
potters in any more sophisticated format than the one I presently use.
In fact, I just started it as an interim project until some clever
person figured out a way to do more and better, and the people of the
list could look at it and decide whether or not to have it included in
the Clayart organizational package, one way or another.
I welcome comments.
Sincerely,
Helen
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Helen Bates
mailto:nell@reach.net
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