Personal Insight Collections

Library

Managing Personal Insight Collections

Using Personal Insight, faculty members have the capability to build their own Personal Collections directly from the
Insight client.

Open the Insight software.

Log on to Insight using your username and password.

Check box next to NYSID Personal Collection Manager Personal Collection.

List of available Personal Collections opens (the boxes next to these collections will be checked).

Double click on the NAME of the personal collection that you wish to open (e.g. Brandt_Peter). You may have to double click more than once.

The collection opens.

Select file (on left of screen).

Select edit personal collection.

Personal Insight Edit Collection Wizard screen opens.

Editing a Personal Collection in Insight

The Personal Insight Edit Collection Wizard is a tool that allows you to add media (images, etc.) and data to your
collection.

Media (images, etc.) must come first. Data can then be attached to the media.

The Editor screen consists of these components:

Task Bar

provides three buttons to let you rapidly jump between the editor panels while editing your collection.

Status Bar

tells you which task step you are performing.

Help Panel

displays tips and descriptions for the current task.

Work Area

It is here that you edit your collection, adding media and data.

Action Bar

contains buttons that act upon entries in the Work Area. Action buttons change depending on which task you are performing.

Steps to Edit your Personal Collection:

1. Import Media

2. Select Media

3. Catalog Media

Import Media

There are two requirements for using media in Personal Collections:

Any image must be at least 384 pixels in length or width to be displayed in the Image Workspace.

An image must be one of the following formats:

Supported Image Types
BMP	GIF	JPEG
TIFF	TIFF (with LZW)	RAW
PGM	PNG

Images and other media are imported by building a list of items to import, and then importing from the list.

About the Media List

The Media List is an assembly of items collected for import into the Personal Collection during this session. When items are added to the list, they are flagged as “Pending.” Once imported, they are then flagged as “Complete.”

The Media List exists only during the life of the current editing session. It is not a permanent import log. “Pending” entries will not be retained from session to session. Upon exiting the Personal Insight Editor, the Media List is discarded.

Importing media is a two step process.

Building the Media List

Importing the Media List

Building the Media List

There are two methods of building the Media List:

Drag and Drop

Media items of acceptable types may be dragged from other applications into the Media List.

You will be unable to drop unacceptable media types into the Media List.

Browse

Press the Browse button to open a file import dialog that lets you navigate to directories on your system containing media.

You may select multiple files.

All selected files will be added to the Media List.

Importing the Media List

Press import to invoke the importer. The importer will process “Pending” items in the Media List (“Complete” items will be skipped). The importer creates the full suite of Insight Images for all known image types. The importer also creates a data record for each Media List item processed.

Select Media

By default, the Catalog Media panel will include all records in a collection.

As a collection grows, it may be desirable to select a subset for cataloging. The Select Media panel offers a bird’s eye view of your Personal Collection, presenting labeled thumbnails of all entries, making it easier to select the set of entries to be cataloged during the current session.

To select an entry, click on its thumbnail. A white box will appear around the entry. You can select as many or as few entries as you like. Clicking a selected entry will un-select it (the white box will disappear). You may page backwards and forwards through the collection as you make your selection.

Buttons at the bottom of the panel offer quick ways to select the entire collection, all entries on the current page, or to clear your selection.

When you have selected the entries that you would like to catalog, press Catalog Media.

Action Buttons Available to You

(first page) -- to page back to the beginning of the collection.

(previous page) -- to go back to the previous page of thumbnails.

(next page) -- to go forward to the next page of thumbnails.

(last page) -- to page forward to the last page of the collection.

-- adds all images on the current page to the select list (including any scrolled out of view).

-- adds all images in the collection to the select list.

-- clears the select list.

This option is useful when a collection is large and it is hard to find the item that you wish to exclude from your select list.
Sometimes it is just easier to start over. Clear the list using "select none" and begin selection anew.

Catalog Media

Catalog Media allows you to enter data for the media in your collection. There is one page (editing workspace) for every image / multimedia record selected in the Select Media panel (or all entries if none have been selected).

The current cataloging template (within the editing workspace) contains the following fields:

Work Type:

Title:

Measurements:

Material:

Technique:

Creator:

Date:

Location:

Style and Period:

Culture:

Subject:

No fields are required. You may fill out as many or as few as you like.

Buttons across the top allow you to page forward and backward through the entries, or to the beginning or end of the record sets.

Beneath the fields is a thumbnail image for the current media item.

Double-clicking the thumbnail will open it in the Image Workspace.

Tools within the cataloging template (within the editing workspace).

(copy forward) - Check the Checkbox preceding the field label to have that field’s value copied into the next record (unless it already has a value).

This is the quickest way to have common values filled in from record to record.

(add repeating record) - If a field can have multiple values, this option will be available. To add another value to the field, press the "+" button.

A new field blank will appear beneath the existing field.

(display select list)-- Press to see a list of values for that field. If the field already contains a value when you press the "display select list button", the list will return all values in the collection beginning with that string.