h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

unless someone Really wants to go through the whole archive of pictures and sort them all out and make a nice updated picture library

I might do that. I think there are only about 6,000 pictures, not including the old "blobs". I already have a spreadsheet with about 90% of the blobs.

That's amazing.

It would really be great to have them all searchable. If/when we do this we'll first need Pastey's help because at the moment we can't add more keywords after a picture has been added. Maybe we could also categorize them all some day.

But I must say this is really not a job I want to do myself. When the time comes any volunteers are welcome. But first we have to properly think things through and talk to Pastey.

Ah. I knew things had changed image-wise. I just didn't know how much. The last time I looked for an image was obviously in the blob era. All the blobs were kept in a specific area and had a unique identifier (a Bnumber IIRC). Since no one was allowed to use outside artwork, all the approved blobs were displayed in a special category and researchers were encouraged to add them to their entries as they liked.

It's nice when things are well sorted like that from the beginning, but once that structure is waived, it's a huge task to recreate it; especially after so many years... "Toothpaste back into the tube" sort of thing.

Oh well.

The image library is coming on nicely

There's a new version of Pliny coming soon that will allow us to build in new features. Gnomon was also kind enough a while ago to let me near his spreadsheet (very impressive it is too!) so the idea is to automate a process to get the entire image backlog into one system, including the older blobs. So they'll be searchable and usable.

That's exciting news Pastey

Our library at the moment is a looong alphabetical list with a search function. The search function works at least for the pictures we added after the takeover from the BBC... and if the person who uploaded the picture thought of the right keywords.

Unfortunately the old image library that you describe was not updated anymore at a certain time, so a lot of pictures are missing. My experience is also that there are so many that the page takes quite long to load.

I've a list I made in December 2011 of the names of all the images in the picture libary. There are about 6,700 images of which 6,200 are jpg files. It's easy to look at these, so I'll look through them and see can I easily tag them.

I imagine this doesn't include the ones from , which - as they're loaded on h2g2 - are available for use on PSes and articles. Since I've been loading from 5-20 pics a week for the last year, that probably adds up to a bit, too.

I've already tagged about 5% of them. I hope that Pastey will be able to come with some way of adding my tags to the existing library, or using them in a new way.

That would be grand.

OK, so how do I get to look at them?

(and, if such a thing should happen, send one in?)

For lots of people to work on them, we'd need some sort of shared spreadsheet. I know such things can be set up, but I've never done it myself.

As has been said before, you can only look at the Entries in the Guide and check which one has a picture and which ones has not, Rod. This is also what we have done with the list of Entries that need illustrations which was posted in this announcement.
Once you have a picture you send it to artists at h2g2 dot com. The only ones who can upload pictures to the Guide ar the Arts Editors and Guide Editors.

Hmm, yes Tav.

It's on my ToDo list.

... we just need the Entry number of the picture to be able to add the picture to the right Entry.

this is actually very important, as well as the U-number of the person sending us the email.
otherwise we get random pictures (sometimes we can guess) and no idea who they are from as so few of us use anything like our real name, unless you send us a lot of pictures we don't know who you are and no-one will get credit for the beautiful pictures you've sent us

by a lot of pictures I mean people who historically send us photos and we know who you are from your email address or if you sign your emails with your user name, (although then we have to search the site for you and retrieve your U number ourselves and hope it's the right person)

we don't have user identifying super powers,

So if you are sending in a photo, be sure to say:

1. The A number of the entry you think it should go on.

2. If it's not to go at the top of the entry, the location within the entry where you intend it to go.

3. A suggested title "A Mango." "The drive mechanism of the cable car network" "WB Yeats in a painting by his brother Jack B Yeats" etc.

4. Your user U number.

Can I just offer a word of caution? At the moment ( or as far as I remember) if you add a new image, it will NOT give a warning that a previous file of that name exists, and so will update the data base to replace the old image with the new one. This could lead to old and beautiful images being overwritten.


Don't blame us, this is part of the problem we've inherited. What could happen is that old entries suddenly have 'new' images because the old image had a generic name, such as 'apples' as an example. As Tav says, the list is incredibly long, the old images are not searchable apart from literally 'going down the list'. So, be very careful when adding new images please.