Re: [ARSCLIST] Please help: quantifying progress

["Steven C. Barr" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Connie Jones" <business_media@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Allow me to throw myself on the (please insert James Earl Jones' voice 
> here)
> "knowledge of the list".
> Allow me to bore you with a bit of background. My boss and my board want 
> to
> quantify my progress here. I have counted the collection in both square 
> feet
> and in linear feet previously. What I am currently working on is 4 x 5
> negatives which don't take up much space in a square foot box. In the last
> quarter I added 1300 + negatives to the database. It doesn't sound very 
> good
> to say I got 1/2 a cubic foot done in a quarter. So we are trying to 
> covert
> how much we have in the collection that needs processed verses how much I
> have done to show progress. I need to find out if anyone out there can 
> tell
> me how many business papers, various sized records (33, 45, 16", 78 rpm),
> there are in a linear foot, or in an inch if you have that. I can measure
> this my self, but thought if someone else already has it would save me the
> trouble.
>
> Also does anyone else have that trouble with their board and boss? Is 
> there
> a better way to measure a collection and show progress?
>
> Any help is greatly appreciated, and if this isn't clear please let me 
> know.
For any collection which consists (as this one does) of a given finite 
number
of physical objects..."quantifying progress" is a relatively simple process!
You simply need to use "X," the number of objects processed, as a
percentage of "T," the total number of such objects in the collection
with which you are dealing...!

Thus, you have successfully "processed" 13xx negatives, out of a collection
of however many...or, in other words, N% of the total number of negatives.
It MIGHT be possible to make a rough estimate of your progress by measuring
the relative height of the stack of processed negatives as a percentage of 
the
height of the total stack...but that is both difficult and unreliable...!

Since you can easily learn the number you have processed (the database
program should tell you the number of completed data records in the file)
all you need is a fairly accurate estimate of the total number of negatives
in your archive (you may or may not have this...I would assume you do...?!).

Comment ca va?

Steven C. Barr