Importing uncatalogued item details

How to import uncatalogued details spreadsheets into the Uncatalogued items Details table in QB.

Introduction

Uncatalogued item detail spreadsheets were brought in for the Visual Materials inventory around 2021 in order to strike a middle ground between giving every single uncatalogued item a temporary number (which would be far too time consuming) and grouping large amounts of items together and giving them no individual metadata.

Uncatalogued item details spreadsheets contain less information than a full inventory record (so are quick to process) but cover some important data points like 100, 700 and accession number. They are also connected to an INV temporary number in the main Artworks table that will have the full VM inventory fields covering the whole batch (such as object type, condition etc). In the Artworks item title field, it is worth including the phrase “See Uncatalogued Details table for more information” at the end of your description to signpost to future users that more data exists for the group.

We create the data in Microsoft Excel and on completion, import these into QuickBase's 'Uncatalogued Items Details' table. This table connects the temporary number which is the same for each item with the main temporary number in the Artworks table.

The standardised document name for these Excel spreadsheets is “Box List for folder contained within location”.

Prepping the Spreadsheet

If you have laid out your various items across different tabs for each temporary number­ then these need to be copied and pasted all together in one sheet. Alternatively you can list all your folder lists in a single tab for ease of importing.

Each item will need its appropriate INV temporary number next to it so that QuickBase knows which Artworks table item it will be attached to.

Importing the Spreadsheet

Head to the Uncatalogued Items table on the Visual Materials QuickBase. In the top right-hand corner click “Import/ Export”

Select “Import into a table from a file”.

Click “Choose File” and select your importation spreadsheet then click “Import from File”

On the next screen, carefully match up the fields from your spreadsheet to the fields in the Uncatalogued Details table on QuickBase.

Make sure to click the “First Row is List of Field Names” so you do not import the fields names as an item on QuickBase.

The click “Import”.

After this I would recommend going to the “Report View” of the Uncatalogued Details table and opening each temporary number you have imported in a new tab. There you will be able to double check that the temporary number description and number of items on the Artworks and Uncatalogued Details tables matches.

Further work

It is often worth creating a print-out of the Uncatalogued Details table for each inventoried location in the same way that we do for the Artworks table data so to provide individualised information looking through the box. Like with the Artworks table print out it is worth putting the location and box / drawer subject in the header of the document.

Once this is done both the original spreadsheet should be uploaded to Sharepoint in the “Imported” section of the “Uncatalogued Details spreadsheets” folder in either the “Box Lists – Solander” or the “Drawer Lists – Drawer Store” folder, both of which are in the “Visual & Material Culture” folder in the “Inventory” folder. Within this there are also folders for “Importation Documents” and “Print Outs” where those files can be uploaded as well.