[Techtalk] Software recommendation: photo database

[Mary]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2003, Andrea Landaker wrote:
> Actually, it sounds like the closest thing to what you want is an
> online picture gallery type thing -- they usually have a date field,
> and you could put the people's names in a searchable keywords field or
> something.  You could probably modify something like that fairly
> easily to have a special "people" field, and customize a Search page
> to look through your new fields.  That way you could have the benefits
> of a MySQL database, but with a cross-platform interface already built
> in.  The only problem might be having someone to maintain it that's
> not you, though it wouldn't need as much maintenance as some
> solutions.

I'm still hoping for something a bit more long-lived. I want this data
(if preserved of course) to be usable in thirty years time. That might
be a big ask even with XML, but I suspect it's more likely that XML
parsers will still exist (and if not, will be easier to engineer than a
gallery-clone) than that gallery and even PHP will.

In thirty years time, the people who know who the subjects of these
photos are will be dead, and so, probably, will their children so the
data entry will be impossible to re-do.

That's why I'm so concerned with archival standard data formats...
although it really seems like the rest of the world (by whom I don't
mean techtalk but the larger world, it's not the fault of posters here
if there's nothing to suggest) isn't, because noone can suggest any :(

-Mary