what's in the Who's Who

[Donald Dale Milne]

So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who�s Who to see what is
recorded. I don't know the details of the underlying database, but this
appears to be working from multiple tables using foreign keys to connect
them. I found:

First name
Last name
Year of birth
Year of death
Roles (writer; artist; editor; etc.)
Education (list of schools)
Influences (list of other creators)
Pen names (list of names used)
Memberships (list of societies, etc.)
Honors (list of awards, including year)
Other media and accomplishments (list of other media worked in and
companies worked for) broken into 4 sub-categories:
* Comics in other media (listed) broken into specific features and
magazines, listing creator roles, then broken down by year
* Print Media - non-comics (listed) broken into specific magazines,
listing creator roles, then broken down by year
* Commercial Art & Design (listed) broken into specific companies,
listing creator roles and perhaps features, then broken down by year
* Performing Arts (listed) broken into specific theater company, listing
creator roles, then broken down by year
Additional biography (list of source material)
Source (source of some data)
Creator (list of features created)
Promotional comics (listed) broken into specific comic titles, listing
creator roles, then broken down by year
Fan & trade zines (listed) broken into specific comic titles, listing
creator roles, then broken down by year
Publishers (list of companies worked for) broken into specific comic
titles, listing creator roles, then broken down by year
Notes on comics career
Other career notes
Syndication (listed) broken down into specific features, listing creator
roles, then broken down by year
Assisted (listed) broken down into specific features, listing creator
roles, then broken down by year

Some of this information probably should not be part of the GCD, but
remain only a part of the Who's Who. Thoughts?

- Don Milne

(Derek and Jamal have still not joined the group, so I'm including them
individually for now.)

[Lionel English]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who’s Who to see what is recorded. I don't know the details of the underlying database, but this appears to be working from multiple tables using foreign keys to connect them.

It's not, but we can pretend that it is.  It's actually all in a single table, with multiple self-joins on a very structured textstring key.

 

I found:

<snip>

 

Some of this information probably should not be part of the GCD, but remain only a part of the Who's Who. Thoughts?

To clarify, by the GCD you mean our proposed new creator table, right?  So are you suggesting that we pick and choose which elements we want to bring over into our creator table?  

Our creator table could always link back to the Who's Who record, as Jochen was suggesting earlier, if we want to retain the current Who's Who as is and running alongside our new project.  And some of that stuff is obviously not comics-related, so I think there's a fair reason for not including it in the creator table.

On the other hand, creative people often work in many creative fields, particularly over the course of time.  I certainly *don't* want to get into the business of recording all of those non-comics endeavors, but perhaps as an alternative we can include links (where appropriate) to other database projects devoted to those other art forms.  For example, links to the IMDb for people who have credits there.  Links to WorldCat.  We'll eventually be incorporating strips into the GCD, so we'll be our own source of comic-book and comic-strip data.  I don't know if there are reliable, established sites documenting the pulp industry or the world of advertising/commercial illustration.  We could also include links to Wikipedia and Toonopedia, but we'd want to think it through first--we don't really want to become a link farm.

Should we move through those data points one by one (or in small related groups) and discuss what to keep/modify/ditch, and then what to add?  Or should we stick to the general discussion first, and then move on to details?

--
Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Tony Rose]

It is important to note, though I think we all know it, that the listings under the publishers are most of the time features, sometimes only genres, and occasionally specific titles.




tony

---

From: "Donald Dale Milne" <dond...@att.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com, "GCD - Jamal Walton" <lja...@ljamal.com>, blac...@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 5:42:45 PM
Subject: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who’s Who to see what is

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[Donald Dale Milne]

I did mean our proposed new creator table, and I was suggesting

that we pick and choose which elements we want to bring over into our

creator table. My preference would be to omit the stuff that is
obviously not comics-related.

- Don Milne

On 8/14/2011 8:57 PM, Lionel English wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net

> <mailto:dond...@att.net>> wrote:
>
> So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who�s Who to see what

> lio...@beanmar.net <mailto:lio...@beanmar.net>

[Donald Dale Milne]

That's what I thought, but for the handful of names I inspected,
they mostly listed specific titles with only a few obvious features
included.

- Don Milne

On 8/15/2011 10:09 AM, Tony Rose wrote:
> It is important to note, though I think we all know it, that the
> listings under the publishers are most of the time features, sometimes
> only genres, and occasionally specific titles.
>
>
>
>
> tony
>

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: *"Donald Dale Milne" <dond...@att.net>
> *To: *gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com, "GCD - Jamal Walton"
> <lja...@ljamal.com>, blac...@aol.com
> *Sent: *Sunday, August 14, 2011 5:42:45 PM
> *Subject: *[gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who
>
> So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who�s Who to see what is

[R Bottorff]

Much can be directed into tht GCD and much remains in the Who's Who. It seems to me if I click on a creator name, and it pulls up this data in the Who's Who, that might work out the best

my best
-Ray

--- On Sun, 8/14/11, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

> From: Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net>

[R Bottorff]

I prefer keeping all the Who's Who together and having the creator table link to it. The idea of eliminating info would bother the heck out of me. Also, keep in mind, the future Who's Who will be expanded when we include creators from other countries, newer creators, and comic strip people whose work is reprinted in comic books but did not have comic book careers per se and therefore did not have a Who's Who entry (ala Milton Caniff). So these tables can be used over and over again for new additions I think. my best -Ray --- On Sun, 8/14/11, Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net> wrote:

[Lionel English]

Don't forget to check http://bailsprojects.com/about.html for more on the structure.  There are actually very few fields, but they're used for multiple purposes.

In the case of work in comic books, the CREDIT field includes:

1. The name of the feature, genre or title of the work;

Example:

	DC COMICS
		BIZARRO WORLD (pen/ink/) 1961-62	> 61 62
		Covers (ink/some pen/) 1960-63	> 60 61 62 63
		FALLING IN LOVE~ (pen/) 1958-60/65	> 58 59 60 65
		GIRLS' LOVE STORIES~ (pen/) 1958	> 58
		GIRLS' ROMANCES~ (pen/ink/) 1958	> 58
		GREATEST 1950s STORIES EVER TOLD, THE~ (ink/) 1990 graphic album with reprint of Jimmy Olsen	> 90
		JIMMY OLSEN (ink/some pen/) 1959-65	> 59 60 61 62 63 64 65
		LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (pen/ink/) 1962-65	> 62 63 64 65
		LOIS LANE (pen/ink/) 1959/61-65	> 59 61 62 63 64 65
		SECRET HEARTS~ (pen/) 1955-58/60	> 55 56 57 58 60
		SUPERBOY (pen/ink/) 1960	> 60
		SUPERMAN (pen/ink/) 1960-62/64	> 60 61 62 64
		SUPERMAN AND BATMAN & ROBIN (ink/) 1962	> 62
		TALES OF THE BIZARRO WORLD (pen/some ink/) 1961-62	> 61 62
		YOUNG ROMANCE~ (pen/) 1967-68	> 67 68

 

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 8:04 AM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

   That's what I thought, but for the handful of names I inspected, they mostly listed specific titles with only a few obvious features included.

- Don Milne

On 8/15/2011 10:09 AM, Tony Rose wrote:

It is important to note, though I think we all know it, that the listings under the publishers are most of the time features, sometimes only genres, and occasionally specific titles.




tony

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From: *"Donald Dale Milne" <dond...@att.net>
*To: *gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com, "GCD - Jamal Walton" <lja...@ljamal.com>, blac...@aol.com
*Sent: *Sunday, August 14, 2011 5:42:45 PM
*Subject: *[gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who’s Who to see what is

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[Henry Andrews]

We should seek to preserve the data and its linkages, but the existing form of the data is not ideal for anything but preserving it exactly as-is.  What Jerry (or whoever chose the database structure) was trying to do with the unusual schema is now better supported by a separate search index with faceting (the part where you can restrict the search to particular fields by putting special text in the search box).  Who's Who opted for a relatively difficult to work with schema structure as a trade-off for better searching (the GCD, as you might guess, has to date made the opposite trade-off).  Modern sites use two different views of the data, one generated from the other, in order to satisfy both goals (usable schema structure, feature-rich search).

I think the most important question here is:  Do we want to open the Who's Who, including the parts that do not fit into the GCD, for ongoing updates?  If so, how do we keep the two properly linked together?  What does "properly" linked even mean?

thanks,

-henry

PS, I checked into gcd-main/chat/tech for the first time in nearly a month yesterday and was really happy to see a lot of progress on both tech stuff and on voting (even if all options got voted down on one topic).  It's really great to see the project going strong without my active involvement.  If anything, I think the pace has picked up which is what I had hoped for.

hha

---

From: R Bottorff <carch...@yahoo.com>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 8:12 AM

[Henry Andrews]

Do we have some sort of dump of the database in a format that can be stuffed into MySQL?  I'd rather like to be able to play around with it a bit.  I don't even really need the whole table if there's some sort of problem with exporting the whole thing, just a representative sample.

-henry

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com; L. Jámal Walton <lja...@ljamal.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 5:57 PM

Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

[Lionel English]

IIRC, the raw database is actually a text file with fixed column width fields.

 

I don't have my old copies anymore, but I might have copies on the discs I got from Jean last month.  I still need to look through those.  I'll try to look at them in the next day or two.  I wonder if I should just upload them to a directlry on our server somewhere?

 

Anyone else have copies of the pre-online Who's Who?  It was broken into floppy sized chunks; you could probably just send Henry one of those chunks as an email attachment.

[Henry Andrews]

For now, I think it would be best to stuff them up on one of our two production boxes and I can grab them there.  Putting them anywhere more public should probably come after a bit more deliberation about how we should handle distribution, and exactly what we should distribute.  I know some folks are interested in an as-is snapshot of the final edition under Jerry's stewardship, whatever else the GCD does with it.

Fixed width text fields is definitely something I can work with just fine.

thanks,

-henry

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 11:37 AM

[Lionel English]

I forgot--for *some* entries there are also scans available to help identify art styles.

 

See, e.g. http://bailsprojects.com/WhosWho.aspx (look under DELL, under GOOFY).

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who’s Who to see what is recorded. I don't know the details of the underlying database, but this appears to be working from multiple tables using foreign keys to connect them. I found:

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[Tony Rose]

I have copies at home, none on this machine.

I also have copies of the even older print version.




tony

---

From: "Lionel English" <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 1:37:03 PM

[Lionel English]

The print version probably hides the keys, just as the online version does.  Henry would want to see a sample from the electronic version, so he can see how it was organized.

[Henry Andrews]

Yup.  I also don't need the images- I can just see the references the data uses (if any- it may just be a naming convention that the code checks- either way not of immediate interest).

While having a copy of the data would be nice on general principle, for these purposes I actually don't care what the data is.  I only care about the structure.

thanks,

-henry

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 12:06 PM

[R Bottorff]

As do I, somewhere here. I have the filemaker files too that I sent to Jamal. my best -ray --- On Mon, 8/15/11, Tony Rose <tonyr...@comcast.net> wrote:

[R Bottorff]

I think a lot a Jerry's original structure he used was changed a bit once he imported it into Filemaker pro... its an older version of FMP too, but he did have some scripts set up on it and the various databases he used were linked relationally, as much as FMP 6 (IIRC) could do relational. my best -Ray --- On Mon, 8/15/11, Henry Andrews <hh...@cornell.edu> wrote:

[Lionel English]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.  Can you check to see if I have a shell account on one of the machines I could ssh in to?

[Donald Dale Milne]

This one is a perfect example of what I had noticed, that these are
not all features. This one clearly is a book title, as it even notes
the book format: "GREATEST 1950s STORIES EVER TOLD, THE~ (ink/) 1990
graphic album with reprint of Jimmy Olsen". "Covers" is also not a
feature. And, a GCD search for "GIRLS' LOVE STORIES" as a feature fails
(except for 1 story apparently entered incorrectly), but it exists as a
book title. We will need to be very careful with our assumptions here
for parsing these.

- Don Milne

On 8/15/2011 12:55 PM, Lionel English wrote:
> Don't forget to check http://bailsprojects.com/about.html for more on
> the structure. There are actually very few fields, but they're used
> for multiple purposes.
>
> In the case of work in comic books, the CREDIT field includes:
>

> 1. The name of the feature, genre or title of the work;

> <mailto:dond...@att.net>>
> *To: *gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com>, "GCD - Jamal Walton"
> <lja...@ljamal.com <mailto:lja...@ljamal.com>>,
> blac...@aol.com <mailto:blac...@aol.com>

> *Sent: *Sunday, August 14, 2011 5:42:45 PM
> *Subject: *[gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who
>

> So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who�s Who to see

> <mailto:gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com>.

> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> gcd-whos-who...@googlegroups.com
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> Lionel English
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> lio...@beanmar.net <mailto:lio...@beanmar.net>

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[Lionel English]

The entries with a trailing tilde ('~') are publication titles, the ones without *should* be feature titles.  But you're right, there's also stuff in there like "Covers".  Presumably that's an example of a "genre" credit.  Perhaps the title case indicates a genre credit?

 

We should also note that not all of the entries are people; he has publisher listings and studio listings in the Who's Who.  We presumably do *NOT* want to bring in the publisher entries, both because they aren't people and because we already have a structure for them.  Do we want to deal with studios (a grouping of people) as part of our creator project, or just leave them in the Who's Who for now?

       <mailto:gcd-whos-who@googlegroups.com>, "GCD - Jamal Walton"

       <lja...@ljamal.com <mailto:lja...@ljamal.com>>,
       blac...@aol.com <mailto:blac...@aol.com>

       *Sent: *Sunday, August 14, 2011 5:42:45 PM
       *Subject: *[gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

       So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who’s Who to see

       <mailto:gcd-whos-who@googlegroups.com>.

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lio...@beanmar.net <mailto:lio...@beanmar.net>

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[Lou Mazzella]

If the data's already been collected (and i'm one of the folks who did some of the collecting) I think we should use it. It doesn't hurt us in any way to be the go to place for information about creators. I think we should keep all the provided info.

-Lou

---

From: Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net>

To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 11:02 AM
Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

    I did mean our proposed new creator table, and I was suggesting that we pick and choose which elements we want to bring over into our creator table. My preference would be to omit the stuff that is obviously not comics-related.

- Don Milne

On 8/14/2011 8:57 PM, Lionel English wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net <mailto:dond...@att.net>> wrote:
>

>    So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who’s Who to see what

>    is recorded. I don't know the details of the underlying database,
>    but this appears to be working from multiple tables using foreign
>    keys to connect them.
>
>
> It's not, but we can pretend that it is.  It's actually all in a single table, with multiple self-joins on a very structured textstring key.
>
>    I found:
>
>    <snip>
>
>    Some of this information probably should not be part of the GCD,
>    but remain only a part of the Who's Who. Thoughts?
>
>
> To clarify, by the GCD you mean our proposed new creator table, right?  So are you suggesting that we pick and choose which elements we want to bring over into our creator table?
>
> Our creator table could always link back to the Who's Who record, as Jochen was suggesting earlier, if we want to retain the current Who's Who as is and running alongside our new project.  And some of that stuff is obviously not comics-related, so I think there's a fair reason for not including it in the creator table.
>
> On the other hand, creative people often work in many creative fields, particularly over the course of time.  I certainly *don't* want to get into the business of recording all of those non-comics endeavors, but perhaps as an alternative we can include links (where appropriate) to other database projects devoted to those other art forms.  For example, links to the IMDb for people who have credits there.  Links to WorldCat.  We'll eventually be incorporating strips into the GCD, so we'll be our own source of comic-book and comic-strip data.  I don't know if there are reliable, established sites documenting the pulp industry or the world of advertising/commercial illustration.  We could also include links to Wikipedia and Toonopedia, but we'd want to think it through first--we don't really want to become a link farm.
>
> Should we move through those data points one by one (or in small related groups) and discuss what to keep/modify/ditch, and then what to add?  Or should we stick to the general discussion first, and then move on to details?
>
>
> -- Lionel English
> San Diego, CA
> lio...@beanmar.net <mailto:lio...@beanmar.net>
>
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[Henry Andrews]

Shops (in the 30s-40s particularly) are one of my current obsessions so I would be in favor of including them.  I spent a fair amount of time last night going over the first 11 pages of shop credits on the web site, actually :-)

thanks,

-henry

---

From: Lou Mazzella <gloi...@yahoo.com>
To: "gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com" <gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 5:48 PM

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to gcd-whos-who...@googlegroups.com.

[Lou Mazzella]

Don't know if my copy is the final one, but I do have a copy. I may have an update that i didn't get to jerry before he passed too.

-Lou

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 2:37 PM

[Henry Andrews]

I don't see one.  It would probably be best if Jochen or Andres added one for you.  I can barely remember how to add a linux account, and I definitely can't remember if there's anything odd about the setup there.

-henry

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 1:49 PM

[Lionel English]

OK, well I'm not getting to anything tonight.  Can't read the CDs from my Ubuntu machines; I'll have to try from my work laptop, which I don't feel like dragging out right now.

[Tony Rose]

We should give serious consideration to bringing the studios into our creator table.  Often the only credit that can be managed is something like "Iger shop" or "Shuster shop."

However, there may be as yet unforseen consequences to this that would make me change my mind.




tony

---

From: "Lionel English" <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 6:09:26 PM
Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to gcd-whos-who...@googlegroups.com.

[Tony Rose]

I'm as yet of two minds on the question of the non-comics associations.




tony

---

From: "Lou Mazzella" <gloi...@yahoo.com>

To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 7:48:28 PM

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to gcd-whos-who...@googlegroups.com.

[Henry Andrews]

Many, many things that are credited to Matt Baker are really "Iger Shop", with no more clear credits possible.

-henry

---

From: Tony Rose <tonyr...@comcast.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 11:11 AM

[Lionel English]

As noted, Jerry shoved a lot of information into a single table.  Our "creator table" may end up being several inter-related tables.  I'm going to resist the temptation to dwell on that and say we can leave it as an implementation detail.  We just need to decide that, "Yes, we'd like to include studios". 

 

But, we'll need to examine them somewhat separately because while we can draw parallels between a person and a group of people, there are also differences.  A person has a birth date and may have a death date.  A studio or other association can have a creation date and maybe a dissolution date.  But you also need to capture the membership of a person with a group, and the starting and ending dates of their association with the group.

 

Perhaps we should focus on creators first, and then come back to the groups and the associations.

 

This brings to mind, though, that some Who's Who entries include things like:

(http://bailsprojects.com/bio.aspx?Name=KUBERT%2c+JOE)

 

Family in arts
		Sons: Adam Kubert; Andy Kubert

 

So, some creators have relationships with other creators.  I don't think we mentioned that previously.  Those are blood relations, but there are also relations by marriage (marriages and divorces between creators) and by influences--X was influenced by T, U, and V, and influenced Y and Z.

[Henry Andrews]

I have plenty of ideas on how the person-to-person and person-to-group/company relationships can be done whenever we want to talk implementation.  On the shop thing, you need to potentially store both the time of the person being related to the shop, and also which credits were done through the shop.  Many GA creators in particular were freelance, just sometimes freelance through a shop and sometimes freelance directly.  So just because X was working in a shop at a given time doesn't mean that all of their work at that time was through the shop.

An example from the Timely-Atlas list this week- Reed Crandall's first work appeared in five comics simultaneously with the same cover month, from three different publishers.  The Quality and probably the Fiction House stories were through the Iger shop, while the Captain America story for Timely was a freelance job directly for editor Joe Simon.  Shortly after this, Quality hired him in-house, so pinning down the boundary between stuff he did for Quality through Iger vs stuff he did as an employee is likely to be tricky, so we need to be able to flag such connections as tentative/unconfirmed.

thanks,

-henry

(currently really into researching shops)

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 3:03 PM

[Lou Mazzella]

Anything listed with a ~ in the who's who is a series title. Otherwise it's a feature.

-Lou

---

From: Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net>

To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

>        So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who’s Who to see

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[Donald Dale Milne]

This seems like a good time to forward some comments from Tony that
he sent me before we started this discussion.

- Don Milne

"I couldn't wait and started thinking about what sort of data we have
and what sort we'd want. This is what I came up with:

name
aliases (or real name if the common name is an alias)
birthdate
birthplace
deathdate
deathplace
education/training
awards
biographical sketch (?)
books and articles of which the creator is the subject

Of course, this is just a starting point. Some could be added, some
eliminated, etc etc. Oh, and it omits the technical stuff like the keys
to link this table to stories, etc."

tony

[Lionel English]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Henry Andrews <hh...@cornell.edu> wrote:

On the shop thing, you need to potentially store both the time of the person being related to the shop, and also which credits were done through the shop.  Many GA creators in particular were freelance, just sometimes freelance through a shop and sometimes freelance directly. o just because X was working in a shop at a given time doesn't mean that all of their work at that time was through the shop.

I understand what you're saying, but that presumably won't come into play until we're talking about a credits table (i.e. the bridge between creators and the existing GCD).  I assume that's a secondary stage, and not part of the initial project.  Or is it?

 

[Henry Andrews]

I like to know where we're going.  Otherwise you often end up with a table design that won't go there, or that is more difficult to work with than it needs to be.  For instance, I think we *could* shove shops/studios into the creator table, but I think it would cause problems.

-henry

---

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 9:14 PM

Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

[Tony Rose]

I want to capture the familial relationships. 

I think that artistic influences is open to a whole helluva lot of interpretation.  The data that Jerry had on influences came from the artists' questionnaires; I don't think any of it was subjective.

tony

---

From: "Lionel English" <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 5:03:20 PM

[Lionel English]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Tony Rose <tonyr...@comcast.net> wrote:

I think that artistic influences is open to a whole helluva lot of interpretation.  The data that Jerry had on influences came from the artists' questionnaires; I don't think any of it was subjective.

 

 

Oh I agree.  But we have that data, and if we continue to ask creators to provide data on themselves we can continue to collect it.  If we want to.  I agree we should not try to *infer* that data.

[R Bottorff]

Yes Tony is right, influences and a lot of other data came from the creators themselves and if we invite other future creators to submit  their own questionnaires in the future, I would love to see that included as well. my best -Ray

--- On Wed, 8/17/11, Tony Rose <tonyr...@comcast.net> wrote:

[Henry Andrews]

BTW, I have no objection to Roy challenging Shooter's statements because:

1.  Roy was there

2.  The statements in question are about him

3.  Roy is part of the list.

4.  Roy's disagreements are informative rather than angry rants :-)

I also don't object to folks discussing the event in general.  It's when we get into "you have to agree with me that Shooter is wrong/evil/eats babies/whatever" that I think it starts souring the tone here.

thanks,

-henry

---

From: Henry Andrews <hh...@cornell.edu>
To: "gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com" <gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 10:04 PM

[Lionel English]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 5:46 PM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote:

   This seems like a good time to forward some comments from Tony that he sent me before we started this discussion.

 

"I couldn't wait and started thinking about what sort of data we have and what sort we'd want. This is what I came up with:

books and articles of which the creator is the subject

I don't think the above should be in the creator table.  I think those would be a natural fit for our eventual bibliography database, each entry of which could be linked to given creators, publishers, series, issues, features, etc.  So, for example, a Gil Kane interview in the Comics Journal could be linked to Gil Kane's entry in the creator table, along with any other creators discussed in the interview, and publishers mentioned linked to the appropriate publisher record, features discussed to features records, etc.

--
Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Lionel English]

What about a picture of the creator?  Photo, self-portrait, or caricature?

[Tony Rose]

Sounds good.  I'd say self-portrait, if available, if not, photo, if not, portrait by other artist.





tony

---

From: "Lionel English" <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 10:42:35 PM

Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

[Tony Rose]

Your probably right.

tony

---

From: "Lionel English" <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 6:53:14 PM

Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

[Lionel English]

Finally found the time, hardware, and software to get all the files off the CDs Jean gave me last summer.

 

The copy of the Who's Who I have is in FileMaker Pro 6, and is from Feb 2006.  Are the files you sent to Jamal from a later date than that?  IIRC, the files on http://www.bailsprojects.com/ were last updated on Oct 18, 2006, so I assume my copy is slightly out of date.

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 1:04 PM, R Bottorff <carch...@yahoo.com> wrote:

As do I, somewhere here. I have the filemaker files too that I sent to Jamal. my best. -ray

--- On Mon, 8/15/11, Tony Rose <tonyr...@comcast.net> wrote:

From: Tony Rose <tonyr...@comcast.net>

Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com Date: Monday, August 15, 2011, 2:51 PM I have copies at home, none on this machine. I also have copies of the even older print version.

tony From: "Lionel English" <lio...@beanmar.net> To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 1:37:03 PM

Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

IIRC, the raw database is actually a text file with fixed column width fields.   I don't have my old copies anymore, but I might have copies on the discs I got from Jean last month.  I still need to look through those.  I'll try to look at them in the next day or two.  I wonder if I should just upload them to a directlry on our server somewhere?   Anyone else have copies of the pre-online Who's Who?  It was broken into floppy sized chunks; you could probably just send Henry one of those chunks as an email attachment.

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Henry Andrews <hh...@cornell.edu> wrote:

Do we have some sort of dump of the database in a format that can be stuffed into MySQL?  I'd rather like to be able to play around with it a bit.  I don't even really need the whole table if there's some sort of problem with exporting the whole thing, just a representative sample. -henry

From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>

To: gcd-wh...@googlegroups.com; L. Jámal Walton <lja...@ljamal.com>

Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 5:57 PM

Subject: Re: [gcd-Whos Who] what's in the Who's Who

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Donald Dale Milne <dond...@att.net> wrote: So I just grabbed a few random names out the Who’s Who to see what is recorded. I don't know the details of the underlying database, but this appears to be working from multiple tables using foreign keys to connect them.

It's not, but we can pretend that it is.  It's actually all in a single table, with multiple self-joins on a very structured textstring key.   I found: <snip>

Some of this information probably should not be part of the GCD, but remain only a part of the Who's Who. Thoughts?

To clarify, by the GCD you mean our proposed new creator table, right?  So are you suggesting that we pick and choose which elements we want to bring over into our creator table?   Our creator table could always link back to the Who's Who record, as Jochen was suggesting earlier, if we want to retain the current Who's Who as is and running alongside our new project.  And some of that stuff is obviously not comics-related, so I think there's a fair reason for not including it in the creator table. On the other hand, creative people often work in many creative fields, particularly over the course of time.  I certainly *don't* want to get into the business of recording all of those non-comics endeavors, but perhaps as an alternative we can include links (where appropriate) to other database projects devoted to those other art forms.  For example, links to the IMDb for people who have credits there.  Links to WorldCat.  We'll eventually be incorporating strips into the GCD, so we'll be our own source of comic-book and comic-strip data.  I don't know if there are reliable, established sites documenting the pulp industry or the world of advertising/commercial illustration.  We could also include links to Wikipedia and Toonopedia, but we'd want to think it through first--we don't really want to become a link farm. Should we move through those data points one by one (or in small related groups) and discuss what to keep/modify/ditch, and then what to add?  Or should we stick to the general discussion first, and then move on to details?

[R Bottorff]

I believe Jamal's should be later. The copies I had were taken off Jerry's computer after he passed away and reflected a couple days worth (at least) of updates and corrections Jerry had made before he died that were never put up on the website. my best -Ray --- On Sun, 1/29/12, Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net> wrote: