Why choose Airtable? Airtable is useful for researchers looking to collaborate with others to track large amounts of metadata online. Airtable is a cloud-based app structured like a hybrid spreadsheet/linked database. It can operate similarly to Google Sheets, making it useful for collaborations or for users to download data, but its database features for linking across tables make it a powerful tool for managing information and images for art history research and/or publications projects. Airtable stores images in the cloud and offers many different types of fields for cataloging.
Airtable Specifications: Airtable’s Free plan offers 1,000 records across all tables and up to 1 GB of attachments. 1GB goes fast when you’re working with art images, so the VRC recommends creating medium res copies of your images rather than storing full-res files here. If and when you need to upgrade to more storage space or more records, Airtable costs $240 annually or $24 billed monthly.
To view the Airtable demo: Please write to visualresources@uchicago.edu and we will share the login information and instructions with you. Airtable can also be used as a digital exhibition platform, please see the Swarthmore College Libraries' example "Black Excellence in the Book Arts".
Features:
- Supports JPEG, TIF, MP3, and PDFs
- Can upload MP4 files, but cannot be previewed in Airtable (will allow for download)
- Easily drag and drop images to enter into spreadsheet
- Stores image files to view as a thumbnail in chart, open image to full size in expanded window (can be downloaded with original resolution)
- Can download spreadsheet as a .csv file and import spreadsheets and .csv files (2 MB limit on .csv uploads)
- Similarly, data from a spreadsheet can be copied or imported into an Airtable table
- The “Group by” feature is great for sorting by repository
- View data as a spreadsheet, or as a gallery of image and text
Metadata
Airtable offers many different structured field types that are useful for managing personal archiving.
- For example, in addition to typical text and date fields, you can add tags from a predetermined list.
- Create multiple tables, linking them together (ex: separate Image, Work record, Archive/Museum tables that talk to each other)
- Create different views to track and sort your data. Flip between preserved views, rather than running a search each time
- Fields can be sorted alphabetically or filtered based on a specific field.. Can search for a specific entry (i.e. ‘Henry Ives Cobb’), but cannot permanently sort according to a custom search.
- The “Multiple Select” field type allows for custom tags to be created and applied to entries
- Concatenate data to create automatic citations
The VRC created a metadata template for Airtable that you can adapt for your own projects. The VRC Template for Airtable is maintained in a publicly accessible Google Sheet.