Digital Album - Presenting Stamps On Digital Album Pages

I am curious, have any of you good people considered or already made 'digital' stamp albums? Or am I simply far off...

By that I am thinking of digital album pages where images/scans of your stamps are presented, so as to digitally imitate a real albumpage. The stamps themselves are actually stored in another system in real life.

There is already a vital discussion ongoing on how to store your WW collection. http://goscf.com/t/40901&whichpage=1 The question I am raising now is related, but still off-topic, as it does not concern the issue of storage, but rather on the presentation.

So here we go in another discussion. Anyone?

It's a very interesting idea;

1- We can place the real stamps in stock books; more convenient to add or rearrange
2- Can be host online
3- expensive stamps can be keep in bank safety box
4- each stamps y a sinple click, can re-open in another Windows enlarged


I like it and I will think about it.

Area66 - You seem to grasp the idea
And further to your list:


5- The digital stamp album pages can be revised continuously, e.g. changing background, adding more spaces etc without needing to actually move the stamp(image) from the old page to the newly edited page.
6- One single stamp (image) can take part in several different digital collections, e.g classical Queen Victoria stamps can be displayed both as part of UK collection, in a forerunner collection (if having abroad cancellation), in a pure Queen Victoria design collection, in a pure 'antique' WW collection, in a pure British Empire collection, SOTN collection etc etc. Countless opportunities.
7- The digital 'collection' can be saved on skydrive for insurance purposes
....
More?

Sorry to rain on your parade but it's been done & it's online with the dead countries website

http://www.dcstamps.com/

Polska, I will make my own version if I'm going for it.

Short answer is yes.

There are many people who have published their collections online in various fashions. Bill Seymour (http://billsey.seymourfamily.com) has several collections and if you click on the image it will open in an enlarged window/tab. Arago (http://arago.si.edu) is a site related to the Smithsonian that allows users to create a collection by dragging and dropping images in an online stock page, but you have to use their images.

For many people a stamp collection is a personal achievement. If a guest wishes to see my collection then I will not have them huddle around a computer screen and click through screens, but instead will bring out the album and sit down and talk about the stamps in the album (and the ones I wish were in the album).

Capturing images of your stamps is a great idea for insurance purposes (although you generally need more info than just an image). I capture an image of front and back for all my stamps and store the images along with various notes using LibertyStreet Stamp Manage software which prints out nice reports for insurance purposes and update approximately every 6 months or more if I get an especially high value stamp.

Putting your album online can be time consuming, but if your intent is also to educate others (as some have done) then it is probably a worthwhile effort but takes quite a bit of upkeep.

Absolutely no worries, YeaPolska I was fully aware it's already been done, and I am certainly not intending on a parade! Appeciate the link, hey that's why I made this thread - to get experience and inspiration from others that has already walked the walk. No need reinventing the wheel.

So - the question is - anybody having any good software that would suite the task? Will e.g EZ/Album gen or other album design software create pages in a workable format (e.g powerpoint), which could then be prosessed further for populating the pages with images?
Can the Steiner pages be used?
Any other thoughts on this concept – pros and cons?


Like to visualize what I am thinking. This is my Sweden stock album, I have scanned some of these stamps, but the stamps are still stored in this rather 'boring' stock album







And then I have used those images for a digital simulation of how they could have appeared on a somewhat more 'proper' albumpage:





This digital stamp album page can then very quickly be transformed to any custom design without needing to remove the stamps, hinges, mounts, you got the picture, e.g.






And the same stamps can also easily take part in any other 'digital collection', for instance presenting a SOTN collection, e.g






Other threads in this forum are discussing the issue that the young are not being attracted to our hobby. Maybe the concept of 'digital collections' will appeal more to this digitalized generation, so they could potentially share on facebook and get their likes...
Cheers, Jon

BjRollison - I appreciate your viewpoint
The links you offered are great, Seymour certainly has done this big style

Any guest in my home are absolutely free to see the real thing - no doubt that would surpass any digital achievement - however I do not have that many guests sharing our passion

I like the idea that a certain selection of stamps can be pulled from various collections - e.g. Queen Victoria stamps from all the B Empire - then they can all be presented in one specialized collection. That would be quite time consuming in real life, pulling countless albums from the shelfes - if one of my guests share the passion for a special theme.

Have been doing it for some years now. Mostly for countries where my collections approaches 'completion' on simplified level, but also on smaller scale for longer & complex series (say for example the Portuguese Cavalinho). For me it's not so much about the presentation, but about being able to combine/present/view all the tidbits from various resources into single page/entity. So it's bit of the same that I do with my blog...

Here's a sample page from my Finnish collection:



Fully digital, no such page as above exists on paper (though I've been thinking about ordering/making a deluxe photo book of my Finnish collection once/when I get all spaces filled).

The how-to part can be read: http://www.stampcollectingblog.com/...igitally.php

-k-

It is very easy to do with Wordpress.

I use it extensively on my forgeries website. Take Denmark as an example: http://stampforgeries.com/denmark/

If you go digital, why try to mimic a real album page? Why not go beyond the limitations of paper and embrace the possibilities technology gives you?

Keijo - you are an inspiration as always. Like your sample, clean and classy, yet including the details.
Nice idea about the photobook - probably also an ideal Christmas present for your wife

ClassicalStamps,
Thanks a lot, Your website is amazing
I had never even considered the idea your are suggesting, had always been thinking that was far beyond my reach to create an own website. Have now been reading about Wordpress for the first time, and understand maybe even an anti-data-geek like myself could manage. Hmm - really need to consider. Guess it opens endless opportunities for easy availability of your own collection, from anywhere in an instant.

I think about it and I come to the conclusion that I twill be too much work to scan all my WW collection. But I do want to do something on the web. I really dislike Wordpress and Blog, I will do a traditional website that will present some of my pages organized by country and also some articles.

area66 - I am looking forward to see your work on the blog, keep us posted.

I absolutely agree that scanning the complete WW collection would be far too much work. The concept of digital collection is probably more suitable for more specialized stuff. Personally I am mostly interested in the Victorian era, so I am planning on creating a 'digital collection' for that part of my collection only. Which drastically reduce the numbers to within reach. Probably most of us have areas of more interest than others, guess those particular interests would be where going digital comes to play.

I think the digital album is particularly useful for those ancillary collections, where you prefer to keep most of the stamps in their main place.

A calendar collection (one cancel for each day of the year), classic airmails, socked-on-the-nose, Zeppelin, all would be convenient to handle digitally without having to leave empty spaces in your main collection.

Very interesting idea, but a lot of hours to implement, especially if your collection numbers in the multi-10Ks. I think it may take away some of the magic of leafing through a physical collection, but at the same time it opens up a lot of possibilities in terms of creating sub-collections as Blaamand says. Only concern is, at what point will collectors decide they can build collections from web images without having to buy real physical stamps? :)