Packard Forum Index » General

I am finishing up a project and might consider entering basic dealer information into a spread sheet like Kevin suggested. I like his idea of getting the basic information, then layering additional information later and/or as it becomes available. I did instigate this and feel some responsibility to it. Let me try the sample sheet O_D provided and see how it goes and how all of you out there like it. Okay?

Kev -

I was thinking at a minimum - dealername, city, and state.

However, some of the entries on Dave's sample page DO show a street address. It would be nice to include an address field, yet simply left blank when that info is not available). However, I would ask that we include a corresponding field to show the year of the source list.

That way, if we import material from other later lists, with this publication year, perhaps we could have multiple entries for a given dealer, one for each unique address. Ultimately, that might paint a picture showing dealer relocation, if any.

I agree that AFTER we get the basic shell up, we can THEN integrate the existing supplemental data and allow others to add to it. I also like the notion of providing some interrelationship with other databases, like the Owner Reg.

The next question, then, is how many other lists we might have access to.

Dave -

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software for desktop computing has come a long way, but still far from perfect.

Kev's scanner might do the best job, but his time is limited.

What we need is someone to, then, tackle the "heavy lifting" on this, cut-n-paste from the OCR'd target file into the spreadsheet, proofing for erros in recognition along the way. I believe, that if they just take it a page at a time, it might go a lot quicker than anyone thinks.

Having said my piece, I'm glad to see JW willing to take a stab at the "transcription".

Dave -

I just took a look at that thread over in the PAC forum and recall Ken Chapman as the fella who provided me with copy of pages from a couple of PMCC Zone lists for some dealers that I had inquired about 15 years or so ago.

The question, now, is whether he or the museum would be willing to provide copies of additional lists for P'Info's project.

How about this so it can be attacked from multiple angles. We come up with a basic excel file spreadsheet that list the following field columns:

Dealer Name, City, State, Country, Address1, Address2, Zip, YearOfReference, DealerOwner, Notes


Anything that doesn't fit into the above field columns goes into Notes as a catch all. Dealer Name, City, and State, Country are required. All other fields optional. Address1 & Address2 are for a two line street address, not two different addresses. YearOfReference is the the year publication of the source material that dealer was listed in.

Now once that spreadsheet template is built, we add it to this thread as an attachment, and everyone can download a blank copy of it. Then independently, everyone that wants to work on this project can add as many dealers as they can find in their own respective Packard literature, service manual, STBs Letters, Users Manuals, etc to their copy of the template. When they are done, they send their spreadsheet to whomever is going to be the Master list keeper, and that person merges all separate copies into a master list (which is easy to do in Excel if all the templates are the same structure) Then it's real easy to purge or merge duplicates and start to build a picture. Then from that I can import them into the database and go to town on it.

Kev -

Great idea! I luv it when a plan comes together and more people can pitch in.

Hope others feel likewise.

Just one more note on doing it the way I have described. Let say that Dave adds Acme Dealer, in MyTown, PA with a YOR (Year of Reference) date of 1934 to his spreadsheet.

Then Brian adds the same dealer to his list with a YOR of 1955.

When those are merged, I would imagine it would be safe to assume that from the two disparate sources that the dealer was in operation from at least the time period of 1934 -> 1955.

The database can be setup to absorb the multiple entries for the same dealer, and know how to display the data. So if it sees a YOR entry for that dealer of 1934, and another for 1955, and another for 1957, then it can display something to the affect the "Known Years of Operation 1934>1957)" when that Dealer Entry is displayed. Ahh the wonders of code.

Thats the benefit of have multiple people work it, as they will each have access to different reference materials.

One note for those wanting to participate, but may not have Excel (or Microsoft Office). You can download and install Open Office (Windows, MAC, Linux, etc) for free. It has almost all the functional of Microsoft Office, and will allow you to edit and view all of the Microsoft Office formats (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc).

It's what I use now on my Mac.

Download it for free here:

openoffice.org/


Just thought I would pass this along.

Here is the sample template.

Comments welcomed.

Attach file:

---

Size: 7.50 KB; Hits: 112

Just a note Kev on the format, I don't believe there were "postal zip codes" in that era, just an internal code in larger cities, for example:

Packard Motor Car Company
Detroit 32, Michigan

Who knows when Zip Codes came into being?