LNP Dome Theater Compendium

Isn't there a printed book version of the Compendium?

There once was, but it has been discontinued. The last edition was printed in November 2002.

How often is the LNP DOME THEATER COMPENDIUM updated?

During the normal everyday course of doing business at Loch Ness Productions, we're continually making changes and updates to our database. When we receive an order for the Compendium, we will usually generate an entire new set of Compendium pages at that time! So the data will always be current, to the best of our knowledge, often to within a matter of minutes.

We've priced the Compendium so reasonably low that you'll be tempted to order frequent updates. In the left corner of the cover page is the creation date, to help you decide when it's time.

Can I get the data electronically, like a spreadsheet?

SHORT ANSWER: If you're interested in only fulldome theaters, our FULLDOME THEATER COMPENDIUM SUBSCRIPTION may suit your needs.

LONG ANSWER: The LNP DOME THEATER COMPENDIUM does not exist as a single spreadsheet or database. It is a compilation of data from different sources.

We use the relational database program dBASE III+ (yes, a DOS program). The address information is in one database, projector equipment in a second, people in a third, the text blocks and URLs in yet more databases. Each database is indexed, and records are linked using unique locater codes. This allows us to link indefinite numbers of records — such as attaching multi-person staffs to single institutions or multiple projectors to single domes, for example — without the overhead of duplicated data in each.

When people ask for our data in electronic form, what they usually want is either 1) a mailing list so they can pitch some product or service to the planetarium or planetarian, or 2) a data set from which marketing analyses can be run for commercial or research intent. We do make available a subset of the information in our databases to parties we perceive as beneficial to the planetarium community — sometimes even our competition.

We can make available the "address block" in database form. Scroll down for details about which items are included. For those wanting information extending beyond what's needed for mailings, you'll have to contact us about doing custom database programming for you.

We maintain more than 1,700 U.S. and 2,300 international theater entries. We charge $170 for the U.S. mailing list and $230 for the international mailing list. That works out to about US$0.10/entry. We do no advance culling — you get all the entries.

dBASE III+ files are space-filled, not delimited, databases. Most database and spreadsheet programs can import .DBF format files. The structure of each record is detailed below. We store the files into zip archives for transmission as an email attachment. U.S. and International combined are usually less than 200K zipped; they expand to approximately 450K each when unzipped.

Structure for dBASE III+ databases:

Field  Field Name  Type       Width    Dec
    1  PLT_NAME    Character     30
    2  INST_NAME   Character     30
    3  ADDRESS     Character     30
    4  CITY        Character     20
    5  ST_PROV     Character     17
    6  COUNTRY     Character     30
    7  POSTALCODE  Character     10
    8  PHONE       Character     19
    9  PHONDESC    Character     10
   10  PHONE2      Character     19
   11  PHONDESC2   Character     10
   12  PHONE3      Character     19
   13  PHONDESC3   Character     10
   14  EMAILBOX    Character     60
   15  PLT_CLASS   Character     15
   16  GIFTSHOP    Character      8
   17  PUB_SHOWS   Character     12
   18  OPENED      Character      4

I want to send a mailing to the "primary contact" people. Are names and emails included in the spreadsheet?

No. Only the fields you see listed above are columns in the spreadsheet.

There are several reasons for this, both technical and philosophical. The technical — we list directors, assistants, secretaries, laserists, administrators, department heads, whomever. A "primary contact" could be any or many of those.

But it's the many-to-one relationship that makes spreadsheets less than optimal for this kind of thing. There are some institutions that operate several fulldome systems. Most don't. So either we create one entry/row for each institution that has multiple systems listed and most of the data fields are blank, or we make one record for each fulldome system, and then live with the duplicated institution data fields. But then there are institutions with many staffers, and some that have one or less staff people. If we duplicated projector and dome data for every staffperson, the database wouldn't be useful for demographic study. Trying to incorporate such many-to-one relationships into a two-dimensional row/column format of a spreadsheet can't be done efficiently.

So we don't include personal names and emails when we sell the LNP Fulldome Theater Compendium Subscription. Yes, we do publish them on the Web site as you've seen, but we're not selling them. We're not even monetizing the site with ads. For the most part, planetarian's names and emails are listed on their own planetarium's Web site anyway.

Now if you did want to blast email to everyone, that's being a spammer, and we definitely don't want that for our customers. We never want to be accused of selling their names/emails to spammers. So we just forestall that by simply saying we don't sell names.

Are the addresses CASS-certified?

No. We know about the USPS CASS-certification guidelines for conforming mailing addresses, but have chosen not to format our data in that manner. We think "123 Second Circle Street, Suite A" looks a lot better in our Compendium than "123 2D CR ST STE A". At Loch Ness Productions, we usually send our mailings first class anyway, so we don't use pre-sort discounts, bulk rates and such.

What's the difference between the LNP DOME THEATER COMPENDIUM and what's listed online?

The LNP DOME THEATER COMPENDIUM is the biggie, the full Monty, the complete listing of all the theaters worldwide. It's a commercial product. There are more than 4,000 locations. It features three index columns (Locations, People, and Projectors); the online listings provide only one, Locations.

The LNP DOME THEATER COMPENDIUM ONLINE! is a subset — only those classic theaters who have licensed Loch Ness Productions shows, or have submitted update forms. There are fewer than 300 locations, though, as more theaters convert to fulldome.

The LNP FULLDOME THEATER COMPENDIUM ONLINE! is also a subset — only those theaters with fulldome video capability. There are more than 1,500 locations.

The latter two include information about Loch Ness Productions shows that theaters have licensed; the commercial products do not.

Online, there is one selector column: theater LOCATIONS.

In the commercial product, there are two additional Index Selectors: staff NAMES and PROJECTOR systems. Selecting a link displays the corresponding theater entry, just like LOCATIONS does. They look like this: