Allies in Archiving

It's always great to find someone with a mind like your own... Sally, the Practical Archivist, found me a while back and I've recently gone back to her site to soak up some more inspiration. Yes, we can get stagnant sometimes even with the things we enjoy.

I've been dragging my feet about getting a new portable scanner (for mobile gigs) and her recommendations are all I needed. Yah-HOO!

Here she's writing about a recent topic of my own!

(my comments)

I just had this conversation with a friend who used to run a museum. He told me about Registrars not letting anything across the loading dock without a museum registry number. I like your idea of getting the boxes or folders done first, I agree with that.

Recently I’ve started cataloging with a system kind of marrying the two. I start with the fact: Is it in my posession, family, distant family, or a public document? When did I happen upon it? What family line does it deal with? How many items will I have with this ‘session’? and finally what kind of item is it? Document? Photo? Artifact? is it a photocopy?

Sounds like a lot, but wait, here’s how I deal with it in my master spreadsheet.

A199906.4.22.DC

The A tells me it’s mine. This was scanned with my mother in June of 99, it’s from her mother’s line, it’s a photocopy of a death certificate, and I scanned over 20 items that day. This number alone tells me a lot. I don’t have to fuss with anything else, but I do because that’s me. If this was something emailed to me by a 7th cousin, I would number the file like this:

C201101.3.1.P

I’ve decided what the codes will be for my family lines, there are less than 10, of course. Before long, I’ve memorized what the numbers mean, and I can tell you from a list if it’s something I can show you physically, or if the scan is as good as it’s gonna get.

I used to use Windows’ mass file renaming system, which works for less scientific purposes. You click the first of the series, hold the shift key and click the last, then right click in your selection and rename with something general, like “STEWART.2010″ and it will automatically do a sequence like “STEWART.2010 (1).jpg” etc.