4 Focus Area 4: Describe
Descriptive information about your digital content, called metadata, helps users find your items, understand their contents and origins, reflect on your community’s history and values, and make sense of how they may use the materials.
DESCRIBE: BRONZE LEVEL
| Key Activities |
|---|
| - Adopt a file naming convention and document it. |
| - Determine the metadata standard you will use and how the metadata fields apply to your collections. |
File Naming
As you digitize your collection items and save your digital files, you’ll need to assign a file name to each one. Using a well-defined and consistent system for organizing and naming digital files will make your life easier, now and in the future. If feasible, develop your file naming system before you begin digitizing.
A few file naming tips to keep in mind:
- Your file name is not a database record.
- Your collection may grow! Your file naming system should accommodate future growth. Use up to five leading zeros with the numbers 0-9 to facilitate proper sorting, for example: smith00001.tif, smith00002.tif, smith00003.tif.
- Format dates consistently. When using dates in a file name, always start with YYYY, then MM, then DD so your files sort appropriately. If it’s easier to read, add hyphens between the year, month and day, for example: 2012-12-01.tif.
- Avoid funky characters. Do not make it “machine-unreadable” by using quotation marks, colons, or slashes. Stick to numbers, letters, hyphens, and underscores only.
- No spaces, please. Use underscores (_) and dashes (-) to represent spaces. Spaces are often reserved for operating system functions and might be misread.
- Keep it short and sweet. Avoid including too many or overly complex elements within the file name.
| File Name Examples |
|---|
| Generic archives file naming convention: [collection]_[box #]_[folder #]_[item #].ext Example: goggins_box1_folder3_item006.tif |
| For a photograph with accession # 2011.32.1: 201132001.tif –OR– 2011_32_001.tif |
| For a series of images by photographer John Smith: smith001.tif, smith002.tif, smith003.tif |
| Not so good: Glassplate16039 Auto repair in basement 025.tif |
Once you’ve created a naming scheme, consider batch renaming existing digital files using a free, web-based tool such as AdvancedRenamer. This will save you a ton of time and reduce potential human-created file-naming errors.
Folder Structure
As you create and name files, organize them into folders in a structure that makes sense for how they will be used. Then document that structure so that others will understand where files are located and where to put new content.
For example, research files for internal use only might be moved to a network drive or a reference desk computer and the files might be organized into broad topic categories:
- RESEARCH FILES
- LOCAL BUSINESSES
- LOCAL HOMES
- COMMUNITY EVENTS
If you’ll be loading access files to a Collection Management System, move them to the computer where you’l