2. Building Your House of Memories — Determine Your Tagging, “Save As” and Sharing Practices Before You Start
If you are reading this, you likely have an interest in creating a digital legacy for yourself, your family, or your organization. If you aren’t sure where exactly to start, read the first article in this series.
So, you’ve decided whose memories (or collection of memories) you’d like to store and preserve for the use of future generations. What you want to avoid at this point is transfering your random collection of memories, records, documents to your eMemory “house”. You need to create a collection that is easy for you and the people you share your memories with to search and ultimately enjoy. Having an online “mess” is no better than continuing to have random photos and documents in a box.
So now what? Here are three easy next steps to help you prepare to build your house of memories.
- Determine your “tags” BEFORE you start uploading documents. Tagging is a critical step to making it easier for your audience to search and find memories in your collection. Tags are like “key words” or “categories” that make searching easier. When you go to a museum to learn about history, you choose a section of the museum that interests you. Imagine if the museum had no categories — you’d never know what you were looking at! Use words that make sense and are intuitive as possible. Keep the words simple and be mindful of your audience and what words they may use to search for information. It also helps to create a document where you can list your tags as you build your memory collection — that way you can teach the tags to other people who may be helping you, or (if you are like me) you forget what your tags are.
- Come up with a “file naming system” you can use to save and notate memories. This is a bit different than tagging. There’s no “perfect” way, but determine your coding system for how you “save” files in your memory collection will also make it easier for your audience to find memories they are interested in quickly and easily. For example, if you save photos or documents, decide if you will “save as” using the only the keynames of who is in the photo, or whether you’ll put the date of the photo in the photo file, or the location. Once you determine your coding system, record it on a document so you can teach other people how to save memories, or (if you are like me) you forget what your coding system is.
- Each time you upload a memory, determine who you should be sharing that memory with and share it specifically with them. Let’s be honest — some people don’t want to know every memory you want to share. Consider who in your family or organization really cares about what and share specific memories with specific groups of people. They will appreciate the specificity of what you are sharing with them and will be more inclined to participate in your house of memories as you build it. They may even want to start to help you!
Determining your system for tagging, saving and sharing is like organizing your bookstore or museum before you open for business! Once you’ve determined that system, it will be much easier to start the fun task of digitizing your memories and starting to store them online.
If you enjoyed this one, you can follow the next step to increase the value of your memories using eMemory!
