21COFH - Metadata

Metadata (data about data) is important if we are digitizing our photographs, family papers, and documents. I'm learning every week about this topic. Here's the framework I'm using right now.

Photographs

I'm in the process of switching over to Adobe Lightroom but right now I use Adobe Photoshop Elements. Whether it's a picture or an old family photo, and regardless of the file format (almost always either jpg or tiff), I use the following fields to add important information about the digital files I have.

• First, I use templates to automatically fill in my name as the Author, the Copyright Notice and contact information as appropriate.
• Second, I use the Description field in a number of ways:
• Write a caption.
• Reproduce what was already written on the back of a photograph.
• Create a citation.
•   Assigning Keywords (or tags) helps to find a photograph or group of pictures later on.

Family Papers & Documents Obtained Through Research
As documents are digitized, I add metadata as described above, paying particular attention to creating a citation.

If you are saving these types of documents as pdf files you can add the same types of metadata as well. I'm using Adobe Acrobat Pro X. I'm not sure which versions do or do not allow for this.

I also like to annote the front of the document with a citation, if it can be done in an "out of the way" place on the document.

Adobe Lightroom
I've been playing with Lightroom on and off this summer in order to learn the program and decide what the workflow should be. An advantage of this program is the ability to handle files in batches, eliminating the sometimes painful process of doing the same thing over and over with many files. Also, the ability to add keywords or tags makes it easier to locate files later.

Denise Levenick at The Family Curator has a great post today called, "Using Adobe Lightroom to Manage Genealogy Images." I hope she writes more in the near future!


© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum