How do you classify and retrieve documents?

[Deleted]

Chaps, I have boxes of farming history, restocking the Falklands in 1983, delivering breeding pigs to 45 countries, photos, newspaper clippings etc. Presumably one can scan every one, and perhaps classify by date, but how do you have a good ID or naming system that will allow you to retrieve a particular item from the resulting electronic heap? What do other Members do?

[rgsp]

I personally don't: most of my things just drift off into cyber archaeology. However, this is THE standard problem faced by library or record office archivists. If you're near one of the copyright libraries (Bodleian, British Library, Cambridge University Library) I suggest you talk to one of the archivists. If not, you must have a County Records Office somewhere reasonably close, and I suggest you talk to an archivist there.

It isn't a trivial problem, and there is no magic answer.

[Deleted]

BBC Click today (Sunday 08JUL12) had some interesting references, but even the best brains in Cambridge don't seem to have come up with a good solution.

[jackladd]

There should be a way of adding 'tags' to files & documents (date, place, subject, etc) the way that you can 'tag' pictures in Picasa & emails in Gmail.

Surely there's a programme or way of doing this .... or have I just blown my chance of making millions!

[SteveP]

I think this is a lot of work but if you wanted to you could save all your files in one folder or, different ones for different categories. Then create a spreadsheet called document finder and say for each category look at the bottom of the workbook and create and name the different categories where it says sheet1 sheet 2 etc (you can add more).

Then you will need to start logging your documents one by one so enter the name of the document and in the next cell a description and in the next cell put in a hyperlink to the document.

Once you have completed this (probably take you through the winter months lol) if you need to find something then check your spreadsheet and click the hyperlink to take you straight to it.

Oh there may be an easier way but this is what I would do lol

[Deleted]

I have run this question past a few chums, and this interesting message comes back from the University of Prince Edward Island:

We happen to have software that will do this, but it isn't a service we provide to the public at the moment. We simply do not have the staff to accommodate any volume of requests. If you do have a large number of documents that you need converted, I'd suggest you invest in something like ABBYY FineReader - finereader.abbyy.com/ . If you do have a volume of documents that need to be converted we could provide you with a quote for that work.

[Deleted]

If your just looking to store photos you could use flickr by Yahoo, its free. I use it alot. Upload your photos and they are stored online in the cloud. You can make a photo public, or private dependant on who you want to see it. But it doesn't handle documents. I guess some documents like posters etc could be scanned and uploaded. Hope it helps!