Good archiving practice – my gold standards of archiving
- The birth familyname is the master key of all items related to persons
- The familyname is ever leading part of the membername of personal items
- The source of archived items can be included as the ending part of the membername, or stored in member-remarks
- Strukturing rules of the repository and its directories and subdirectories
1. The birth familyname is the master key
The birth familyname is ever the permanent master key of all person related archiving members over the whole life cycle of the person.
If a person is married and gets (mostly in Germany) another familyname (familyname 2), and is divorced and married again (familyname 3) and his/her documents would be named by these different familynames they would be scattered / spread out by names.
To keep all documents of a person over his/her lifecycle by one single expression, the birth familyname, would keep all informations together concentrated and sorted in the archive folders / directories.
- e. g. Birth document of Marilyn Monroe =>membername Monroe,Marilyn_birth_document.pdf
- e.g. Wedding document of her => membername Monroe,Marilyn_married_Kennedy.pdf
- e.g. Divorce document => membername Monroe,Marylin_married_Kennedy_divorce_document.pdf
- e.g. Second Wedding => membername Monroe,Marylin_Married(2)_Johnson_marriadge_document.pdf
Benefits: All documents over the whole lifecycle of a person are not distributed and are ordered in the archive folders unique and can be easier found again later.
2. The familyname is ever leading part of the membername of all personal items in the digital family archive
The same rule is good for the naming of subdirectories in a family-named directory
The reasons why / benefits:
1. good ordering a big amount of items
2. Quick finding in a big amount of items
Membername Examples
- Tabarelli,Guiseppe_abc_def_…
- Tabarelli,Innominato_born_08.04.1810_Sant_Egidio_ Osp_mother_Teresa_Insomo_…
- Tabarelli,Heinrich_died_02.08.1891_…
Directoryname Examples
- Eisenhower-Ike-family (named directory)
- ….. Eisenhower,Dwight,David (first named subdirectory, filled with members of him)
- ….. Eisenhower,John (second named subdirectory, filled with members of him)
- ….. Eisenhower,Anne (third named subdirectory, filled with members of her)
3. The source of archived items can be included as the ending part of the membername
or can be stored in the remark field of the member.
The reasons why / benefits of including as ending part:
1. good ordering a big amount of items
2. Quick finding in a big amount of items
3. Needed to register the copyright or the photographer name or similiar restricted informations of copyright law or author’s rights
4. Needed at publishing the item in your internet presentation as footnote to an image or document description for copyright law or author’s rights
Membername in general:
Tabarelli,Guiseppe_abc_def_S_sourcename
_S_sourcename as …_S_www.abc.com / or …_S_libraryname like wikipedia / or …_S_anything-else-source-of-item
Membername Examples
Tabarelli,Guiseppe_birth_church_picture_S_www.tabarelli.org
Tabarelli,Heinrich_death_02.08.1891_S_churchbook_Tre_1867-1944_page_036_deathregister_1891_Nr.IX_f313
Tabarelli,Innominato_born_08.04.1810_Sant_Egidio_ Osp_mother_Teresa_Insomo_S1_familySearch_S2_churchbook_Trento_1548-1937
4. Strukturing rules of the repository and its directories and subdirectories
will be defined and explained later
- Fine „Archiving principals & standards“ Last-update 03.09.2026