Step 4: Build Your Client's Archive as a Photo Manager

Step 4: Build Your Client's Archive as a Photo Manager

This is step 4 of the getting started guide for Photo Managers. Read on to learn how to build your client's archive, or use the navigation links below to navigate to other steps in this guide.
  1. Introduction
  2. Step 1: Creating Your Account
  3. Step 2: Creating and Managing Your Clients' Archives
  4. Step 3: Manage Storage and Payments on Permanent.org
  5. Step 4: Build Your Client's Archive
  6. Step 5: Hand Off Your Client's Archive


Building your client’s archive

Now that you have the archive set up and have decided how to manage payments and storage, you’re ready to start uploading materials to your client’s archive. Below are some tips and suggestions for building your clients’ archives. 

Uploading to the archive

Your Permanent.org archive functions similarly to other cloud storage services, with a few differences. You can upload files to the archive, then organize and describe them. You’ll notice, however, that your Permanent archive has a number of different workspaces on the left side of the screen where you can upload materials.

You can think of these workspaces as separate boxes of materials, and each workspace serves a different purpose on Permanent to ensure that you and your client can control who has access to different materials. 

The Private Files Workspace is a workspace where you can upload materials you only want accessible to people you have invited to join the archive. Viewers must have a Permanent.org account and be invited to join the archive. 

The Public Files Workspace is a workspace where you can upload materials that you want to publish to your archive’s Public Gallery page. These materials will be freely accessible to anyone without a Permanent.org account. You can learn more about your archive’s different workspaces in this article.

Idea
Which workspace should I use for my client’s materials?
That depends on how your client wants to share their archive. We’ll talk about that more in the Publishing section. For now, most members and photo managers choose to do their work in the Private Files Workspace at first, and then publish some or all of the materials when they’ve finished working.

There are three different ways to upload materials to Permanent:
  1. Upload button: There is an Upload button in both the Private and Public Workspaces. You can use the Upload button to select one or multiple files to upload to your Permanent archive.
  2. Drag and Drop: If you have many files, or you want to upload folders and files that you’ve already organized, you may wish to use the Drag and Drop feature instead. To start an upload, click on a file or folder in its location on your device and drag it into your browser into the Permanent workspace you want to upload it to. When you release your mouse, the upload will begin.
  3. SFTP: Our SFTP feature allows you to use the command line or a SFTP client to sync large numbers of files from your device to your Permanent archive. This is a good choice if you have multiple gigabytes of materials you need to upload. You can learn more about SFTP here.
As you are uploading, you can see how much storage you have available by viewing your storage bar in your account menu (or, if you have an Archive Payer on the account, in the archive menu on the left side of your screen).

Organizing the archive

Organizing the archive is similar to how you might organize files on your computer. You can create as many folders as you’d like (even folders within folders) to organize your client’s materials. 

You can use the New Folder button to create new folders, and you can move materials around by clicking and dragging or using the Move and Copy functions when you select a file or folder. Learn more about organizing an archive here.

Describing the archive

There are a number of ways that you can describe your client’s archive and the materials within it. The first two ways are the record metadata and the folder metadata. Permanent has a number of metadata fields available to help you tell the story of your client’s materials:
  1. Title: the title of the item. By default, this is the filename of the file. This field is used in search results.
  2. Description: an open text field where you can describe the item. This field is used in search results.
  3. Alt Text: a brief description of the visual information in the record, used by screen readers for viewers who may not be able to see the record. By default, this is the title of the file unless changed.
  4. Keywords: individual words or phrases (like tags) that you can use to group like items together across the archive. You can add as many keywords as you’d like to an item. This field is used in search results.
  5. Date: The date depicted in the record. By default, this may be the creation date of the file itself, so make sure you edit it if that date is incorrect.
  6. Location: The location depicted in the record. By default, this field is blank unless that information is available in the embedded metadata for the record.

If you find that there are additional metadata fields you’d like to add to a record, you can do so with our Custom Metadata feature. Custom Metadata allows you to add a new metadata field and its value to a record. Learn more about Custom Metadata here.

The final way to describe your client’s archive is through the Archive Profile. The Archive Profile is a high level summary of the contents of the archive. It allows you to give an overview of what people might expect to find in your client’s archive and provide some additional context about the person, group, or organization the archive is about. The Archive Profile is also part of your archive’s Public Gallery Page, as it is an essential way for viewers who may not know anything about the subject of the archive to learn more about the subject of the archive. Learn more about the Archive Profile here.

Idea
Should I fill out the archive profile even if the archive won’t be public?
Yes, we recommend filling out the archive profile even if you and your client do not plan on publishing any materials from the archive. The archive profile is available to anyone who has access to the archive and can still provide important context for the archive. In addition, your client may decide in the future that they want to publish part or all of their archive, and the archive profile will help viewers understand the stories in the archive.

If you embed metadata in your files before sending them to your client or uploading them to the Permanent archive, Permanent does try to read that information and translate it to a Permanent metadata field when possible. You can learn more about how Permanent reads embedded metadata here.

Publishing the archive

Publishing materials on Permanent.org makes them publicly available on your Public Gallery Page. This means that the materials will be available to anyone on the internet without a Permanent.org login and records may show up in search engine results. Any files located within your Public Files Workspace in your archive are available on your archive’s Public Gallery Page.

You should talk to your client about how they’d like to use the materials in their archive and whether they feel comfortable with certain materials being publicly available before you decide to publish any materials from the archive. Below are a few questions you may want to ask your client to determine if you should publish any or all of their archive:
  1. Does the material I’m working with contain any sensitive information, such as personally identifiable information of living people or stories that some may not wish to be published? If so, you and your client may not want to publish this material or may want to edit the information available in the public copy.
  2. Who do you want to share this archive with? Will they be comfortable creating a Permanent.org account to access the material? If the materials do not have any privacy concerns and the client wants to share their archive with people who do not want to create Permanent accounts, you may want to publish the materials in the archive. This way, your client only needs to share the public link to the archive and their loved ones will be able to see it.
  3. Have you discussed with those who may be affected by these materials about the implications of publishing this material? People depicted in the materials or the loved ones of people depicted in the materials may not wish to have the information publicly available.
  4. Are there parts of the archive that you would feel comfortable sharing publicly? You do not need to publish all materials in an archive. You can select which materials you want to publish and which you’d like to keep private, and you can change your mind at any time.

There are a number of different ways you can publish materials in your archive. You can learn more about how to publish in this support article.

Setting up a legacy plan for the archive

Now that you have completed building your client’s archive, it’s important to consider helping your client set up a Legacy Plan for the archive. A Legacy Plan is a set of instructions for what should happen to a Permanent member’s account and archive when they have passed or when they are unable to maintain their account and archives. Legacy Planning ensures that your hard work and your clients’ stories are passed down to the next generation.

A Legacy Plan on Permanent consists of two parts: setting a Legacy Contact for your account, and setting an Archive Steward for your archives. 

Because you must set a Legacy Contact for your account before you can set any archive stewards, it is best to assist your client in setting these up. Below are links for instructions for setting up a Legacy Plan and some helpful advice and questions you may want to talk to your client about to help them choose a Legacy Contact and Archive Steward:
  1. What is Legacy Planning?
  2. How to assign a legacy contact for your account
  3. How to assign an archive steward
  4. What’s the difference between a legacy contact and an archive steward?
  5. How to choose an Archive Steward (helpful to show or discuss with your client)
  6. How to start a conversation with your Archive Steward (helpful to show or discuss with your client)
  7. For Legacy Contacts (your client can send this information to their Legacy Contact)
  8. For Archive Stewards (your client can send this information to their Archive Steward)


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