Using the family archive

1. Accept your invitation

Peter or Sue can send you an invitation email. Follow its instructions to join using the invited email address and choose a password of at least 12 characters. If you are given a one-time invitation code instead, enter it on the join page with that email address.

The code expires after 14 days and can only be used once. Do not pass it to anyone else.

2. Log in safely

Use your own email address and password. Select “Keep me logged in” only on a private device. Log out when using a shared computer.

To replace your password, open Security, confirm your current password, then use Change your password. If you cannot log in or believe somebody else knows your password, contact Peter or Sue rather than creating another account.

3. Protect your account

Two-factor authentication is compulsory for administrators and optional for everyone else. Open Security, scan the QR code with an authenticator app, confirm the six-digit code, and store the recovery codes somewhere safe.

A recovery code can be used once if your authenticator is unavailable. Never store the codes beside your password or share an authenticator code with anyone.

4. Add material carefully

People, photographs and physical Items can now be catalogued. Upload JPEG, PNG or WebP images as Photos. Use Add document/scan to choose an existing physical letter, certificate or other Item and attach its PDF, or create the physical document first. Every upload remains unavailable until its security scan succeeds.

• Use the clearest original file available; avoid screenshots when the original exists.
• Record who supplied or uploaded it and where the original is held.
• Add names, approximate dates, places, topics and a useful description.
• An owner is someone who owned the original, a recipient is who it was originally for, and a custodian is someone who physically looked after it. “Who has the original now?” means exactly that and does not necessarily mean its owner.
• For a scanned letter, certificate or document, these answers describe the paper original rather than the uploaded PDF.
• Choose whether each group of connected people is confirmed, probable, unverified or disputed.
• Mark uncertain information as uncertain rather than turning a family story into a fact.
• Credit photographers, authors, collections and external sources wherever known.

5. Connect people and evidence

People have permanent records connected through direct parent-child and marriage or partnership links. Relationships such as siblings are worked out from those direct facts rather than being entered again. An archive item may relate to several people, places or events.

An event records something that happened. A collection groups things with a shared connection. One record can belong to several events and collections without being uploaded again.

• Passing-out parade, 1984: create an event, connect the person who took part, and select the photographs, programme or certificate. Choose Year only and enter 1984 if you do not know the full date; leave Known date blank.
• Congo collection: create a collection and select the statue, its photographs, the tropical medicine book and relevant documents. Explain what brings them together.
• A statue presentation: record who gave and received it on the event. That event can also belong to the Congo collection.

After saving a photograph, item or document, choose Connect to events or collections. Tick an existing event or collection and choose Save connections. Check existing entries before creating another. On an event, use Add to a collection. To connect a PDF, use the document record that holds its scan.

Administrators and curators can organise all material. Contributors can connect their own material, edit their own events and collections, and add their records to visible collections. If an event is not offered, ask Peter or Sue to make the connection. Viewers can browse but cannot change connections.

Opening an event shows its people, photographs, items and documents. Opening a collection shows its selected material and events. These connections also appear back on each record. Adding an event to a collection does not automatically add all the event’s material: select those records separately when wanted.

Use Timeline to browse recorded events from earliest to latest. A person’s profile also links to their event timeline. Dates recorded only as a year stay as a year, and undated events appear last. Births and deaths remain on the person’s profile.

Unticking a connection removes the link, never the original record or scan. Changes are recorded in the audit trail. If someone else changes the connections while you are editing, reload and review their changes before saving.

Collections preserve each record’s access rules. Private collections are visible to their creator, administrators and curators. Private material must be connected to private events and collections; grouping material never makes it public.

Bulk upload

Use Add → Bulk upload when photographs, slides, letters or documents share useful information. Choose whether to create a new collection or Add to an existing collection. This lets you return later to scan another bundle into “Letters from Fred” without changing that collection’s name, description or privacy.

1. Choose Photographs or slides, or Letters or documents. For documents, say whether each one is a letter, certificate, diary, postcard or another kind of record.
2. Choose the collection. Add only information that is true of every file in this batch. Shared dates and descriptions are optional. If everything belongs to one place, select it and then say how the material is connected to it; otherwise leave No single shared place selected.
3. Choose Continue to choose files, then select the whole batch. The browser sends each file separately into quarantine rather than making one oversized request.

Every image becomes a separate Photo. Every physical letter or document becomes a separate Item with its own PDF scan; combine all pages of one letter into one PDF before uploading it. Only enter facts that apply to everything at the shared stage, then add people, recipients, precise places, titles or corrected dates individually where needed.

Opening the collection shows image thumbnails and PDF document cards. Select an image to open the protected full-size photograph, or select a PDF card to open the protected document viewer. The title beneath a card opens its catalogue details instead. The archive does not provide an ordinary document download action, although viewed material can never be made technically impossible to copy.

Detailed source citations, page references and fuller provenance workflows are planned. For now, describe what you know and keep uncertain connections marked unverified, probable or disputed.

6. Connect organisations, groups and places

An organisation or group is a regiment, school, employer, hospital, club or informal group. A place is a country, town, building, site or home. A hospital organisation and its building have separate records.

Check Browse → Organisations & groups or Browse → Places before adding a record. Search also checks other and historical names. If two different places genuinely share a name, the duplicate warning lets you confirm that they are distinct.

• For a person, open Places and organisations and choose Connect an organisation or group or Connect a place. Choose a role such as Served with, Worked for, Attended or Lived at.
• Add a start and end only when known. Enter 1984 or 14/07/1984; leave unknown ends blank. A blank end does not assert that membership or residence continues today.
• For an event, choose Where did it happen? when creating or editing it. Its Places and organisations section connects the organisation that organised it or was involved.
• For a photo, item or document, connect the relevant organisation or place and say whether it shows, mentions or is otherwise connected with it. A photograph’s location may be where it was taken or a place shown in it.
• Birth and death forms can also choose an existing place or add an unlisted name. For places, record the larger place they sit inside: a building inside a town, for example. Other and historical names stay on the same record when they refer to the same real place.

A parade can therefore connect its participant, regiment, barracks, photographs and programme. Open the regiment or barracks to see the visible connected records. A Congo collection remains a chosen grouping of material; the Congo place record describes the place itself.

Use Edit connection to correct the role, dates, confidence or supporting notes. Removal requires confirmation and keeps both records. Each person–organisation or person–place role currently has one recorded period; describe separate stints in the notes until multiple periods are supported.

Place and organisation records can be Family or Private. Each connected person or piece of material retains its own privacy. Exact current storage instructions for objects belong in their restricted storage field, not a place’s address.

7. Respect living people

The archive is invitation-only, but private information still deserves care. Avoid uploading sensitive medical, financial or identifying material unless there is a clear reason and suitable permission.

A Family person record is visible to every active signed-in archive member. A Private person record is visible only to administrators, curators and that person’s own linked account.

Do not copy material out of the archive or publish images of living people without considering their wishes.