Page 366 - Green - Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook. 2nd ed

Chapter 12: Artifact Photography 345
folder. It was occasionally possible that the images would fall into more than one subject, so each subject or group was placed in a folder with a six- figure date-prefix (YYMMDD) and the subject. Where the subject falls into a broad category then the digital image folder can be placed in this sub- folder. This enables people to see very quickly what the subjects are and go directly to the images. It is also useful to put the suffix UW where images are underwater images. The images can be left with just the autonaming system of the camera (that is usually the month and day and a cumulative number for that day). It is essential, however, that when a group of images is put on the server a short Word document is created explaining what the images are, who took them (particularly important for crediting), when, why, etc. (This is called the folder description file or metadata.)
For digital images taken by non-museum staff, these go in the non- museum images folder with some indicator of the source of the images in the folder description file together with any copyright and reproduction restrictions. Scans are a even more difficult to store as they generally do not come in large numbers and are not date related. Usually they are simply given a title with the main subject as the start of the file name.
When the file is digital images of artifacts, the images need to be named with the registration number of the object and stored in an artifact image file. This file is used as part of the artifact database system which then calls up these images as part of the operation.