Photos & Documents
Put the family material at the centre.
Photographs, albums, letters, scanned records and other documents are the core of a JFA archive. People and genealogy give that material context.
Photographs
A photograph in JFA is more than an uploaded image. It can be described, connected to people, placed in albums and presented as part of the family archive.
When adding or editing photographs, use the descriptive information you actually know. A useful archive does not require every field to be filled in before a photograph can be preserved.
Start with the material you value most.
A smaller, well-described collection is often more useful than importing thousands of files before the people and context around them have been identified.
Who is actually in the photograph?
JFA distinguishes between people who are visibly pictured and people who are related to the photograph in some other way.
Pictured
People in the photograph
Use this for people who can actually be seen in the image.
These connections are used when JFA builds person-oriented photograph views and galleries.
People connected to the photograph
Use this when a person is important to the context but is not actually visible in the image.
For example, a photograph of a house may be related to the family who lived there even if none of them appear in the picture.
If someone is pictured, mark them as pictured.
The pictured relationship takes precedence. There is normally no need to mark the same person as both pictured and merely related.
Finding people while tagging material
Person selectors in JFA are searchable. Start typing a name to narrow the list instead of scrolling manually through every person in the archive.
This is available in the main photograph workflows and in album-related person selection, making the interface practical even when the archive contains many people.
Albums
Albums let you create meaningful groups of photographs without changing the underlying photograph records.
GROUP
Build a collection
Create albums around an event, place, branch of the family, period or any other useful theme.
ORDER
Control the sequence
Arrange album photographs in the order that best tells the story rather than relying only on upload dates.
CONNECT
Keep people connected
Album workflows can reuse the same person information that connects individual photographs to the family archive.
Documents and scanned material
JFA document entries are intended for letters, records, scanned documents, PDFs and similar archive material that benefits from a description and family context.
A document entry can contain one file or several parts. The archive entry provides the shared description while the files remain the actual preserved material.
One file
A single document
A single PDF or other supported file can be presented directly as the document material.
Several files
A multi-part document
Multiple scans or files can belong to one archive document while remaining individually viewable as parts.
PDF and multi-file downloads
Download behaviour depends on how the document is constructed.
Single PDF
A document consisting of one PDF can offer that PDF directly.
Several files
A document containing several files can be downloaded together as a ZIP package.
Individual parts
Parts are primarily presented for browsing inside the document rather than as a separate download system for every part.
Describe the document, not just the file
A filename such as scan0042.pdf tells future readers almost nothing. Use the archive entry to describe what the material is and why it matters.
- Give the document a meaningful title.
- Add a description or summary of the contents.
- Record relevant dates and places when known.
- Connect the material to the people it concerns.
- Record provenance and rights information when available.
Sources and provenance
JFA includes optional provenance fields so important source information can travel with the archive material instead of being lost in personal notes.
Original URL
Record where digital material originally came from when an online source exists.
Creator
Record the photographer, author or other known creator.
Institution
Record an archive, library, museum or other institution associated with the source.
Rights
Keep available copyright, licence or other rights information with the material.
Digitized by
Record who scanned or digitized the physical material when that history matters.
Shared by
Keep track of the relative or other person who contributed the digital copy when appropriate.
Unknown is better than invented.
Provenance fields are optional. Leave information empty when it is not known rather than turning an assumption into archive metadata that may later be mistaken for fact.
A practical workflow
1
Preserve the file
Add the photograph or document to JFA before contextual details are forgotten.
2
Describe what you know
Add a useful title, description, dates, places and provenance without guessing at missing information.
3
Connect the people
Identify people who are pictured and separately add people who belong only to the wider context.
4
Organize when useful
Add photographs to albums and keep related document parts together when that improves how the material is explored.
5
Review the frontend
Look at the material as a relative would see it and check that the connections and descriptions make sense outside the administration interface.
Private files
Family photographs and documents may contain information that should not be exposed through ordinary public upload URLs. JFA includes a private-media layer for protected archive files.
The details of private storage, access checks and protected delivery are covered separately.
Privacy & Private Media →
Understand how JFA keeps private archive files behind controlled delivery instead of ordinary public media URLs.