Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Archiving Tips?

[Jodi Allison-Bunnell (jodi]

Chiming in as one of those unhelpful archivists. ;-)

I concur with using Google Drive as Lauren suggests. But there’s an important 
point on that: It should be Google Drive for the organization, not someone’s 
personal drive. Otherwise, all of the organization’s permanent records can be 
lost when a person leaves the organization. 

As Lauren also suggests, Drive makes everything keyword searchable. Although 
file structures and naming conventions are important, the approach that 
individuals use will vary by personal style. 

Bozeman Cohousing pays $6/month for a business account with a single admin 
account. While our focus is more on sharing and editing documents in the 
present, it will serve nicely as a long-term repository so long as the humans 
remember to pay attention. (This is the single weakest link in any approach; 
the humans have to remember year to year.)

Good luck with this important work!

Best, Jodi

> On Feb 22, 2025, at 8:23 AM, Lauren Lake <laurenlake161 [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Nicole,
> 
> I’m happy to chat in more detail if you like.
> 
> Broadly speaking, our documents are in a Google Drive held by an account
> used only for this purpose. Each Circle has a folder, with subfolders for
> agendas, minutes, and other projects. In addition, we have an Orientation
> folder, a Policies folder, and a folder that holds references and
> inventories.
> 
> Because all of this is in Google Drive, it can be searched by keyword, so
> it’s not as critical that everything be filed in the perfect place.
> 
> The only naming convention we use is for agendas and minutes, which
> includes the name of the Circle, the date of the meeting, and an A or M for
> agenda vs minutes (e.g.  M_FRC_2024-02-22 is the Finance Records and
> Compliance Circle’s minutes for a meeting held today).
> 
> We also have a records retention policy that we use to do annual cleanups
> to get rid of outdated/incorrect information.
> 
> Lauren Lake
> Green Grove Cohousing
> 
> On Sat, Feb 22, 2025 at 5:51 AM Nicole Daddio <daddiollc [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
>> Hi all!
>> 
>> I'm helping scan and label documents at my cohousing community.  Would love
>> ideas on categorization, including *sub-categories or being able to follow
>> threads of hot-topics through the ages.*
>> 
>> Folks are worried that info won't be found easily which is kind of the
>> entire point.  Meanwhile, multiple archivists have been unhelpful.  My
>> current idea is to make uploaded pages searchable, to have broad categories
>> of folders to put documents, and to have each document have a long title
>> with a date and all its subtopics for easier reference.
>> 
>> Does anyone who's tried archiving on this scale have tips?
>> 
>> Nicole Daddio
>> (757) 375-0512
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
>> http://L.cohousing.org/info
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info
> 
> 
>