Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Archiving Tips?

[S N Martin (snmartin]

We are a new community and relatively small in comparison to most, but have
also been strategizing on how best to organize and archive our documents.
We too are using Google Drive as a repository and considered getting a
business account and using the Shared Drive functionality. Instead we ended
up using a "generic" Google account and regularly work at having that
account "own" all of the documents.

We have set up a bunch of blank documents, spreadsheets, slides, etc. owned
by the generic account. When someone needs to create a new document, they
can grab one  of those from the Blank Docs folder in our folder structure,
rename it, and move it to the appropriate folder to work with.

For those files already owned by someone's personal Gmail account, they can
request to transfer the ownership to the generic account. The generic
account receives notice of the request and can accept ownership of the
file.

Of course we have had and continue to have many files already created by
folks' personal accounts. You can pretty easily search for all files you
own within a directory and transfer ownership in bulk after selecting them.
Then someone with access to the generic Google account can accept ownership
of them. The generic account has full edit access to our folder structure
so it always shows up as an editor in the Share dialog, allowing it to be
selected to transfer ownership to.

A key search term for files that need to be transferred: "owner:me"
And the search term for the generic account to accept ownership:
"pendingowner:me"
I made a copy of the document we created to explain this process and have
obfuscated references to our generic account and our folder structure. I
hope it helps to explain the process:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UbB-XWioDyyqLtAy6nprRaAEjYehdpaxaKyfcmzy3XU/edit?usp=sharing

Note: This does not work if someone has created or uploaded a file using a
Google account in a different domain (other than an @gmail.com account in
this case). In these cases, the generic account has to make copies of those
files in order to own them. This loses the revision history, among
other disadvantages.

It's a little bit of a process, but it's been working so far.

Good luck!

Stan
Acorn Creek Community
https://acorncreek.org





On Sun, Feb 23, 2025 at 9:25 PM Jodi Allison-Bunnell <
jodi [at] allison-bunnell.net> wrote:

> 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
> >> _________________________________________________________________
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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
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