You may have one or many collections, intentional collections and accidental collections. Part of the fun of collecting is keeping track of it: Knowing what you have and what you’re still hunting for, what is sentimental vs. valuable, and what is okay to sell some day versus you’d prefer to pass down to someone special.
We know a thing or to about accidental collections. Try out our free checklist available here.
If you were a professional archivist, librarian, or appraiser, you’d have a ready tool in your pocket to help manage your collections. It’s called a finding aid. But guess what? As you Artifct your collections, you are implicitly leveraging the best of finding aids, but in a friendly form that all can enjoy and benefit from.
Here’s your peek inside the world of archivists where we show you how finding aids and collection management are made easy and meaningful with Artifcts!
What Is a Finding Aid, and Why Should You Care?
Unless you are a collections professional (archivist, librarian, appraiser…), the concept of a finding aid is likely foreign to you. For the longest time at Artifcts we even mistakenly referred to them as finding keys. Oops!
A finding aid is exactly what it sounds like: A tool that helps you locate items within a large collection in a fast and efficient way. A finding aid is a guide that describes the contents of an archival collection. A well-designed finding aid makes quick work of determining the topical relevance of any collection. After all, what good is a collection if discoverability hinders locating and using elements within the collection in the future.
Many of us have experienced the feelings of dread and being overwhelmed upon contemplating many boxes of inherited items that probably have something important contained in them but what and where? Imagine if you had a finding aid that told you exactly what was important and where you could locate it!
This is the magic of what finding aids do.
To a large degree, information within a finding aid is standardized per guidelines from the Society of American Archivists, “Describing Archives: A Content Standard,” better known simply as DACS. Standardization means a professional could work with or for any gallery, library, archive, or museum (aka GLAM) and their collections without much difficulty. They might simply display the information differently than one’s accustomed to.
A finding aid would have information such as: reference code, title, date, extent, name of creator, description, dates, and location. Does that list look familiar? If you Artifct, it should…
For those of us who didn’t go to Library Science school, in our daily lives we probably do not want to think about taxonomies, metadata, bytes of storage, or even finding aids. We want to enjoy and share the meaning behind the items we’ve collected and ensure the stories and value behind them live on!
Enter Artifcts: Solving Age Old Problems of Finding Aids for Every-Day Collectors
What we created at Artifcts is the solution to several age-old problems of finding aids in an individual and family-friendly fashion. And this means great things for you all! While finding aids are brilliant tools for professionals, they are disconnected from how most of us describe and catalog the ‘why’ of our collections. We need more multitasking support in our lives.
Here’s how you can use Artifcts to preserve the history and the value of your collections beyond the constraints of traditional finding aids.
Use those QR codes.
If you were to work with a professional appraiser, archivist, or collections manager of any type, they will likely offer as part of their services a description of the collection and list organizing the inventory within your collection, a finding aid of some sort. But how do you link that list to your physical collection? At Artifcts, you can print a QR code or use Artifcts QR code stickers to link the physical and the digital.
An Artifcts QR code unlocks the story and value!
Record your stories.
Move beyond “scope notes” and “meta data” inherent to the archivist’s expertise – “This is a 19th-century {name of item}” – and breathe life, context, and personal meaning into the objects in your collection, e.g. “This is what Great Great Grandma brought from France when she moved to New York. And I’m giving it to you now.”
Artifcts offers the options to share your story, indicate what you want to do with items in the future, and supply critical other information like where on earth you’ve stored the item in your home or elsewhere and the supporting documents (receipts, appraisals, and more).
Connect the dots.
We typically describe each Artifct you create as connecting the dots, because only you know how photos of those specific items relate to shape a story or history. But we help you go a step further, too. You can use our @ feature to cross reference one Artifct with another, tying together pieces of a collection and pieces of a story that others may not otherwise realize relate.
Simply type @ as you add the story or description to your Artifct to link to other Artifcts.
Leverage your community.
Let’s not forget the value in sharing and collaboration to learn more about items in your collections. Through Artifcts Circles and the option to give ‘Edit’ permission to other paid Artifcts members, you can crowdsource information from your loved ones and experts alike to capture important details about your collections that may add historical and family history information as well as increase the value, too.
Preserve what is.
Add the photos, videos, and original documents you have to your Artifcts. There’s a spot dedicated to securely preserve each as is. No compression. No conversion. What you upload is what you can always download again, too.
In our spring 2024 series finale of Evenings with Artifcts, our expert guests shed light on the 'why' and 'what' of collections.
Ensure that if you work with an appraiser or other collections manager in the future, they provide documentary support through Artifcts, so that you can protect and share the value of your collections with friends and family as well as knock off those “to dos” with your insurance company, financial planner, and estate attorney.
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You may also be interested in these ARTIcles by Artifcts:
Fall is here and with it comes everything pumpkin spice, cooler nights, and the return of Evenings with Artifcts! This fall our 5-part series is centered on interactive workshops that allow YOU, our Arti Community members, to follow along with us as we delve into the details of how to Artifct photos, ephemera, and everything baby, just to name a few.
No guilt tripping or extreme minimalism hacks here. We'll talk frameworks to tackle the sentimental clutter and photos, and invite you to take a fresh look at your legacy and life stories through the lens of Artifcts. We'll highlight key features and time-saving tips and provide you plenty of time to follow-along at home as you capture, preserve, and share YOUR story, YOUR memories, one object at a time.
Mark your calendars for Wednesday evenings at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET from October 16th through November 13th. Look for event and RSVP details each week in our e-newsletter and on our social media channels (Instagram and Facebook). And please share with friends, family, and others you meet. The more the merrier!
If you missed any of our past Evenings with Artifcts, catch up now!
Note to reader: If you're excited about the recipe pictured above in this article, you're in luck! It's Artifcted and available here for you along with a photo of the original baker herself so you can make these treats at home, too. Enjoy!
When I was a kid, the sweet smell of cherries would waft through the house as my mother cooked down Door County cherries to transform them into all things delicious. My favorite was cherry jam, hands down. A sweet but tart treat on crepes, toast, and pancakes.
The physical artifacts of jam are many. Photos of our family out picking the cherries. Cookbooks and recipe cards, pots and slotted ladles. And of course, cherry juice-stained shirts, reused year after year while pitting the cherries.
While the ambition of passing down these traditions, cookbooks, pots, and so on, is a touching and earth-friendly one, reality suggests we need an alternative. Tight living spaces, our more nomadic lifestyles, and the fact that only person can inherit that item, when maybe 3, 4, or 5 of you want it, means going digital helps ensure your culinary traditions live on and can be shared with all.
Recipes are so much more than just food as are the cookbooks that contain them. Each has the ability to capture personal culinary histories and social histories, too! Check out this fascinating presentation from Evenings with Artifcts when material culture specialist Gena Philibert-Ortega joined us to talk all things cookbooks.
Start Your Ovens and Your Artifcting
This holiday season, as you set out to reenact old traditions and create new, keep your Artifcting habit front of mind so you can capture those moments and the details to recreate them long into the future. Here are holiday-ready Artifcting tips for all things culinary:
Supplies and tools. You might think taking pictures of the supplies is senseless, but exactly WHICH brand did your uncle always use? And when Grandma said a cup, did she mean a 1 cup measurement, or did she use her favorite “cup?” When it came to this grandmother’s biscuits, it was most assuredly the latter! If you’re aiming for more predictable results like her granddaughter, Artifct those tools, too!
The real recipe. There’s the recipe that’s written down—and how we love seeing the recipe in someone’s original handwriting—and then there’s the recipe as it is actually made. If you can, participate in the making this year and take notes to compare with the current recipe of record. Artifct a recipe that includes all the details, making it less stressful to recreate next year.
Tricky steps, strange consistencies. If there is some art in the making, a short video or even a picture can help. I tried to capture just that in this Artifct because as a novice baker I was incredibly unsure that the consistency of my dough was right.
CLICK THE IMAGE to view the Artifct and recipe!
The end result. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we know, we know, but capturing a beautiful photo of the completed recipe to feature in your Artifct will entice family and friends to check out the recipe. And isn’t that the goal? You want them to check it out and bring it into their kitchens, too.
BONUS! If you ever publish your Artifcts to a custom holiday book or cookbook, you’ll have the great picture you’ll want to feature with the recipe and its story.
This is definitely an eye-catching pic! CLICK THE IMAGE to view the Artifct and the recipe.
Make Artifcting a New Family Holiday Tradition
Artifcting your holiday traditions is fun and easy and by design draws in people of all ages.
If you’re reading this as you are nearly ready to sit down for your holiday meal, consider grabbing a stack of notecards or a blank book and passing it around. Gather favorite recipes, in their handwriting, to Artifct and share after the day.
Getting ready ahead of time? Make Artifcting easier for all to enjoy by taking a few minutes before the holiday to create an invite-only circle on Artifcts—our co-founder Heather does this ahead of every holiday meal hosted at home. Invite to your circle your brother, sister, parents, neighbors, and all others joining you for the holiday. Encourage them to share their recipes, holiday décor, and “best of” pics from the day with the circle to easily relive and enjoy for years to come.
Creating a circle is fast and easy. Watch our video or follow these steps:
Sign in on Artifcts.com.
Go to the plus (+) menu in the top banner.
Choose "Create a circle." You'll have options to add an image for the circle, name it, and add a description.
You then have two options for inviting members.
Option 1: Continue by adding each member's Artifcts screenname or email address, and then send the group a custom note so they know why you've invited them.
Option 2: Save your circle without adding members, and then click to ceate your copy an invite link to send to everyone via email, text, or however else you prefer to reach them. Remember, to access circles you've created or have been invited to, go to your "Special Collections" in your top right menu.
We wish you happy Artifcting!
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For an extra dose of inspiration, sign in and download our culinary checklist for free!
Careful what you ask for. In his book “Stuffocation,” author James Wallman details how in the post-industrial revolution US economy of the 1920s and 1930s, there was too much of everything, everything produced by farmers to industrial machines. We overachieved! Rather than produce less, the goal became getting consumers to buy more, even if they had enough. Advertisers had to up their games.
The trick was how to get people to lose the “lasts a lifetime” expectation and develop a desire for the newest version, model, or edition that industry was now only too happy to churn out. The fashion industry already exemplified this and now the rest had to catch on, landfills be damned, and provide cheaper, disposable, fashionable everything.
Fast forward 100 years and the "buy more" concept has persisted and matured, leaving no industry untouched. Here are a few examples to get you thinking like the advertisers do.
GADGETS.
Millions regularly trade in their favorite gadget—whether a phone, tv, fitness tracker, or otherwise—for the next model the moment it’s released, waiting in line to ensure they are the earliest of adopters. And tech's just the obvious example.
COLORS!
Have you thought about why there are “colors of the year” and “of the season” that pop up in your feeds and inboxes, often with seasonally suggestive names, like “breezy blue?” All the companies fall in line with their similar version of the “it” blue of the season, until it’s suddenly a beautiful gem green and yet again you rethink your clothing and home decor choices.
DESIGN CONCEPTS.
Design concepts trend just like colors. Recently “glaze” has popped up on hot pink garments from Lulu Lemon and green frames from Framebridge. This is not to be outdone by “scalloped” edges on picture frames from Archival Methods, mirrors and tables from School House, and toilet paper from Charmin. Product and marketing experts know how to get modern buyers to buy.
MATCHING SETS AND COMPOSITIONS.
Here’s yet another reason to buy – sets. Whether that’s a matching clothing set or a gallery wall of frames, moving you to buy not one, not a set, but MORE all at once. I mean, the picture shows 10 frames make a gallery, so I guess I need one of each, right?
Maybe these tactics do not sway you. You have a certain style, and you stick to it. Timeless. Functional. You! What about ...
ENTICING DISCOUNTS.
... the sneaky “up to 30%” off offers? Have you fallen for those? You browse or click and nearly nothing you’re interested in is 30% off, just a tactically chosen few which you overlook as you accelerate through the checkout process because you are already there in the store or your credit card or other digital payment means is already available on your phone or laptop.
6 Strategies to Help You Muffle the Calls to Buy
We first published this story in honor of Earth Day and in recognition of our general philosophy here at Artifcts that you should stop and smell the roses more often when it comes to your ‘stuff’ to appreciate what you have and why you have it, we’ve curated some easy tactics you can use to halt more stuff from coming into your home. We're republishing it today so you can revisit these strategies before your holiday shopping begins and hopefully save some money and avoid being lured to buy 'stuff' you'll regret later. If nothing else, put #3 into action today!
1. Unsubscribe. (Yes, catalogs, too. Check out options). Have you heard of that movie from 80s, "See No Evil, Hear No Evil?" That's the idea. If you are not seeing those emails and notifications, you are so far ahead of the game. Worried you’ll miss a sale? Set a reminder to check back when you know they usually have sales. Or simply sign up again later if you truly miss seeing their emails.
2. Delete payment methods. Unless you are on a recurring payment plan that requires a purchase, delete and/or do not save any payment information anywhere. Make it inconvenient to make that purchase. You’ll have to get up out of your seat to get that credit card, giving you time to think again.
3. Work ahead for sales. You’re a deal hunter. Fabulous. So are we. Save items to your shopping cart weeks before that next big sale. In the US, big sales are like clockwork on major holidays. By preloading items to your cart, you have time to think on it. When you return weeks later you might discover that at least some of those items are not as “must have” as you first thought.
4. Visualize where it will go, where and when you will wear it. Maybe you love a beautiful, framed picture, a side table, a cool clock, a dazzling watch, or a “travels-beautifully” dress. Pause to think, where exactly will I hang this picture in my home? Where will this table fit? You already have a watch. Why do you need or want this one?
5. Keep savings goals front and center. Do you have debt to pay down? A big trip you’re dreaming about? What about ambitions for a lower stress summer with the kids in camps they’ll love? Keep photos of your goals around you. Track your savings each week. Or add to your savings each time you resist a purchase as a reward toward your goal, even if it’s only skipping that espresso. Whatever it takes for you, remember the thrill of that purchase might be short-lived compared to your still more thrilling goals.
6. Skip “{fill in the blank} math.” Here’s a recent example of this straight from our teenage daughters and their talk about “girl math.” Normally the swim tops and bottoms are individually $30 but there’s a buy one-get one sale. Dear daughter picked out a swim set and said, “Awesome, I have $30 more dollars to spend.” On something, anything, no idea what, but let’s go spend! Sigh.
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We feel better already, reminding ourselves of these strategies. We're not turning over a minimalist leaf or shaming anyone for enjoying a bit of shopping. But we do hope your buying does not lessen anything else in your life, from enjoying your home to taking those trips of a lifetime you save for and remember always.
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