People and open questions
Two sheets for captioning: the people who appear in your photos, with how they are related and who identified them, and the questions you cannot answer yet, with who might know.
Optional on a first pass for most libraries: captions can live in the photos themselves. These sheets become essential when the names come from someone else's memory, or when a caption might not survive an export: the people sheet records who identified each person, and the questions sheet keeps what nobody knows yet. They are the sheets Dates, captions and people fills.
People
One row per person who appears in the photos. Years can be estimates ("about 1940 to 2011"). Who identified them matters: a name from memory is that person's memory.
Open questions
One row per thing you do not know about a photo. Leave the answer blank until someone gives one, and write who did.
How to use these sheets
- One row per person, one row per question. A person who appears in two hundred photos is one row; a photo with three unknowns can be three questions.
- Write who said it. A name a relative gives is that relative's memory; the "who identified them" and "who answered" columns keep it that way.
- Estimates are allowed and labeled. Write "about 1965", "1960s" or "before 1970", the way archivists write uncertain dates; leave a question open rather than guess.
- Names of living people stay private. These sheets live in this browser and in files you export. The share link carries your setup only.
The example rows are from Ruth Feldman (fictional). Her cousin Miriam Katz named three of the five people in the 1971 beach photos by phone; Miriam is on the people sheet with "Ruth" as the person who identified her, and the two people nobody has named stay on the questions sheet with who might know.
The sheets record what people told you; they cannot confirm it. A date worked out from clues is an estimate and is written as one. Whether a caption typed in an app travels with an exported photo depends on the app; the export test in Dates, captions and people settles it for yours.