After almost any research trip there remains the un-enviable job of labelling your haul of photos in some meaningful way. This task can take hours, as you carefully sort items and assign relevant references to each image (linking it back to the original item). Of course, photo management tools, like Tropy, are invaluable, allowing you to add metadata, create tags and record image rights. But at the end of the day Tropy does not change your images or their identifiers. Those random letters and figures allocated by your phone remain, making sharing and reuse outside of the Tropy environment difficult.

The project team has given this some thought and come up with a phone app that allows you to embed an archival reference in the image metadata. This flexible system allows you to use any form of reference and a repository code. You can add as many images of each document as required ( and allocate sub-numbering). File management software on your phone allows your research images to be uploaded to the cloud or retained locally for later download, according to your personal settings. And the embedded reference can be easily retrieved from the metadata for bulk file renaming, using a short piece of code.

The proto-type used in the Small Bills project has been commissioned for use by Prof Karen Harvey and her team on the Social Bodies project. The upgraded version incorporates features suggested by their specific project requirements.

This app is still in development so if you have any suggestions please contact us. Android versions are freely available for trial via the Google Play Store.