File Naming Conventions

File Name

File names for your images should include each of the following elements:

  1. Your team: A shorthand for the asset's owner, such as SEAS, Creative, etc.
  2. Date: YYYYMMDD, either the date of the event or the date the image was created
  3. Subject: Commencement, Orientation, Last-Day-of-Classes, Class-Day, etc.
  4. Detail: This can either be descriptive (Lastname-Firstname) or numerical (01, 02, 03)

Examples:

  • SEAS_20180123_Applied-Math-Colloquium_Tong-Jiajung
  • SEAS_20180328_Data-Science-Day_001

Punctuation

  • Between each element, use underscores. Do not add spaces.
  • Within an element, use hyphens.
  • Keep file name shorter than 50 characters
  • Use periods only in the file extension (.jpg)
  • Use only alphanumeric characters (A-Z), digits (0-9), hyphens, and underscores. Do not use any other characters. Special characters are good for strong passwords, but not for file names. Avoid > < ” / \ | ? * : ^ $.

Tags

Tags should describe the literal visible elements of an image.

  • What do you see? If it is not visible, use the Description field instead to add these.
  • Choose only the most important features, not everything
  • Focus on three elements:
    1. Type of photo (horizontal, landscape, portrait, illustration)
    2. Location (interior, exterior, campus, manhattanville)
    3. Person or object within (scientist, student, speaker, building, snow)

Description

  • Add a full sentence description of the image. Think of how you would caption the image for publication.
  • Briefly describe the image (who or what is in the image, where in the image) and provide context (event, date, place, etc.).

Example:

President Lee Bollinger (L) and Mike Sovern (R) at the book talk for Sovern's Improbable Life: My 60 Years at Columbia and Other Adventures in February 2014. 

Other Best Practices

  • For recurring events, group by date
  • Be descriptive: Names should let the user know enough about the content before opening the file. Use common or agreed terms to describe the contents.
  • Be clear: Be careful with abbreviations or acronyms that may not be clear to others. Use terms that are understood by all users.
  • Dates: For file names with dates to sort correctly, use year-month-date (YYYYMMDD).
  • Numbers: For names with numbers to sort correctly, use preceding 0s. For example, "01, 02, 10" will sort in order, whereas 1, 2, 10 will sort as 1, 10, 2.
  • Write it down: Make a list of agreed names, abbreviations, and acronyms for your team's agreed practices. What is your shared vocabulary? Think of this as a cheat sheet for anyone new joining the team:,the team shorthand at a glance.
  • Be consistent.