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File Naming Conventions Recommended Practice When creating digital objects, be sure to use a consistent, machine-readable file naming convention. Document your best practice policy for naming digital files and save that documentation with your project files. Characters The characters in the file name should only be as follows: · alphanumeric characters (a-z, 0-9) · underscores and hyphens (no spaces, periods, ampersands, slashes, commas, etc.). · lower case lettering or camel case capitalization (e.g. camelCase, fileName, etc.) · no more than 32 characters long (not including file type extension) Structure The structure of the file name should be easy to interpret for any user. Include the following: · contributing organizational ID (optional) · collection name (optional) · file creation date · file number Organization ID / Collection ID If one organization is digitizing only its own collection, it will suffice to identify the collection in the file name; if multiple organizations are contributing to a collection, the organizational ID will be a crucial component of the file name. If it is deemed necessary, both can be included in the file name (being cautious about the 32 character limit) Organization ID Use acronyms to identify the contributing organization name: · Hazelwood Community Museum & Archives = HCMA If two organizations have a similar name, define them by expanding one the two main organizational names, e.g.: · Hazelwood Community Museum & Archives = HCMA · Halliday Community Museum & Archives = HalCMA Jess Posgate NamingConventions v.4 June 2012