Overview

This document provided guidelines on the naming of files for submission to SCOLR.
Please contact SCOLR staff if you have any questions.

Quick Examples

Type of Work	Name of File
Text with single author	Smith_John_2015
Text with multiple authors	Smith_John_et_al_2015
Text with Agency/Organization as author	Ministry_Environment_2015
Image	Smith_John_img001 OR History_Collection_img001
Audio	Smith_John_clip001 OR History_ Kootenays_clip001
Video	Smith_John_clip001 OR History_ Kootenays_clip001

General Principles

File names in SCOLR should

• be unique
• have less than 50 characters
• omit “stop words”: a, an, the, if, of ,for, etc.
• have no spaces
• use letter, numbers and the underscore (_) or dash (-) only
• use the underscore to separate words and the dash to separate numbers

Most works should be saved using the creators name in the format LastName_FirstName followed by the year of creation or publication. If the creator has multiple works from the same year additional information should be added to differentiate; either with month and day of creation or short form of title (ex. Smith_John_2015-06-30 or Smith_John_History_Kootenays).

If a work has multiple authors or creators save using the first person listed with “et_al” following

Works that form a series such as photos or interviews should be named using the creators name in the format LastName_FirstName followed by a sequential number (see example above). In the event that the creator is unknown a title may be used instead.

Files may be renamed based on an accession number, particularly those related to the archives.