This summer, I had the opportunity to work with Madison County’s Public Information Office (PIO) to create a file organization system and archive for their collection of county photographs. PIO staff are responsible for sharing and presenting any news and updates from the Madison County government to local residents. This includes all press releases, social media posts, and proofreading any county department’s shared content. PIO staff strive to ensure that anything released by the county is accessible, easily conveys important information, and portrays the county in a welcoming, positive light.
PIO staff travel across Madison County taking photographs of any local events or vistas that they want to be advertised to the public or used in a social media post. This systematic collection built over the years has provided them with a way to have a photograph for almost every occasion. If there’s inclement weather or road work being done, the PIO will have a photograph of somewhere in the county which can be used in conjunction with a release or post that can convey what needs to be communicated with the public. It’s difficult to fully realize how much information is sent out by the county on a daily basis under a time crunch. If a road is closed or the Department of Health has a vaccine clinic coming up, PIO has to be ready to send out a slew of posts across several different platforms that all have to get the same message across under different constraints.
The need for PIO staff to be able to share this information with the public in a timely manner means that they need quick and easy access to their photographs, but PIO houses tens of thousands of images, and without a clear organizational system, any difficulty in finding the correct photograph meant a delay in important public outreach. I spent the summer creating a system of photo organization that was tailored specifically for the staff of the PIO’s needs. Photographs were sorted by various categories unique to each county department, event, or location, and within those folders they were given metadata tags that give insight into what each photograph depicts, and what kind of post it might be useful for. This cuts down a significant amount of time it takes for members of the PIO office to find the right photos for the right moment.
As a History and Native American Studies double major, a lot of my time is spent looking through sources and archives from decades or centuries ago that have been collected, preserved, and organized. I thought about this a lot whenever I was out taking photographs at different county sites, and then as I went through photographs and decided which ones to keep and delete for PIO’s purposes. I thought about how tailored our own collection of photographs are, and how it is easy to think that what I look at can be all encompassing, but this summer has really made me understand just how hard that is to do. I also want to thank all Ryan and Sam of the Public Information Office for being such fantastic people to work with!