Name Drop

Not every photograph that is cared for by an archive has complete information about who or what is in the photograph. Many times the archive isn't sure about where or when a photograph was taken.

You can use Name Drop to try to help us learn more about the details of the photographs that we care for.

This section of the website gives you some fields where you can use personal and community knowledge, and maybe even your historical detective skills, to fill in any information that you have about the archival photographs that you see here.

Name Drop Tips

• You don’t need to sign in, but doing so will help you retrieve input you might want to go back to.
• Save your work frequently – every 15 minutes – if you don’t save before you navigate away from the page, your work will be lost!
• Study the image, zoom in and see the detail and read the caption to see what clues you can discover for the image you’re working on.
• Tap into your community knowledge and share it with us. Can you name people? Streets? Buildings? Events? Clues in the image (like style of cars and clothes, visible signage, street names) can help you guess at details like the decade the photo was taken.
• If you choose to list what you see, separate multiple words or phrases with a comma.
• Look at more images in the provided collection and see if there are identified elements that might help in understanding the one you are working on.
• You can choose up to 3 themes from the pull-down menus. These use standard language and will help us with sorting and allow for better searching and accessibility.
• You can enter a more specific location that can be found on Google Maps.
• You can choose a county from the pull-down menu.
• Contact us or join the discussion on Facebook — ask others if you get stuck on a detail, find something interesting or have a tip to share with us.

FAQs

Q: Do I have to register?
A: No, registration is not required. You may use your name but it is not mandatory. If you enter your name you will be able to search for images you've been working on. Our system will not track you nor contact you. You can simply skip login but you won't easily be able to find the images you work on.

Q: I’m stuck! What do I do?
A: Invite the “crowd” to help you. Join the discussion on Facebook and help each other. Contact us and we’ll try to help too.

Q: What happens to finished images? 
A: Input given by ‘Name Droppers’, once reviewed, will be downloaded and added to online collections at //archives.novascotia.ca/virtual/. This will enhance searching by words, dates and locations and allow our collections to be more accessible to a wider audience.

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