With NPS Focus you have the opportunity to create and preserve a digital information heritage for America's cultural and natural resources ... Now that's exciting.

But!! You're no expert at this and you have a ton of other things to do. ... That's frustrating.

Don't Agonize! Perfection is not required.

• If you can answer "yes" to question one below, you have done your job.
• If you can answer "yes" to question two, you have done a great job!

1. Have I covered the basics?

a) Look at the record you have created and ask yourself if five years from now, someone in another place whom you have never met will be able to find this record through a keyword search.

If you can't answer "yes" then add a little more info to the Title, Subject, Place, Time and/or Abstract fields.

b) And once they have found this record, will they generally understand what they are looking at, e.g. the content of image?

If you can't say "yes," add a little info to one of the fields above.

2. Have I covered all of the bases?

A very good parallel is to think of yourself sitting next to a friend and looking at their photo album. What are the usual questions people ask about a photo?

• Who is that? or What is that?
• Where was this picture taken?
• When was this?
• What are they doing?
• Why did you take a picture of that?

Your record is the surrogate for someone being able to ask you these questions directly.

Now look at your image and record. If someone asked your record these questions would they find their answers? If you can say "yes" then congratulate yourself. You have done a great job!

Additional Advice: Pay most attention to the fields that are used for searching (Title, Subject, Place, Time) and the field that is used for explaining (Abstract).