Case file05
Memory of a family house
A century of decisions, correspondence and know-how scattered among heirs. The engagement was to reunite them without betraying them.
- COGNITIVE HERITAGE
- FRANCE / MONACO / SWITZERLAND
- REFERENCE ON REQUEST
What the client entrusted to us
A family house held a century of memory: deliberations, business decisions, correspondence, photographs and orally transmitted technical know-how. The whole was spread among several heirs, kept in uneven conditions, with no inventory.
The risk was not only material loss. It was also loss of meaning: a document isolated from its context says nothing anymore, and unexplained know-how does not transmit.
The programme was run with AIGYROS — Cognitive Heritage, the group’s house devoted to memory and transmission. It was not about digitising a collection, but about building a heritage usable by future generations.
The starting point
What the diagnosis revealed.
Before any technical proposal, we write down the real state — including what unsettles. This description, validated by the teams, is what makes the rest verifiable.
- 01
Uninventoried collection
Nobody could say what the family held, or where each item was at any moment.
- 02
Fragile media
Acidic papers, silver photographs, magnetic media partly unreadable.
- 03
Scattered among heirs
Documents followed moves and successions, with no conservation or restitution rules.
- 04
Unwritten know-how
Precise technical gestures existed only in two people’s memory, with no written or recorded trace.
- 05
Lost contexts
Important decisions were documented by no explanatory note: date and author missing.
- 06
No access rules
Neither confidentiality perimeter nor consultation rules between family branches.
Constraints
What could not be compromised.
- 01
Family confidentiality
Some items were to be viewable only by part of the family, for a set duration.
- 02
Future readability
No proprietary format, no dependency on software that could vanish in ten years.
- 03
Respect for the document
No content retouching, no reframing, no rewriting: the item is kept as it is.
- 04
Transmitting meaning
Each item had to be replaced in context — date, author, subject, links to other items.
- 05
A long horizon
The system had to remain usable in thirty years, including without us and without our tools.
- 06
Governance
The family itself had to decide access and transmission rules, and be able to change them.
The AIGYROS answer
What we built.
The programme began with gathering: visiting conservation places, interviewing holders, reuniting scattered items. Each element was inventoried before digitisation — an undescribed collection is not a collection.
Digitisation followed conservation standards, with no content retouching. Know-how was recorded with the people holding it, then transcribed and captioned.
Structuring produced a stable tree, readable metadata and a context apparatus: who, when, what, and why this item matters. This layer is what allows finding, understanding and transmitting.
Protection rests on duplication: conservation copies, use copies, off-site backups, with a family governance charter defining access perimeters and transmission rules.
Conduct
Four stages, held in this order.
Stated durations are orders of conduct magnitude, never commitments: each engagement is recalibrated on its own ground.
- 01Collection phase, across several places
Gather
Visiting conservation places, interviewing holders, reuniting scattered items, condition report.
- Visiting conservation places
- Interviewing holders
- Reuniting scattered items
- Initial inventory and condition report
- 02Inventory phase
Describe
Item-by-item description, metadata, collection ranking and conservation tree.
- Item-by-item description
- Metadata: date, author, subject, place
- Collection ranking
- Conservation tree
- 03Digitisation phase
Preserve
Standards-compliant digitisation, know-how recording, interview transcription, quality control.
- Standards-compliant digitisation
- Know-how recording
- Interview transcription
- Image and sound quality control
- 04Governance phase
Transmit
Access and confidentiality charter, conservation and use copies, backups, handover to heirs.
- Access and confidentiality charter
- Conservation and use copies
- Off-site backups
- Handover to heirs with manual
What changes
Before, after — no showcase figures.
We do not publish improvement percentages: they cannot be verified from outside. What can be described, on the other hand, is the daily gesture that changes.
- Initial situationAfter the engagement
Initial situation: Uninventoried collection
After the engagement: Complete item-by-item inventory
Initial situation: Fragile media scattered among heirs
After the engagement: Conservation and use copies
Initial situation: Know-how held by two people
After the engagement: Gestures recorded, transcribed and captioned
Initial situation: Contextless decisions
After the engagement: Context apparatus: date, author, subject, scope
Initial situation: Ruleless access between branches
After the engagement: Family governance charter
Initial situation: Software-dependent formats
After the engagement: Open formats, readable without us
Deliverables
What stays in your hands.
An engagement is also judged by what it leaves behind. Every deliverable is written to be read without us.
- 01
Collection inventory
Each item described, with conservation state and location.
- 02
Conservation tree
A stable organisation, understandable by future generations.
- 03
Digitised corpus
Conservation-standard images and audio, with no content retouching.
- 04
Interviews and transcripts
Know-how recorded, transcribed and captioned, attached to its authors.
- 05
Governance charter
The access, confidentiality and transmission rules decided by the family.
- 06
Backup plan
Multiple copies, off-site backups and periodic verification procedure.
Excluded scope
What the engagement did not include.
A blurry scope costs more than an incomplete one. So we write it down in black and white, from the proposal stage: what is handled, and what is not.
- Judicial or notarial appraisal of items: the family keeps its own counsel.
- Public promotion of the collection: no external dissemination was requested.
- Material restoration of the most damaged documents, entrusted to a specialised workshop.
- Genealogical research, outside the programme’s scope.
A described collectionis never lost.
Case file
Memory of a family house
Case 05 — Cognitive heritage
Area of operation: France / Monaco / Switzerland
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