Preserve the record. Build the book. Keep the original.
Archivia and Keeplace are for people who want to preserve what matters without turning it into a life-admin project. Together they bring order to the things that scatter across phones, cloud accounts, boxes, drawers and half-finished albums.
They work for a baby keepsake book, a family history, an artist's studio record, or a living archive that links printed pages to the original objects. The aim is the same every time: when something matters, give it a place.
The register. It gives each important thing a name, a date, a description, a location and a backup record.
The book-making space. It turns memories, photographs, artworks and letters into pages you can print, keep and share.
Most baby books ask you to sit down and finish a product. Keeplace works the other way. Add one memory at a time, place it on a page when you're ready, and print that page on its own. The book grows gradually instead of becoming a task you never quite get to.
Add the memory first — you don't need to know where it belongs. Let it sit in the tray until you have time to shape it into a page. Over time the book becomes a record of chosen moments rather than an attempt to capture everything.
The output doesn't have to be a closed, bound album. It can be a living keepsake binder. Print a page about a first haircut and store it beside the envelope holding the lock of hair. Print a preschool painting and keep the original behind it in a sleeve.
Keeplace gives the memory a page. Archivia records where the original lives.
One person has the photos. Someone else remembers the story. A document sits in a box, a date is uncertain, a name appears in three spellings. Keeplace turns this material into readable pages; Archivia preserves the evidence behind them. For family history it often helps to start in Archivia — catalogue the source first, then build the page.
Don't force certainty where there isn't any. A labelled circa 1940 or probably Canberra is more useful than a precise date that might be wrong. Archivia records the difference between a known date, an estimate and a family memory.
An artist generates a lot around each work — the finished piece, but also process images, video clips, draft statements, installation views, edition records, press copy and captions. Without a system it fragments across a phone, an inbox, a studio drive and a folder. Archivia becomes the studio register; Keeplace makes the folios and presentation material. One entry can then serve a catalogue, a collector, a grant application or a post.
Artist-at-work pages, artwork pages, studio video registers, biographies, catalogue spreads, timelines, installation and process pages. A studio clip becomes part of an artwork's record rather than another unlabelled file on a phone.
A bound photo book is beautiful but fixed — it can't hold a lock of hair, a folded letter, a child's drawing or a certificate. A storage box keeps objects but loses the story. A camera roll keeps images but not where the original lives or why it matters. Archivia and Keeplace bring the two together: print a page, store it with the physical item, and let Archivia record where everything lives.
Use a binder or folio box. For each section, keep the printed pages, archival sleeves, labelled envelopes, original drawings, small keepsakes, and an Archivia reference. For framed, valuable or delicate items, store the original separately and let the printed page be the index to it.
The page doesn't replace the original. It gives the original context.
A place in the archive.
A place in the story.
A place on the page.
A place beside the original.
Some memories are photographs. Some are voice notes. Some are objects you can hold. Keeplace helps you make the page; Archivia makes sure the record isn't lost. Begun, not perfect — consistent enough that the things that matter aren't lost.