Short answer: choose one shared place, organise it by season or year, and give members one simple way to add photos with names and a date. Digitise old prints rather than collecting them, ask permission before showing living members publicly, and agree who looks after the archive when the board changes.
Last updated: 3 November 2026. The facts about Google Photos, the GDPR and the advice on handling photos were checked on that day on the official pages; the sources are at the bottom. This page is not legal advice.
Every club has its own memory: the team photo from the promotion year, the choir on tour, the scout camp in the rain, the student society's first gala. Usually it lives in a few boxes in a clubhouse cupboard and on the laptops of whoever was on the board at the time. When those people leave, the photos often leave with them. A small amount of structure keeps it together.
Five steps
- Choose one place where the archive lives, and one or two people who look after it.
- Organise by season or year. That is how members remember. Inside a season, events: the tournament, the tour, the party.
- Ask for a line per photo: who is in it, which season, what happened. Names are what gets lost first.
- Digitise old prints on a scanning evening, with older members at the table to name people. Leave the originals with their owners.
- Agree on consent: what stays inside the club and what may be shown publicly, for example on the website or social media.
Where to keep it: the options
| Option | Good for | Who can see it | Not the best choice when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared cloud folder | Storing files in folders per year | The people the folder is shared with | You want stories and names next to the photo, or members without the folder's app to add |
| Google Photos shared album | Collecting photos of one event quickly | Anyone with the link can view and add | You need control over who has the link, or an archive organised over decades |
| Private social media group | A club that already lives there | Members of the group | Not every member uses it, or you want to find the 1998 season again |
| Club website gallery | Showing a selection to the public | Everyone | Members have not agreed to be shown publicly |
| The Memory Palace | A wing for the club, a room per season, with photos, voice recordings and stories side by side | Only the members you invite, or anyone you send a collect link to | You need a public website, or a shared account for the whole board |
Consent and the GDPR
The GDPR makes an exception for purely personal or household activity. A club or association is usually not that, so the rules apply to its archive. Photos in which living people can be identified are personal data. In practice: keep the archive inside the club, ask members before publishing photos in which they appear, remove a photo when someone asks, and do not add more personal details than needed. The GDPR does not cover people who have died, although national rules can. Read more in does the GDPR apply to a family tree or family archive, and ask your national data protection authority when in doubt.
Old prints and keeping copies
For old prints, the Library of Congress advises writing only on the back, near the edge, with a soft graphite pencil, and never using tape, glue, sticky notes or paper clips on photos. For the digital archive it recommends at least two copies in different places, checked once a year, with descriptive file names and the names of people tagged. For a club, that means one copy on the platform you use and one full download kept by the board.
The Memory Palace, honestly
The Memory Palace is a 3D memory palace: photos, videos, voice recordings and written stories hang in rooms you walk through. For a club, you make a wing with a room per season or per event. It is private by default. You invite members into a room or the whole wing and choose per person whether they can view only or also add. With a collect link per room, any member you send it to can add a photo, a memory or a voice recording from the browser, without an account; you can withdraw the link and remove a contribution with one tap. A veteran member telling the story of the promotion year can sit next to the team photo.
What it lacks: there is no separate club account: one member keeps the palace and invites the others, so agree who that is and download a copy regularly (a full ZIP on every plan, with a page that opens offline). It is not a public website or a membership system. It is encrypted in transit and at rest, but not end-to-end. The free plan has 1 GB; a club with many years of photos will probably need Keeper, €12 per year for 25 GB. It is made by a small team in Leuven, Belgium.
A simple start
Start with one season: the most recent one, or the jubilee year. Ask every member for three photos with names. For old photos without a date, the free photo date tool helps place them by decade. If you want a wing for the club, you can start a palace for free.
Read on: collecting photos for a school reunion, how to label old photos without damaging them, where to keep memories with friends privately, and all guides on your own memories.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR): Article 2(2)(c), purely personal or household activity; Recital 18; Recital 27, deceased persons: eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj
- Google Photos Help, share albums (anyone with the link can view and add): support.google.com/photos/answer/6131416
- Library of Congress, care, handling and storage of photographs (limit markings; write on the back near the edge with a soft graphite pencil; no adhesives, sticky notes, paper clips or rubber bands; cool, dry, stable storage): loc.gov/preservation/care/photo.html
- Library of Congress, Personal Digital Archiving, digital photos (at least two copies in different places; check them once a year; descriptive file names; tag people and subjects): digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/photos.html