A Community Heritage Archive in Your Pocket
GeoTag lets anyone with a smartphone record a heritage site as a photo, an exact location and a short note, and turn those records into a shareable archive. It runs in the phone’s browser, installs like an app, and works without a signal. That makes it practical for the people who know local heritage best: residents, elders, students, teachers and volunteer groups, working where the places actually are.
What Each Record Holds
- The photo, taken in the app with the back or front camera, from the phone’s camera app, or chosen from the gallery.
- Where it is, from live GPS with its accuracy in metres, a pin placed on the map, or the location already stored in an older photo.
- When it was taken, including the original date of gallery photos.
- What it is, in the contributor’s own words, plus a phone number for the custodian or informant.
The location and time are written into the photo file itself, and can also be stamped visibly along its bottom edge. A picture keeps its context even after it leaves the archive.
Built for community fieldwork
- Works offline. Records save on the phone with no network, so remote villages, forests and river islands can be documented on the spot. Map areas viewed earlier stay available.
- No accounts, no server, no cost. Contributors open a link and start. Nothing is uploaded, so the community decides what is shared, with whom and when.
- Any language. Notes can be written in any script, and exports open correctly in Excel.
- Ordinary phones. It runs in a mobile browser, keeps photos at a sensible size, and shows plain guidance when GPS or the camera needs attention.
- Accurate by default. Saving waits until GPS reaches a chosen accuracy, and each record states where its location came from.
From phone to archive
Saved records appear as dots on the map, so a group can see at a glance what has been covered. One export bundles the photos with three standard files:
| File | Opens in | Use |
| captures.csv | Excel, Google Sheets | Catalogue and inventory |
| captures.geojson | QGIS, web maps | Heritage maps and planning layers |
| captures.kml | Google Earth | Presentations and virtual site tours |
Exports can be downloaded as a ZIP or shared straight to WhatsApp, Drive or email. A village volunteer’s records can reach a museum, university or panchayat office the same day.
Where it helps
- Built heritage: old houses, prayer halls, temples, mosques, churches, bridges and memorials, including buildings at risk of demolition or decay.
- Sacred and natural sites: groves, ponds, trees and stones that carry local meaning but appear on no official register.
- Living heritage: craft workshops, weavers, boat builders, festival grounds and market sites, recorded with the maker’s name and contact.
- Oral history: marking the places elders speak about while walking with them, with their account in the note.
- Monitoring: revisiting a site each season to show change over time, damage after floods, or restoration work.
Good practice and current limits
- Ask first. Get consent before photographing people, homes or rituals, and before recording a contact number.
- Protect sensitive places. Exact coordinates of sacred or vulnerable sites can invite theft or intrusion; review exports before sharing them widely.
- Export often. Records live on the phone until exported, so a lost or reset phone loses unexported work.
- Know what it doesn’t do yet. GeoTag records photos and text only, not audio or video. There is no shared online archive or multi-user sync, so a coordinator gathers the exports.