I'm approaching the scanfest challenge as a process, to be accomplished little by little during the year:
- Gather albums from multiple sources. [Plenty are on hand, more to be gathered.]
- Rough sort photos by family, year, and/or theme (vacation, Christmas, etc). [Started.]
- Discard damaged and irrelevant photos and negatives. [One bag tossed today--photos with rips or stains were scanned and will be digitally repaired.]
- Separate good dupes to send to family members. [Going into the mail Monday.]
- Extract photos carefully from those awful magnetic albums, preserving labels. [In process]
- Scan a hundred or more at a time. (I love my Flip-Pal, set at high resolution, for speed and convenience.) Where appropriate, include handwritten label of place/date next to first photo scanned in a series. [One day scanned total: 181 good images!]
- Keep scanned snapshots in order in a temporary storage box, ready to be checked and then stored in a safe way. [in process]
- Arrange digital images into digital folders (again, by family/year/season/theme, etc.) and make digital dupes on flash drives for family members.
- Create a few special photobooks with descriptive captions to send to family members.*
- Have fun during the process, reminiscing and double-checking identifications and dates/places with family.
Doing this little by little makes the scanfest and genealogical organization a lot less overwhelming. I highly recommend scanning with a family member, not just for the conversations but also for the extra hands ready to work with photos. Having my Sis partner with me doubles the fun--the time really flies by!
Have you been scanning your baby photos and other photos from "modern" family history, to preserve them and have digital versions backing up the physical images?
Thanks to Amy Johnson Crow for this second in the 2019 series of #52Ancestors prompts, "challenge."
Special thanks to WikiTree for the Scan-a-Thon challenge, January 11-14, in coordination with GeneabloggersTribe.
Yes, I'm a bit early, but I'm also spreading my scanfest out over many weeks to share the fun with family!
*For privacy reasons, I will only upload selected photos of ancestors (not living people) to my online family trees.
Hope you get lots accomplished. I sent out my collection a few years ago because of the sheer volume. My scanner (husband Dave) wasn't fast enough for my liking.I am very happy it is all done, though, and so is he!
ReplyDeleteI stil haven't gotten over the loss of 500 slides of my family from 1954-1970 that I sent to a company in California. I'll never do that again - so it's a SCaNfest for me from now on!!
DeleteOh, dear, Deborah, what a loss :( So sorry!
DeleteI am not a wikitree person, but I like the idea of the scanfest. I bought archival photo albums a few years ago but have YET to get those photos out of the magnetic albums. That should be my project starting today. Or maybe tomorrow. I know! I know!
ReplyDeleteHi Linda and Wendy, thanks for reading and commenting. With my sister at my side, it's a lot more fun to scan and discuss each photo. Yes, it takes longer but sharing stories and memories adds even more to the meaning of what we're doing! And we haven't yet gotten to the archival album stage, but that may be our next step in the process, so thanks for the nudge.
ReplyDeleteWish I had a sib around to do this with. My brother lives in the same town, but he is busy 30 hours a day (so so it seems!)
ReplyDeleteIf he gets a snow day off from work, maybe he can visit and scan with you? Anyway, inch by inch is the key to getting things done!
DeleteOh to have someone to help me. Organizing old family photos is something I dearly need to do. In the mean time I have the oldest ones in file envelopes where I have categorized them. I made sure that I put my school mates photos in one that said not related --Classmates and Friends.
ReplyDeleteAny categorization is better than none! Congrats on starting the process.
DeleteI have so much that needs to be scanned and digitized, I really like the idea of planning out the process over a couple of weeks. #resolutions
ReplyDeleteNo rush...best of luck doing this, little by little. Even separating into family groupings would be a good beginning.
DeleteI like your plan of attack. I've got gads of scanned photos. Now I have to decide what to upload to WikiTree's Scan-A-Thon. Great post.
ReplyDeleteLaura, I just registered to officially join the Scan-A-Thon! Friday is my chosen day to participate, but in reality, I'm participating for the next couple of months. Thanks for reading and commenting. Best of luck on your scanning!
DeleteI need toget start doing this sometime soon, too. We are just now digging our way out of boxes, after our move into our now forever home. If you do not own a scanner, what is the next best way to accomplish the same thing?
ReplyDeleteCongrats on your move! My local library allows people to use its scanner (bring your own flash drive), so perhaps you can check there? I found a scanner is so handy that I actually own two: the Flip-Pal for up to 5x7 photos and a flat-bed scanner for letter/legal size photos and documents. Not terribly expensive and convenient to have here in the house.
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