As a genealogist, I belong to several mailing lists, one is for Erie County, New York. Lots of good things have come from that list including a link to this blog The Practical Archivist. You know, we all have our guilty photo secrets, like the boxes and boxes of them that we moved down here from Michigan. Last fall, younger daughter went through all of them and selected the ones she wanted to keep, giving me a stack to scan for distribution on CD. Older daughter got 3/4 of the way through and still has a fair amount to search through and then DH and I will sort through them and keep only ones we truly want. The rest, gasp, we are going to get rid of. I have a box of pictures my aunt gave ne, mostly because she didn't know who the people were. I got maybe two dozen photos out of that box of people I could identify - out of at least two hundred photos.
Now, I should mention that my dad was a pack rat. His father was a pack rat. My husband's father is a pack rat. So when it comes to photos, you guessed it, we have all of the ones we have EVER taken. Remember double prints? Good idea if you are going to share them. Mostly we have double pictures of places we don't even remember. Somewhere along the line in the early 1990's I started separating them by year and did a pretty good job of it, but stopped by 1996 when I went back to work. Who had time for that? So now comes the really daunting task of sorting through them one more time.
Oh well, it will give us something to do between now and the 2012 election!
So glad you've found my advice useful!
ReplyDeleteI want to point out that there are "orphanages" for ancestor photos. DeadFred.com is my favorite, but there are others.
The 5,463rd photo of Uncle Joe doesn't need to be kept. But with ancestor photos you might have in your hands the only photo of Great Great Great Uncle Joe.
Keep up the good work, and thumbs up for sharing the best photos with others. A win-win!
Warm regards,
-Sally J.
The Practical Archivist
P.S. I'm also a HUGE fan of craft beer. And lucky for me I live in Wisconsin, where fantastic breweries are abundant: Lake Louie, New Glarus, and Furthermore.
Sally J. - thanks for such a great blog! This is a very timely subject as the holidays draw near.
ReplyDeleteThe Detroit, Michigan area is home to many microbreweries. I miss them a lot. There aren't many in Tennesse - at least not unless you are in the big city.