I have acquired a box of photos, commingled, from my grandmother and my mother. Also a collection from my mother's sister. That together with a couple of hundred photos from my father. 1. I have identified all subjects that I can. My aunt assisted with hers. 2. I made black and white negatives of all I could identify and wanted to be sure to preserve over a long period of time. (a couple of great shots of me lying on a bassinet with my bare butt reflecting the sunlight) 3. All have been put into archival storage pages, with pockets, back to back. 4. Later I will scan and preserve. Problem: need suggestions on how others would approach labeling each photo so 1, it can be located and 2, returned to its proper pocket. It is not impossible some will be given to others which would cause a re-organization. I have and use a ZIG pen to write on the back, edges, to identify people. This pen is acid free, archival quality, non-bleeding. Phyllis Cloyd wrote: > I finally have my really old photos organized and under control. Thanks -- Clint Mailto:clintcrocker@home.com G.C.Crocker 3425 Kegley Meadows Court NE Olympia, WA 98506-2996 Ph/Fax (360) 438-6691 C rocker, B laylock, F etterley, S argent, T rinterud B ateman, I ler, G ladbach, S trong

Estimated 15,000+ scanned images organized here with no numbering system except for same-day pictures like recent weddings. Special events and trips might have dozens of pictures taken on a variety of cameras. Originals or notes for finding oversize items are in archival sheet protectors and mostly kept with family group sheet computer printouts from a genealogy program with a scrapbook. Scans need to be organized with *progressive* permanent backup sets stored in multiple locations, not just one copy on a hard drive or one copy on a CD-Recordable that might get scratched. Choice of genealogy programs is determined by the favorite method for organizing pictures NOT the most complex method for organizing text-only sources. The pictures don't move and sources may be incomplete in a GEDCOM. Each individual and marriage can have a scrapbook with "all available" pictures and scanned source documents but it is convenient to have about 50 items for each topic and time period as sections are reprinted after editing. Plan a separate family file (or at least a scrapbook file) for each group of about 250 inserted images. If pictures are very small for family tree charts, it might be practical to have 500-750 images. I haven't worked with more than 100 pictures linked to a genealogy program. Some contacts have claimed up to 2000 images but those projects are hard to move from one computer to another. It is a lot of work to reorganize hundreds of pictures if the chosen method doesn't scale to include all images available over time. Scanned images are named (mostly) with date first and kept in multiple Windows folders. 1900-01-01NameTopic.jpg. Images for family projects printed in sets are scanned to the "right" size for the purpose, not archival size cropped later. Some people keep up to four copies of each image -- archival, family, web and thumbnail. One Internet contact claims 4 GB of scanned images. Family project size images are usually saved as standard JPG and 480-600 pixels at the time of scanning. About 2000 average size images of 200 kb might fit on a CD-Recordable along with the family data and research notes. As long as images are grouped in sets that belong together and in approximate order by date, the exact order of originals may not be all that critical. Estimated dates change as one sees a computer-printed scrapbook and gathers more details from relatives or research. Change the date in the genealogy scrapbook, sort by date and reprint when the previous copy has too many pencil changes. Distribute "draft" copies of computer genealogy scrapbooks to anyone interested and hope they will share more information. Elizabeth ----- Original Message ----- From: "Clint Crocker" > Problem: need suggestions on how others would approach labeling each photo so > 1, it can be located and 2, returned to its proper pocket. It is not impossible > some will be given to others which would cause a re-organization.

Most archives would use some sort of unique reference number. Examples include SMPTE UIDs for moving image and TV clips, accession numbers in libraries etc. These can be as simple as an ordinal starting at 1 or perhaps better would be year/number where the year is know and 0/number if unknown. That number would then go on the back of the photograph much the same as professional stufios put their reference on backs and then go into your databse. The database would include all the metadata about the picture, details of physical storage location and in due course pointer to scanned image and/any other formats of the same image. The database allows you to find the photo by subject, date etc, points you to the location then when it is returned that same location pointer tells you where to put it back. The location pointer would be as simple as file volume, page/sheet, xy co-ordinate or posiiton on the page. If some are given away not to be returned then where they went, i.e. who to and when, can be recorded as the location pointer. -----Original Message----- From: Clint Crocker [mailto:clintcrocker@home.com] Sent: 27 October 2001 01:40 To: VINTAGE-PHOTOS-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [VINTAGE-PHOTOS] Organizing I have acquired a box of photos, commingled, from my grandmother and my mother. Also a collection from my mother's sister. That together with a couple of hundred photos from my father. 1. I have identified all subjects that I can. My aunt assisted with hers. 2. I made black and white negatives of all I could identify and wanted to be sure to preserve over a long period of time. (a couple of great shots of me lying on a bassinet with my bare butt reflecting the sunlight) 3. All have been put into archival storage pages, with pockets, back to back. 4. Later I will scan and preserve. Problem: need suggestions on how others would approach labeling each photo so 1, it can be located and 2, returned to its proper pocket. It is not impossible some will be given to others which would cause a re-organization. I have and use a ZIG pen to write on the back, edges, to identify people. This pen is acid free, archival quality, non-bleeding.