Archiving, Saving, Organizing Old Photos

Treetopleaf
Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:52:49 +0000

Well… time for an update. I’m copying the photos, then taping the loose photos to vellum and storing them in sleeves (all archival materials).

Recall that I had a box filled with enlarged portraits in paper sleeves, plus small B&W and sepia tone prints, some in old envelopes, some just sitting there. Also a few negatives. There did not seem to be much organization within the box - someone wasn’t careful to keep negatives with prints, etc.

What I am doing is scanning in the photos, one by one, or photographing them in cases where scans don’t work well.

I’m naming each image file with a number to start, then a short description i.e. a name, group name, whatever, and ending the filename with whatever numerical ID the photo has written on the reverse side. (example: S21aJoeSmith344.jpg is picture ‘a’ from the S21 roll, shows Joe Smith, and has 344 stamped on the reverse side). My intent here is to alphabetically organize the photos both on my disk at home and in my ‘set’ at flickr. Those numbers on the reverse are helping me date photos and even ID people at times.

As I scan and upload these photos, I’m editing a file that contains all filenames plus my notes on the photo. Some of these had notes written on the back from the times we sat down with older relatives. I can add some notes to some photos as I get familiar with these people and can ID a few more. I can make notes about questions and fix these descriptions as I go along.

I’m also scanning in the photo envelopes and giving them filenames that place them at the start of the series of photos that came from that envelope. I’m also scanning in some negatives (or photographing negatives that are very dense), as I’ve found that some of these negs don’t have prints for some reason.

When I’m done, I am taping these loose photos (a hinge at one side) to archival vellum. I then slip the vellum into an 8 1/2 x 11 archival sleeve with 3 hole punch. I’ll put these sleeves into an album when I’m done. The vellum allows me to see the reverse sides of these photos. So far, this seems to be a workable, relatively inexpensive solution. I’ll label these vellum sheets when I’m done, maybe by printing the notes from that file out and putting them in with the photos.

Now if we could just get that box of photos from that widower on the other side of the family…