I hope this finds you well and feeling positive.  I had planned to be spending this coming week and last with family, but it wasn’t to be, not for a few weeks yet.  I hope you’re finding things to do with your time, and that if the lockdown has left you with even more to do than usual (e.g. home schooling) that you’re finding some time for yourself too.

So as it’s Easter weekend I thought something light would be in order.  I’ve been sorting through my inherited family photos and I’m at the very early stages of archiving them properly.  It will take a long time to do it, but reading around the subject I’ve come up with a list of what I need to do, and I thought I would share that with you.

Organise:
Sort photos into families.  If possible, store these in acid free boxes until they are scanned.  The scanning is likely to take some time, and is best done in small batches.
I’ve sorted my photos into my mum’s side, my dad’s side, and the ones that were taken after my parents got together.  There are also some people I don’t know, plus others that I feel sure I will be able to put a name to when comparing with other images.

Scan:
I know from past attempts at archiving my photos that the scanning process will take considerable time, particularly as I like to digitally ‘clean up’ the images as I go.
Scan the front and if there is anything on the back, e.g. photographer’s studio, date, greeting, etc. scan the back too.
Store them as tiff files with caption and metadata.  (There’s something I didn’t do last time.)

Save:
Save to hard drive, pen drive, the Cloud, etc – as many places and options as you have.

Use and Share:
You can now attach copies of these photos to people in your trees as well as share them with others researching your family – preferably to receive more photos in return!  You could also use them in projects to scrapbook your family history, create albums, etc.

Label:
As you finish with each batch of scanned photos the originals can now be labelled.  There are two schools of thought on this:

1. Label with a soft #2 pencil on the back of the image.   To do this, lay image face down on a clean, white sheet of paper.  Write gently close to edge of rear of image.  Do not press hard.  Here is a blogpost about the best writing materials to use.
2. Alternatively… Do not label the actual photos!  Instead place in acid free envelopes or sleeves.  Label each sleeve.  Afterwards remove the photos from their sleeves as little as possible, but if you do remove them, be sure to return each one to the correct sleeve.  Apparently, polyester sleeves are acid free and recommended for archival quality.
3. Ancestry have produced a blogpost on what information to include on the label when archiving photographs.  It’s a lot more than you might imagine.

Store:
The photos can now be stored in archival conditions.  Everything should be acid free.  Particularly fragile photos can be wrapped in acid free tissue paper instead of being placed in sleeves.  I’ve found archival photo storage boxes at a dedicated preservation equipment supplier that I’ll buy when they reopen after lockdown ends.  These boxes must then be stored in a living area of the house (not an attic, cellar, garage, where temperatures fluctuate).  Ideal conditions are well-ventilated, cool rather than warm, low humidity and dark.  In a box under the bed but not close to a radiator might be a good place.  My plan (at this stage) is to place the archival storage boxes in a plastic crate that will fit under a bed.

I have two large biscuit tins of precious photos (you might wonder why they are in buscuit tins if they are so precious – but even this is a step-up from how I received them) plus two large plastic crates of more recent albums, so I have my work cut out here.  This isn’t a weekend project!

Please do leave a comment if you can add anything to this.

On that note I wish you a Happy Easter, Chag Sameach or if neither apply I hope you have a very happy weekend.