News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Last week, Allison
fessed up about her so-far-untouched mountain of boxes inherited from her grandmother,
full of genealogy records, pictures and news clippings, with some nongenealogical
stuff thrown in for good measure.

 

A bunch of you chimed in with advice, encouragement and stories that’ll benefit other
overwhelmed family archivists. The gist of your advice is:

• Take your time. Baby steps!
  
• Sort by family, people or place.
  
• Digitize.
  
• Archival storage.
  
• Share.
  
• Consider donating what won’t be kept.

Here are some more details from your suggestions and stories. To read the full comments,
go to Allison’s
“Organizing Grandma’s Archive” blog post and click Comments at the bottom. 

• Claire suggested making an inventory of the items: “Tackle one box a week. Label the
  first box 1, the second 2, etc. Go through the contents and list everything in a notebook
  under the appropriate tab. For example, in the Anderson-Dugan tab, you might have:
  

John Dugan birth certificate, box 1

Photo of Anderson family reunion 1930, box 1

“At some later date you might relocate everything to a better storage system,” Claire
adds, “but at least for now you’ll know the contents of each box.”

• Joseph Martin would allow more time: “I count 15 boxes in your stack. Give yourself
  two months to sort and organize one box. In less than three years, you will be done.”

• Renee advises scheduling small chunks of time (30 to 50 minutes) a few times a week,
  so things don’t feel overwhelming. “I wouldn’t begin to move things around until you
  document how the documents appeared, since what folder they were in or what they were
  next to can have bearing on the meaning of the document. I would take photos of the
  box and each item in the box as you unpack them.”

She also recommends digitizing as you go. “If you re-create the folders and boxes
digitally, you’ll always know the exact order they arrived in. You can then tag them
or make digital copies and reorganize them according to your preference. It will make
you familiar with what’s there and you won’t have to reorganize the actual papers.
You can just store them (or toss, if needed) and work with the digital copies.” 

• Patti McElligott describes her system of 3-inch binders for each family name, with
  each family member on a tabbed index sheet. Paper records for each person go inside
  clear sheet protectors behind his or her tab.
  

Patti’s tip for labeling photos: “Take a stack, and anytime you are sitting
down, write on the back the who, what, where etc. There are pens made for this that
will not damage the pictures.”

• Cheryl Hughes was also left with an archive like Allison’s, but from several different
  relatives and families. She’s been working on it for 10 years. “I still get boxes,
  as I am thought of as the ‘picture person’ of all these families,” Cheryl says.
  

She separated papers from the pictures, and had some of the old photos
and tintypes restored and copied. “I am copying all pictures to CDs or SD cards and
having prints made to share with other family members … the originals are in safe,
acid free boxes, with copies in albums.” 

• Micki Gilmore’s inherited archive is smaller. “I plan to digitize. There are some
  great scanners out there,” she says, and plans to tackle one box at a time.

• Diane Hart has been digitizing photos all summer. “The photos are on discs, and then
  I view them on a slide show on my computer. They look so nice! … From photos I received
  from my 83-year-old aunt, I made a disc for her with a very nice identifying label,
  printed a thumbnail photo gallery of disc contents, and included my contact information.
  Then I drove miles to deliver this to her, and we watched the slideshow. She absolutely
  loved it! She is the only living child in my Dad’s family of 13.”

• S. Lantz is using Clooz software to
  keep track of her archive. “[It] allows you to tag names in your genealogy name list
  with each item (photos, census, documents, books, etc.). If you assign a unique number
  to each item, you can run an individual report that will list all of the items tied
  to that individual.” 

• Juanita Dean uses photo boxes and tabbed dividers to organize her photos by place,
  then event. “If you look at the photos yearly, put them in a larger box that is handy
  to share for reunions, otherwise use archival boxes to put them away.”

• I love Ardith Hale’s words: “The Chinese say you can move a mountain one spoonful
  at a time.” She advises Allison catalog and digitize, then sort.
  

“I have been given a huge store of pictures, which we went through with
my mother to assign names, then sort by family. Each family gets theirs. Older ones
are being digitized, copied and spread around so that hopefully somewhere there will
be a copy. Unidentifed ones are kept together in the hope that some reunion or gathering
can attach a name.”

• Shasta says “Take your time, think of a plan, and execute it slowly, a little bit
  at a time … I managed to scan our family photos by doing a few each day, a little
  extra when I had time.”

If you’re looking for more advice, the January
2011 Family Tree Magazine has Denise Levenick’s (she’s the
Family Curator blogger) guide to organizing a family archive like this one.

Feel free to keep sharing your stories about sorting through family collections—we
love to hear ‘em.