Organizing Family Photos - Hysterical Preservation and the 80/20 Rule

With limited time and budgets, families and others hoping to preserve a historical heritage in photos and documents often have a difficult time drawing the line between what is important to preserve and what can be preserved.

Many preservationists have been referred to as "hysterical preservationists" when they appear to take the position that most or all things historic should be preserved. The "hysterical " approach is often criticized as spreading resources and attention too thin, to the detriment of truly special and unique objects of historical significance.

I believe that the same debate can be applied to family photo and document collections. If a collection consists of boxes of photos or "keepsakes" in an attic, there is a decent probability that someone named in your will could be even less motivated to sort and cull the image collection than you are.

On the other hand, if you approach a culling and organizing project as an application of the 80/20 rule, it is much easier to make some decisions and real progress. In a recent culling project of family photos around our house, we tossed about 80% by volume of our old prints.

We determined that uniqueness and mediocrity were the most obvious criteria. We simply decided that we did not need to keep all of the mediocre shots of a trip to the Grand Canyon in 1975. A couple of the better shots of us with the canyon in the background were sufficient to recall a memorable trip in our younger years. Likewise, multiple shots of a young child in a Halloween costume could be easily reduced to the single best shot.

Uniqueness and historical significance can also be measured differently over time. Historical photos of people may only have had significance to the people in the picture at the time. If people in a picture were engaged in some activity that has historical significance, perhaps the activity is the uniqueness to future generations.

In any case, the person who is culling, sorting, and organizing images is likely the person most qualified to judge uniqueness and historical significance. Keep in mind that you are not just sorting and organizing the collection for yourself, you are also helping those who will inherit the images in the future.

If based on the best judgement of the sorter, roughly 20% of the collection ends up properly sorted, organized, and captioned, the most unique and historically significant photos and documents are much more likely to survive and be shared into the next generation.

For more suggestions on culling and organizing photo and document collections, see the article on Organizing Photo and Document Collections.