Friday, May 28, 2010

Online Albums - A Word of Caution

Many families post digital images to online albums, including the sites of major online printers. These free and easy to use online albums can be very helpful in sharing images with friends and extended families. However, it is important not to rely solely on these free online albums as your digital image library backup.

The fine print in many online album service agreements typically allows the provider to re-size and/or eliminate images, at their discretion. With the declining cost of storage, this is unlikely to become a problem. However, these online album providers can be subject to human, software, and hardware failures, and your family photos are simply too important to rely upon someone else as your primary backup.

As prices and sizes of memory formats, such as CDs, DVDs, and memory sticks, continue to decline, there are no good excuses for not having the bulk of your digital images duplicated and stored in a bank safe deposit box or other off premise location. It is just too easy, quick, and inexpensive to not make the effort to backup some of your most prized family possessions.

For more information on organizing, preserving, and sharing family photos, visit LocalArchiver.com.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Why Family Photos Are Important

Family photos and documents are often among a family's most prized possessions because they provide a tangible image link to the past.

At some point in our lives, most of us will come to realize that our lives are more closely connected to generations past, present, and future than we previously appreciated. Connections to our past are important to developing and maintaining a sense of place, a sense of personal and local identity, and often add to our individual sense of purpose and belonging.

Much discussion is currently centered on “social networking”. The family remains our most important and core social network. Shared family experiences, memories, heritage, and often values and interests are reflected in family photo collections and provide a sense of connectedness as well.

A well organized and effectively shared photo collection can promote a clearer understanding of how our family ancestors influenced our thinking, and provide reminders of our personal history and development. A properly organized photo collection allows the next generation to better appreciate these important photo reflections of the past, and can help them to understand their heritage as well.

It was not long ago that most family photos were limited to professional studio portraits. As photography became more affordable and mainstream in the last century, families have routinely captured more images of their family history. Digital technology has now made image transfer and sharing much easier, and online databases are making genealogy research more fruitful than ever before. With the evolution of these tools, developing family histories and coloring that history with photo images has become a growing interest of many families.

Preserving our sense of place and family history is at the heart of why it is important to both preserve and share family photo images. Special family photos and documents simply help us to remember and better understand the uniqueness of our families and our individual journeys.

For more information on organizing, preserving, and sharing of family photos, visit LocalArchiver.com. The above blog is an excerpt from a book being assembled for publication this fall and based on articles at LocalArchiver.com.