Holiday Gift Ideas for Family Photo Sharing

As in holiday seasons past, many of us will struggle with finding "the perfect gift(s)". This is often difficult and many of us will default to spending money on a gift that someone does not really need.

Here are a few ideas for unique gifts that can be long remembered and perhaps even treasured. The gifts relate to helping others maintain and share their special family photos.

The two large and reputable online professional scanning services, ScanCafe and ScanDigital, both offer gift cards for their services. ScanCafe also offers a pre-paid gift box that the recipient simply fills with photos, slides, and negatives. What comes back is a collection of digital scan files and the originals.

The collection of scanned images can then be duplicated and shared with an entire extended family. With these digital files, each family member can add the scans to their own photo collection and creatively use the images in a broad range of their own projects.

You may be running out of preparation time to assembly images for a special photo book for the holidays. However, you could describe a photo book project you will commit to as a gift. For ideas and a sense for the process, visit Picaboo, Snapfish.com by HP , or Kodak Gallery. Photo book products at each are impressive. I believe Picaboo leads the pack with its range of themes, templates, and creative ideas to be found at its website.

If you have a special image that you would like to present framed, it is not too late to upload a scanned image to one of the major online printers and to order a ready-made frame from the likes of Dick Blick Art Materials. I suggest that you look at Nielsen Bainbridge Artcare metal ready-made frames at Blick. These are museum quality, attractive, reasonably priced, and come with everything you need to impressively frame a print (except for a bit of photo safe tape to attach the print to the mat).

For more family photo organization, preservation, and sharing suggestions, visit LocalArchiver.com.

Family Photo Organizing and The Holiday Season

In past posts, I have suggested that it becomes much easier to organize and share family photos when older print images are scanned into a digital format.

I have also suggested that many family members often have their favorite photos held captive by another family member who somehow wound up with albums or boxes of prints when someone moved or passed away. Perhaps the other family member has good intentions and plans to scan and share the images someday, but has not found the time.

What better time than the holidays to talk about sharing photos. Some of the largest and most encompassing extended family gatherings take place over the holiday season. Additionally, other family members are typically somewhat nostalgic, in a sharing mood, and of good cheer during holiday gatherings.

Perhaps you can recruit some other family members who would be happy to take part in a project to consolidate a family photo collection by converting it to digital format. Perhaps some family members would be happy to provide some funding to have older prints scanned professionally for easier and broader sharing.

If available older prints are collected and scanned, contributing family members could have originals returned and other interested family members could each have a consolidated digital collection on CD or DVD. If you think your extended family might want to use a professional scanning service, check out ScanDigital and ScanCafe, two of the largest.

Who knows where such a project could lead? Perhaps some family members would carry the project further and expand it into a genealogy project or develop an extended family online share site.

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

Family Photos - Priceless Memories at Risk

Family photo collections contain priceless images that bring back vivid memories of family joys, milestones, trips, and other moments deemed worth preserving.

With changes in technology, the "bad news" is that many families now have combinations of photos in older acidic and deteriorating albums, loose photos and transparencies in multiple boxes, and a ton of digital images on a hard drive or CD. This mix of formats is enough to lead many of us to inaction, which places many of these family photo images at risk.

The "good news" is that these very same advances in technology have created the means to easily consolidate, organize, and more broadly share your priceless family photo images.

Clearly a well organized digital image library of family photos provides the greatest opportunity to take advantage of online services and software that can easily and inexpensively create slide shows, photo books, collages, image gift items, and a dozen other satisfying ways to share family photo memories.

As a first step to consolidating older prints or slides into a digital image library, it is necessary for someone to scan the print or slide. Many families hold the view that this is something they should do at home. They then become challenged with the lack of technical expertise, or by not being able to find the time necessary to get organized and to actually complete the scans.

It is clearly easier to have someone perform the scans for you, and there are well established services that will complete your scans for you with little preparation required on your part. A little culling of bad or duplicate prints can save you some money, but you can simply send a shoebox without any sorting or culling. The cost of these services is very reasonable when you consider the benefits of preserving your priceless family memories and the value of being able to creatively use the digitized images in a multitude of image projects in the future. The cost of having your scans done professionally is very inexpensive when considered against the potentially high cost of doing nothing.

To get started, it is not necessary to send your entire collection to be scanned. Although volume discounting is available, it may actually be easier to get your head around sending a few old prints to a professional scanning company to satisfy yourself about the level of service, the quality of scans, and the reasonableness of pricing. To better understand the services and pricing of a couple of the major scanning services, visit ScanDigital and ScanCafe.

It is likely that once you get started, momentum will build. I am confident that once you have begun to create a consolidated family photo digital image library, you will see a range of expanded sharing possibilities that will excite you.

For more information about organizing, preserving, and sharing family photos, visit http://www.localarchiver.com/.

Family History Month - Genealogy Research Service Free Trials

Both interest in genealogy and the sophistication of available research tools continue to expand.

As more record databases become available to be searched via the Internet, subscription genealogy information search services have become more productive. At the same time, these services have become much easier to use, and many have begun to use software to automatically identify links in database information that were difficult for individual researchers to make in the past.

Family History Month is a good time to consider exploring some of these online services. Two of the most widely used subscription services offer free trial periods of 7 to 14 days. To make the most of your free trial periods, sign up when you know that you will have some time available to adequately explore the services to see how productive they might be for your family.

Two of the leading genealogy research services are Ancestry.com and OneGreatFamily. Both offer free trial periods to give you the opportunity to explore their databases and overall research capabilities. After the trial, if you are happy with the progress you make relative to your family's history, you can decide on exactly how long you would like to extend your subscription. Both services offer monthly, quarterly, and annual subscriptions.

Many of the emails I receive about sharing and preserving family photos and documents are from people who have taken an interest in a family genealogy project. They often come to realize that family photos and documents add considerable color to raw name and date facts. In many cases, they quickly recognize that organizing, preserving, and sharing historical family photo and document finds is important to their overall satisfaction in the project and in coloring and preserving the rich family information they are gathering.

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

Family Photos and Family History Month

Around the country many celebrate October as Family History Month.

What better way to celebrate than by dragging out some of those neglected shoe boxes, drawers, and old albums full of photos reflecting your family history.

Family photos are often the most tangible images we have of our family history.

Our sense of place and personal identity are often reflected in these family photos.

With many children back in school and before the hectic holiday season is upon us, this is also a good time to start a project to better identify, organize, and cull these family photo images. This project does not have to be completed in one sitting, and any progress made is a good thing.

Family photo organizing projects can be very intimidating. However, once started, most people will find that any progress will feel good, and that momentum can easily build.

Once some decent progress is made in identifying, culling, and organizing old prints, you are on the path to many creative image sharing opportunities using online digital image services.

Celebrate family history month by bringing out the old family photos and walking down memory lane with the rest of the family. Before you put the photos back where you store them, take some time to identify, cull, and organize at least a few. You will be happy you did.

For tips on culling, organizing, and sharing family photos, visit LocalArchiver.com.

Organizing Family Photos - Getting Started

Most people will admit to the need and desire to get their family photos under better control. Many will also admit to being overwhelmed by the thought of such a project.

This sense of need for better photo organization is often based on a desire to more broadly share our photo images with friends and extended family. If only we had our photos better organized, we could produce those impressive photo books, collage posters, and image based holiday and greeting cards we have seen our friends make. Still many are paralyzed at the thought of organizing, scanning, and labeling all those images that have been accumulated in boxes and on our hard drives.

Complicating the task, and another cause for procrastination, are the challenges of learning about ways to combine family photo collections that include prints, digital files, and in many cases slides and perhaps video film.

The key to making progress is to simply get started. This process is a bit like going to the dentist. It is not likely to hurt as much as you fear, and just think about how good you will feel when you have the project behind you.

Three key organizing tips to keep in mind.

1.) Eliminate Images that Hold Little Value - It is likely that much of what you have collected over time has lost much of it's importance. We tend to keep all the photos taken at a particular event even though some are clearly better than others. Remember that the memory of the event is normally more important than any one particular image. With the passage of time, perhaps one good photo of your first car is plenty. Likewise, unless you married your prom date, with the passage of time, the prom photo has clearly become less important.

If you start your organizing project by eliminating images that are truly bad and/or have little present value to your collection, it becomes a much easier task to properly cherish, organize, and share the best and most highly valued images that remain. If you head into the project with the intent of applying the 80/20 rule, you will likely find that 20% of the images hold 80% of the interest/value or that perhaps only 20% of the images actually deserve to be organized and shared.

2.) There is Considerable Help Available - Driven largely by the evolution of digital technology, it has recently become much easier to creatively organize and share family photo images. A good first step is to consolidate print and digital collections . Once family photo images are in digital file format, it becomes quite easy to accomplish many family photo sharing projects at home or online. Family photo history books, custom greeting and holiday cards, photo collages and posters, and spectacular family photo wall groupings are only a few clicks away with the help of sophisticated online services.

In order to create your consolidated digital family photo collection, it is possible to have your prints scanned professionally at a reasonable cost. Simply place prints of varied sizes into a provided envelop or box and send them off to be scanned and returned. Visit ScanDigital and/or ScanCafe to preview and try their services.

3.) Any Step is a Good Step - Take a moment to think about how you might feel if your photo collection is lost in a disaster or simply becomes a burden to whoever may ultimately tidy up your estate.

You do not need to complete the entire project all at once. It may be best to simply grab one of several boxes of family photo prints or one deteriorating album and organize these images. Perhaps send out one of several potential batches of prints to be scanned in order to take a positive step and to see how the service works. If you do not have the time to start a large project, make it a series of smaller projects.
-----------------------------------
For more tips and suggestions, read Tips for Sorting and Culling Photos and Documents at LocalArchiver.com

Family Photo Framing - Easy and Inexpensive

Most of us have some place on a wall in our home that would be perfect for an arrangement of family photo images of special memories or places. Finding the right frames to properly display these images can be intimidating as there are so many choices at the local framing shop and on the Internet.

Many museums use frames with simple clean lines when displaying collections of images in order to focus attention on the images themselves and to provide a sense of unity with other matching frames.

This approach can be used very effectively in creating a wall grouping of favorite family photos. Reasonably priced archival quality frames are available with pre-cut mat openings.

To develop ideas and explore the possibilities, visit the framing area at Blick Art Materials. When exploring the framing area, be sure to take a look at Blick Art Materials' selection of Nielsen Bainbridge Archival Gallery Frames. Another good source of reasonably priced ready made and custom frames is ArchivalMethods.com.

For more tips and ideas on creating a wall grouping of favorite family photos, see the article on Using Family Photos in Stunning Wall Displays at LocalArchiver.com.

Family Photo Storage - Some Major Environmental Factors

Despite the good intentions of many families to better organize family photo prints, stacks of photo prints are often stored in unfriendly environments.

Until they get around to organizing the photo print collection, it is useful for them to understand that some things can be done quickly and easily to prolong the useful life of the images.

Most deterioration of the paper, pigments, and binders used for older prints is attributable to chemical reactions. Therefore, any effort to minimize or slow these chemical reactions is helpful. The attic, basement, and garage are simply not good places to store photo prints.

Major environmental factors related to these locations include:

Temperature - Museums strive to maintain temperatures of roughly 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Although it may not be possible to control temperature as precisely as a museum, the further outside of a human comfort zone, the greater the risk to your collection. Extremes and dramatic swings in temperature damage the paper and other materials in photos and documents by accelerating chemical reactions and/or by expansion and contraction.

Humidity - Museums typically strive to maintain a relative humidity of 50%. Particularly in combination with temperature extremes, humidity both initiates and accelerates many chemical reactions. High humidity can also create an environment conducive to mold and mildew, a situation that can cause rapid deterioration and irreversible damage.

Pollutants - Pollutants include a broad range of substances or objects that cause or accelerate chemical reactions, or create an increased risk of abrasion or other surface damage. These pollutants include dust, smoke, fumes from cleaning materials, chemicals and acids present in improper storage materials, and many glues and tapes used to mount and display images. Even fumes being created by natural chemical reactions in unventilated storage can accelerate other chemical processes. Clean storage areas, reasonable ventilation, and proper archival storage materials reduce the risks associated with most pollutants.

Pests - Insects and rodents may choose to take up residence in certain types of paper. Worse yet, they may perceive the collection to be a food source. The best way to avoid pest damage is to periodically inspect the collection in order to detect and resolve a pest problem early.

Exposure to Light - Museums go to extraordinary lengths to control exposure of collections to certain types of light. Many types of lighting, particularly direct sunlight, impact chemical reactions of the different materials that may be contained in displayed objects, and fade or discolor images in a meaningful way. Careful placement of displayed images, rotation of collections, use of special lighting, and day-to-day display of duplicates, are some of the many techniques used to control the level of exposure to harmful light.

Therefore, at a minimum, photo print collections should be stored in areas of the house that feel comfortable to the home owners. It is better to store the prints in a closet than in an attic, garage, or basement, as the temperature and humidity is likely to be closer to museum standards and more consistent in the closet. It is also important to eliminate obvious pollutants such as paper clips and rubber bands. Use of proper storage materials such as acid free envelopes and boxes will also help to prolong the useful life of the prints.

For additional tips and resource suggestions on family photo and document storage, organization, and image sharing, visit LocalArchiver.com.

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.

Family Photo Sharing in The Digital Age

There are now so many creative ways to share digital family photo images. If you have not yet tried some of the popular online photo image services, you likely can not grasp the range of possibilities.

In days past, we would ultimately remember to take that roll of film to be developed and perhaps order double prints so that we could share photos with at least one friend or another family member. Less often we would take a negative to have additional prints made. This is the reason many of us have older one-of-a-kind prints that others would like to have as well.

Now most of us have more recent subjects as digital image files on our computers. Many of us send downsized copies via email or post these in an online album and send a link for a quick look by friends and relatives.

Older relatives without easy access to email or the internet, and those who simply can not be bothered, are now often left out of the image sharing flow.

By easily uploading your images to an online gallery, you can then order inexpensive prints for hard copy display and sharing, create photo books, and access a broad range of other image based products.

My favorite online printer is Shutterfly.com based on its breadth of products and cutting edge services, including its share sites. Uploading and storing your digital images is free. Then you or others ordering prints and image products pay only for orders placed. Your relatives who want a print can place the order and pay themselves. If you know a relative without access to the digital photo album would want a print, you can order one for them and have it delivered directly. Prints are typically shipped within two days, and there is an option to pick up 4x6 prints at local Target stores.

It is also easy to take your best older one-of-a-kind prints and turn them into digital files that can then be added to your online gallery and/or used in other family photo projects.

If you do not have the time, energy, expertise, or equipment to scan your older prints, check out the services of ScanDigital.com.

If you are hesitant to create an online album because you have so many old prints and digital files on your computer, try one of the online services such as Shutterfly with just a handful of images. Once you realize how easy the process can be and experience the flexibility and convenience, you are likely to become more motivated to grab a second handful. You will also begin to see the many sharing possibilities more clearly.

For more family photo sharing guides and project ideas, visit LocalArchiver.com.

Preserving Family Photos and Documents - Archival Paper Basics

Understanding the basic archival qualities of paper is useful in understanding how long a family photo or document might last, and to better select proper paper storage products.

Most paper produced since the late 1800s has been produced using wood pulp, an inherently acidic material. The quality of paper made from wood pulp often equates to how many steps are taken in the manufacturing process to reduce the acidity of the paper and to improve the chemical stability of better quality papers.

This is why we see rapid deterioration of cheaper paper materials such as newsprint, which remains highly acidic. This rapid deterioration is the result of chemical reactions, which are accelerated by light, heat, and humidity.

There are some labeling terms often used with paper products, which provide clues to the appropriateness of using paper for archival storage purposes.

Be cautious as you see these terms, as suppliers' definitions of archival qualities vary. In any case, if you can become satisfied that paper being used for reproductions and storage are chemically stable, your preservation efforts are improved.

pH Balanced - A chemically neutral paper is typically described as pH balanced. This paper will have a pH between 7.5 and 10. A pH of 7.5 is often referred to as "balanced" and a pH of 10 is often associated with "archival".

Buffered - Paper is referred to as buffered when it is manufactured to contain a small amount of Calcium Carbonate to act as a barrier to acid contamination. The calcium carbonate is typically in the range of 2%.

Acid Free - The term acid free is used to suggest a very low acidic content. In paper content descriptions, this is often denoted as the % of lignin content. Lignin is an acidic compound present in wood. Therefore, a very low lignin content percentage is indicative of a low acid content, and is often described as acid free.

Archival - Materials are best described as archival when the pH approaches 10, and lignin is not present. However, you may see materials described as archival when pH is above 7.5, only small percentages of lignin are present, and materials are buffered.

Although many products sold through mass marketers are labeled archival or such, the best way to be certain of labeling is to buy from sources that are experienced with these materials. Dick Blick Art Materials has a dedicated archival materials department and Archival Methods provides a broad range of archival storage products, and provides custom solutions as well.

Photo Fading Factors - A Reason to Consider Having Your Photos Printed Online

Inkjet printers are the most common choice for home photo printing, and printer manufacturers have made great strides in providing relatively inexpensive equipment to satisfy home printing needs. Compared to just a few years ago, we can now create astonishing photo prints at home with available color and resolution capabilities.

However, a risk that we should all be aware of is the permanence of the image we print at home. Each printer manufacturer and office supply company offers us a complex choice of inks to feed our printers, and each of these have varied qualities that impact the original printed image and how long it will survive before colors shift and fade. Equally mysterious is the wide choice of papers to place beneath the ink image as these papers also deteriorate and will perhaps impact the inked image above.

In order to be confident that your home prints will last as long as possible, you would need to learn the language of paper and ink quality characteristics and conduct some comparative research. Wilhelm Imaging Research is the best know image permanence testing organization, and they publish test results for many brand name inks and papers. Better papers and inks can be expected to reflect a higher cost. This is something to consider the next time you reach for bargain private label photo paper at your local office supply superstore.

On the other hand, large online printers such as Shutterfly.com need to be able to satisfy the questions and printing needs of their most sophisticated professional photographer customers. The online printers' professional staff and buying clout allow them to identify and purchase the best materials for initial and long lasting quality. It is also important to note that processes used by major online printers are simply not the same as those available in the home.

Although printing at home may provide some instant gratification and you may like the apparent added control over the editing and printing process, you are probably not using materials that will maximize the enjoyment of the image by you and perhaps future generations. The effort to identify the best materials for your home printer combined with the added cost of these materials may actually exceed the cost of having your prints made professionally. Even if you use quality materials at home, you may still not attain the same consistent high quality available through major online printers.

For a description of materials used by at least one major online printer, go to Shutterfly.com, use the menu near the page top to access "help" and then search on "Photographic Print Durability" once in the help section.

It is clearly useful to have a photo printing capacity in the home for many photo projects. However, if the purpose of printing a photo includes the goal of long lasting enjoyment, perhaps into future generations, one should consider the image permanence issues raised above, and at least explore having the print made professionally and conveniently by a major online printer.

For a broader discussion of printing photos, read the article titled Printing Quality Photo and Document Digital Images at LocalArchiver.com.

Feedback on Photo and Document Preservation and Sharing Topics Most Welcomed

This blog and its related website, LocalArchiver.com, have now been up and running for about three months. In addition to starting this blog in June, articles have been added to the LocalArchiver.com website and additional features such as print friendly pages and the ability to email page links to others are now available.

I am receiving some welcomed feedback on the usefulness of the site. This feedback is much appreciated, as it is the primary way of knowing whether others are finding the website content useful. This feedback also lets me know that the site is beginning to meet its primary goal of helping families and community historical societies save time and money in their efforts to organize, preserve, and share photos and documents in their image collections.

Feedback to date has been positive. Some kind excerpts from emails include:

"Great job on developing a user friendly and informative web
site."

"...Your site is fabulous! I just checked out your blog, too. Very nice. Extremely informative, too.... I have fallen heir to a great deal of very old photographs and letters. You're helping me preserve things as they ought to be. I'm forever grateful for that. "

"I don't know how I stumbled on your site but thankfully I did! ......I still have a long way to go but I have a much clearer vision now and feel the weight has lifted from my shoulders. A HUGE thank you! Your site, resources and links are wonderful...."

Feedback such as this has helped me to feel that I am on the right track and that some visitors are finding the content at LocalArchiver.com useful.

I ask that visitors also let me know what they feel is missing, inaccurate, or unclear. Many of the topics in the website are subject to ongoing debate (best scanning resolutions, best number of pixels for quality print resolution, etc., etc.). The LocalArchiver.com offers what it considers to be the best information available, consolidated and presented in a way to be useful to a non-professional.

Clearly, the "rightness" of a given solution is somewhat dependent on circumstances. The "correct" image capture resolution and digital file format selection will likely be different for a family vacation photo and a professional landscape photo.

Likewise, a large urban museum with a full time professional staff will likely catalog collection images differently than a community historical society. Please keep providing feedback, both positive and constructive, so that we can jointly make LocalArchiver.com as useful as possible, and to represent the varied views of visitors to this blog and to LocalArchiver.com.

Family Memories and Color Photo Prints Fade Together

Due to differences in materials and processes used, family color photo prints begin to show deterioration much more rapidly than older black and white photo prints. For a relatively concise explanation of why, read A Consumer Guide to Traditional and Digital Print Stability at the Image Permanence Institute website.

In short, the dyes, pigments, and other materials used to create color photo prints are inherently less stable than those used in black and white prints, and the materials and processes vary more widely. Therefore, it is generally agreed that noticeable fading and color shifts are possible within roughly 50 years, even when prints are properly handled and stored.

Color photo prints became widely available in the 1950s. Therefore, most families are likely to have some portion of their collection demonstrating this color photo print instability, and they can expect to see additional deterioration of aging color prints in the future.

The Image Permanence Institute article suggests that "Color prints, not electronic files, are the best way to ensure that digital images will be preserved for future generations."

I agree that understanding the optimal print technology, storage, and handling of color prints is important, particularly when a decision is made to display prints in albums, scrapbooks, and elsewhere in the home.

However, I believe that creating digital scans of older color prints before they show fading, and properly managing newly created digital files is the best way to preserve and share these images with current and future family generations. In addition to expanded ways to share and distribute the images once in digital format, I believe that we can be confident that clever people will develop ways for us to easily transition digital family history images from generation to generation.

Clearly one should create backups of digital files to avoid complete loss in the event of equipment failure. However, backups of photo prints is equally important, as these are subject fire, floods, and other calamity as well.

Digital file formats, digital storage media, and the technology used to view the digital images will undoubtedly change over time. However, this will not happen overnight. Further, I am willing to bet that my descendants will be smart enough to see these changes coming and transfer family digital image information to evolving technology. I also suspect that there will be competitive business services to help them. There are still a lot of ways to transfer old 8mm movies to DVD, and I am confident that there will be inexpensive and readily available ways to transfer CD and DVD information to the next and subsequent generations of storage media. There are simply too many digital jpeg images on hard drives, CDs, and DVDs to think that these digital images are at greater risk than prints.

I also believe that the transfer of family history images can be made easier and more likely by placing the images in the proper digital format and distributing multiple copies now. Regardless of the care taken to prolong the useful life of one-of-a-kind color prints, many will be faded in another generation or two, and will become more likely to simply be tossed as faded old photos that were not properly captioned and indexed as digital files.

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

To explore creating digital files of your older color prints, or your entire photo print collection, visit ScanDigital.com.

Now is a Good Time to Plan Off-Season Photo and Document Preservation and Sharing Projects

The summer months always seem a bit busier than other seasons of the year.

Families travel, vacation, attend reunions, and participate in a broad range of other seasonal pleasures with friends and extended family. The end result is likely an increase in the many photo images that are already on the shelf or in the computer, and the number of photos that you hope to organize and share someday. Families may not have time to take on a major photo organizing and sharing project during the hectic summer. However, thinking about your off-season project goals now can be helpful later.

As you capture memories of a trip, you may think about how to best caption and arrange a photo book to tell the story of the trip. Keeping a short journal of the trip may be helpful. As you attend reunions, you may want to talk to other family members about how to coordinate the sharing of one-of-a-kind photos held by others. You might find out that a particular family member has a growing interest in starting a genealogy project, and another is already interested in organizing and sharing extended family photos. A family discussion of such things can lead in interesting directions.

Volunteers at community historical societies are often quite busy with summer season fund raising fairs, extended collection viewing hours, and perhaps building or display renovations.

However, chances are that volunteer interest and participation are at a peak, and some discussions about off-season projects can be very fruitful.

When extended family and historical society member interest in photos and other images is at a peak, establishing some preliminary photo and document preservation and sharing project plans for the off-season can provide some momentum into the slower off seasons.

For additional "HowTo" information, and family and community historical society project ideas, visit LocalArchiver.com.

Many Benefits to Sharing Family and Community Historical Society Photos Online

The ability to share on the Internet is a powerful thing. Images, ideas, news, music, product information, and you name it.

A meaningful opportunity for families is to easily unlock the sharing potential of the many photos now being held by a single family member in a shoebox, dresser drawer, or traditional album or scrapbook. By digitizing these closely held images and placing them online, the extended family can share, print, and download the digital files for their own creative project purposes.

The images can be easily shared by distant family members as a basis for gathering image identification information and genealogical color. The act of sharing online can reveal a particular family member's interest in coordinating an effort to better organize a family tree and the history around it. For more online family image sharing ideas and thoughts, read the article Sharing Possibilities Expand with Digital Images at LocalArchiver.com.

Community historical and genealogical societies have similar opportunities by developing or expanding their online image sharing activities. Placing images online clearly expands the viewing potential and can help the society meet its community history education objectives, generate additional interest in society activities, boost membership interest, and likely help in fundraising activities.

For additional ideas and guides to scanning, preserving, and sharing photos and documents, visit LocalArchiver.com.

Online Image Galleries - Many Options With or Without a Website

Many community historical societies have a desire to establish or strengthen their web presence. Cost and volunteer web design experience have both been challenges. As community education and collection sharing are typical society missions, finding ways to share collection images is often a priority goal.

There are many alternatives, and even combinations of alternatives, available to expand online image sharing activities. A society need not have a website or volunteer web design expertise to get started.

Societies with some expertise and a website may still find it advantageous to expand their current image display activities, or even to market some special images as a fundraising activity by using inexpensive third party services available online.

If any member of a community historical or genealogical society can place scanned images in a folder on their own computer, the society already has the ability to create an online image gallery. Beyond that, additional sharing and fundraising options are numerous.

For some image gallery examples, ideas, and suggestions, visit the article on Sharing Photos and Documents in Image Galleries on the Internet at LocalArchiver.com.

Prepaid Scanning - Unlock the Family Photos Being Held Captive

When family photo collections are passed along, it is often the case that one family member, perhaps a sibling or cousin, ends up with the bulk of the collection that includes photos that are most important to individual members of the family.

Even with the best of intentions, the sibling or cousin may just not get around to sorting and/or scanning the images for distribution.

I was chatting with a friend over a barbecue grill last night and he mentioned that a cousin had several of his childhood photos held captive. He had previously offered to buy the cousin a scanner to get her started, but he was not taken up on the offer.

As an alternative, I suggested that he canvas other family members who may feel the same way and that he ask them to contribute to a bulk prepaid scanning plan at one of the major scanning services.

I suggested that for the price of a nice dinner, he and some other family members can get their hands on all of the photo images held captive by the good intentioned, but procrastinating cousin.

Both ScanDigital and ScanCafe have programs which allow someone to purchase prepaid scanning. The scanning services will then send a gift card or even a box to the cousin or sibling with instructions to simply fill it up and use the pre-printed mailing label.

What could be simpler for my friend? What could be easier for the cousin? What could be more important for you?

This pre-paid service as a gift for parents is also a great way to get the family photos preserved and shared before they wind up with a single sibling or cousin.

For additional thoughts on scanning images, and photo preservation and sharing, visit LocalArchiver.com.

Protecting Treasured Images - Family and Historical Society Photo Preservation

When famed photographer Ansel Adams was once asked which of his wife or his negatives he would first save from a burning house, his reply was thoughtful. "My wife, she could help me get the negs out!"

Ansel had a plan, and the rest of us should as well. Many families and community historical societies could do a much better job in planning to protect against a disaster. A bit of thoughtful disaster planning can also help to develop overall preservation and sharing priorities.

A logical first step is to develop a good sense of what you have in your collection. Although a worthy goal, I am not necessarily suggesting a complete assessment and cataloging. Rather, a rough idea of what categories are located where.

The next step is to visualize the potential pain associated with the loss of certain categories, and then develop a plan to best protect these most important categories. Perhaps your historical society has certain categories that best reflect your mission. Perhaps family photos of the immediate family are deemed more important than high school yearbooks and other memorabilia.

Thinking about what would be most tragic to lose can help you to develop priorities and a plan to protect your most treasured images. Developing priorities is important to many families and community historical societies as they must allocate limited time and budgets.

In many cases, there are things that can be done quickly and inexpensively to protect at least a portion of a collection. If a family or historical society has a portion of their collection already in digital format, an easy protective step is to duplicate the files to a CD, DVD, or memory stick, and to place the backups off premise with a family relative, society officer, or in a safe deposit box.

When considering priorities, it is also important to remember that the "importance" and "quality" of images do vary. If an image simply does not "speak" to us any longer, it should probably be assigned a lower priority in our preservation activities.

Giving some honest thought to what you would miss most in your image collection in the event of a calamity and total loss will help you prioritize your preservation and collection activities, and better understand where you should focus your energy, time, and money in photo and document preservation and sharing activities.

Like most things in life, it may be that the 80/20 rule can be applied to image preservation and sharing. Perhaps roughly 20% of your collection deserves 80% of your efforts, and 80% of the audience for the images is most interested in roughly 20% of the collection.

In a recent culling and scanning project of our family's photo prints, we eliminated about 80% by weight and feel pretty good about it. It was interesting that my wife did the first cull, and I did a secondary review of eliminated prints. In each and every case, when I had a question about keeping a print she had eliminated, she was able to quickly produce a better print of the related person, place, or event. Indeed, we only needed the best family reunion group photo from ten years ago, not all ten photos taken at the time.

Prints that remain have been scanned, duplicate CDs are in the safe deposit box, and digital images are being shared in a variety of ways. We do have the originals stored in archival boxes, but take considerable comfort in knowing that duplicate images are always available and have been shared more widely.

For additional tips on preservation and sharing activities for families and historical or genealogical societies, visit LocalArchiver.com.

Scan Resolutions and Photo Preservation and Sharing

A common question among families and historical society volunteers is what resolution should be used for scanning photos and documents for archiving and sharing.

As you might expect, the simplest answer is that it depends. It primarily depends upon the size of the original to be scanned and the anticipated size of prints that may be made.

When considering digital scan and print resolution, our primary interest is pixels per inch (ppi) that we capture in the scan and then have available to spread over a selected print size. Generally, we will want to capture more pixel resolution as the size of the original decreases and/or the size of the intended print increases. At LocalArchiver.com, there are several articles on scanning and printing that are intended to clarify how these activities relate.

The human eye is pressed to discern print quality differences at greater than 300 ppi and quality images can be printed at resolutions well below this. In the LocalArchiver.com article on printing, I compare the minimum resolution requirements for several major online printers. This is informative as these resolutions have been found to be satisfactory to a vast majority of their customers.

If you are scanning a 4 x 6 print so that you can then print several additional 4 x 6 prints to distribute to family, a scan at 300 ppi should be plenty of resolution. This is the case as 300 ppi is described as professional print quality. If you believe that you may someday desire to print an enlargement, you may wish to capture more pixels in your scan, perhaps 600 ppi. This would allow you to spread captured pixels on a print size that is twice the size of the original and still maintain a print resolution of 300 ppi.

In articles at LocalArchiver.com, the relationships between pixel capture by scanning and printing pixel needs are developed further. In general, LocalArchiver.com recommends that families and historical societies routinely scan at 600 ppi to maintain flexibility with images into the future while not generating excessively large image files. It is also recommended that the jpeg format at high quality / low compression be the digital file format of choice.

Many local photo labs are acquiring equipment to bulk scan prints. However, many are restricting their scans to 300 ppi and then save the image files at less than high quality compression. This is the case since higher resolution scans require more operator and equipment time, and more compression / lower quality files save storage space on the lab's equipment.

Professional services focused entirely on scanning will typically offer a choice of resolutions and will provide high quality files of the images. ScanDigital is such a service, and is a good choice for a family or historical society that is seeking consistent high quality scanning. Clearly there is an opportunity to take advantage of quantity discounts with such a service. However, there is no requirement to have an entire collection scanned at the same time, and giving such a service a try may represent a first and important step toward better preserving your photos and opening many additional opportunities to share your images once in digital format.

Historical & Genealogical Society Projects and Service-Learning

Many historical and genealogical societies have some level of interaction with local schools. However, most have an opportunity to become more creative by exploring additional ways to interact with teachers and their students.

I recently stumbled upon a website for the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse. This website contains many thought provoking suggestions about how to start or strengthen a historical or genealogical society's project relationship with local schools. Several historical preservation projects are described, and many resource links are provided.

The basic concept is to match historical society needs with learning opportunities for students. A few of the projects described are collecting and documenting oral histories, researching important community history topics, documenting and preserving artifacts, and scanning / captioning / publishing historical images in a local paper. The possibilities are limited only by a society's imagination.

These projects provide students with a practical and real world learning experience, the students are providing a service to the community, the historical society has found additional resources to advance its preservation and sharing objectives, and the society has hopefully enthused the next generation of society volunteers and leaders.

A good place to start a browse of the website is on a page titled Service- Learning & Historic Preservation: Benefits. Additional tabs below the title provide examples, resources, and first steps.

If your historical or genealogical society has an example of a successful project partnering experience with a school, please share it in a comment.

Photo Preservation and Sharing Life's Little Pleasures

When we consider why photos in our family or community image collections are so important and cherished, a common thread appears.

Most family photo images are captured to document life's milestones, celebrations, social gatherings, and accomplishments. These include births, birthdays, graduations, holidays, family gatherings, vacations, and special recognitions.

In the case of community historical societies, the most treasured images are often of "simpler times". This historical record of a community at work and play might include images of local industry, community organizations, fairs, dances, and local recreational interests.

These images taken together represent a photographic history of family and community. Family, historical society, and genealogical society collections speak volumes about our family and community past. These images form a foundation of our collective memories and identities.

As we approach the summer season, we anticipate parades, family vacations, reunions, visits from distant relatives, picnics, and many other fair weather activities. A good time to sample life's little pleasures with family and community.

Be sure to keep a camera close at hand to preserve and share memories of these simple pleasures, just as our ancestors did.

Discover more about photo and document preservation and sharing at LocalArchiver.com.

Photo Preservation and Sharing - Any Step is a Good Step

Families and volunteer dependent community historical societies can easily become overwhelmed with the range of photo and document image preservation and sharing possibilities. Technology and the Internet have fostered many competitive services all willing to help you store, preserve, and showcase photo and document collections.

At the same time, professional curators and archivists are scrambling to keep up with the growing volume of materials to preserve, and the setting of standards that will make it possible to globally share all of this information.

Professionals who are being paid to find ways to connect their collection to a global network of libraries and museums must be mindful of the avalanche of information. Non-professionals are often simply blinded by this volume of information about what can and should be done.

Non-professionals simply do not have the time, money, tools, or training to undertake preservation projects in the same way as paid professionals in a library or museum preservation department.

Therefore, families and community historical society volunteers should become comfortable that any step toward preserving and sharing photos or documents in their collections is a good step.

Volunteers and families can accomplish much by starting small and taking modest steps by using inexpensive and readily available services to preserve and share their most treasured images. A worthy objective may be to digitize and index an entire collection. However, simply finding 25 or so treasured family or community images and sharing them with a broader audience on a free share site will provide meaningful enjoyment to all involved.

Increased Image Sharing Can Increase Community Support

Public display of the image treasures held by a community historical or genealogical society is an easy way to increase the level of community support for a society's activities. If photos, documents, and other images are only viewable in a society's museum or archives, it is likely that many in the broader community have only a vague notion about the society's preservation activities.

With technology available today, it is relatively easy and inexpensive to share collection images with a broader community by placing some images online or by putting some image prints on display around town.

If a society has a website, it is simple to add an image gallery. If a society does not have a website, free and easy share sites can be built quickly to gain a web presence, and these can be expanded over time. A society can then create a full blown website when appropriate.

A few scans of images owned by the society or in the public domain is all that is needed to be able to share images with the broader community.

Once digital images are available, it is also an easy and logical step to make prints and image gift items available as a fundraising activity to support ongoing projects.

Greater display of historically interesting community images is likely to increase awareness of society activities, bolster enthusiasm about a community's rich history, and this can ultimately lead to expanded volunteer and financial support.

For more thoughts and suggestions, visit the "Sharing" section and "Projects for Local Historical Societies" at LocalArchiver.com.

Professional Preservation Standards and Community Historical Societies

There is little argument that some digitization and collection description standards are needed in order to effectively share the world's library and museum collections on the web.

To satisfy a global collection sharing goal, relatively complicated and costly cataloguing systems are being advocated by library, museum, and archiving professionals. The professional side of the debate suggests that it should be done once, and done to professional standards.

On the other side of the debate, resource constrained and volunteer managed community historical and genealogical societies often do not have the expertise or funding to accomplish what salaried professionals are advocating as standards.

Therefore, many community historical and genealogical societies may be left to design their own approach and standards for collection preservation and sharing. It may be appropriately decided that the typical vintage photo in a community historical society collection does not need to be scanned at the same resolution, and described in the same detail as an item in the scanning department of the Smithsonian.

The LocalArchiver would suggest that moving ahead with some level of digital preservation and sharing is more important than hoping to someday digitize a collection to professional standards. In the meantime, originals will still be properly stored with archival quality materials.

At a minimum, community societies can select some of their best photo and document images and share these with their local community through online galleries. Placing photo and document images on a website or share site is within the ability of many volunteers. For step by step guidance and discussion of alternative approaches, visit LocalArchiver.com.

Historical Society Projects With Schools

A previously written LocalArchiver.com article suggested some ways to partner with local schools. See Historical Society Educational Programs for the Local Community.

I just ran across a History Channel sponsored grant program called "Save Our History". The list of 2008/2009 grant recipients and descriptions of their projects makes for some interesting reading. Most are collaborations between community historical societies and local school systems.

The descriptions are probably useful in expanding the list of ideas about how a community historical or genealogical society might collaborate with local schools.

Organizing Family Photos

As I poke around the Internet, I see plenty of advice on how to organize older photo prints. Clearly, this is a personal decision and any step that helps you locate a picture and improves storage/organization is useful. Common suggestions are to place the prints in archival quality storage containers by date or to organize the prints in albums or scrapbooks. Fine suggestions and viable alternatives.

However, if you want to supercharge your ability to preserve, locate, and share images, digitizing the prints by scanning before properly storing them will increase your near and long term flexibility tremendously. You do not necessarily need to scan the prints yourself as there are professional scanning services that can do the job for you at a reasaonable price.

With older prints available as digital images, you can consolidate your image collection with your more recent photos, which you likely already have in digital format.

Now the fun begins. As online image services continue to expand and become easier to use, you can accomplish many satisfying and creative projects easily and inexpensively.

• Upload some of the digital images to a free online album so that extended family members can order prints or gift items of the images.


• Create a free family share site for family members to share images, schedules, ideas, favorite links, genealogical updates, recipes, etc.


• Upload some themed images and add captions and text to create a photo book of a family trip or a portion of family history to mark a significant birthday.


• Take those digital images and organize them using software like Photoshop Elements. With such software, you can create your own album categories and searchable keywords or "tags". Now you have a searchable digital image library and you are able to find all photos of uncle Pete simply by typing Pete into the search field. You can also find all photos in a given category such as "ancestors", simply by clicking on the category name.

Yes, there is a cost in having photos scanned professionally or in time to do it yourself. However, those old prints are probably one of the most valuable things you own. If you are planning to organize your older prints, the added step of digitizing them is one that will provide you many aditional ways to share the images in the future.

For detailed guides on how to scan, organize, and share family photo and document images, pay a visit to LocalArchiver.com.

Genealogical & Historical Societies - Common Interests

It is interesting to explore the websites of organizations which have titled themselves as either genealogical societies or historical societies. Such titles often distinguish the emphasis of their activities. However, many of their objectives and interests are similar.

Although some genealogical societies limit their activities to helping individuals trace family lineages, many move beyond the family tree to family history. Once a society includes family history in its objectives, it is difficult to ignore how community history and family history become a common interest.

Sense of place, sense of community, and sense of personal identity are clearly related. The character, values, and legacy of many of our ancestors was very much shaped by the history of the communities in which they lived and raised there families.

For these reasons, many members of community historical societies have an interest in family genealogy projects, and many members of genealogical societies have a strong interest in community history.

It should not be a surprise that the mission statements and projects of many genealogical societies and historical societies reflect this common interest in family and community history.

Therefore, LocalArchiver's guides to preserving and sharing family and historical society photo and document collections are also guides to preserving and sharing family and community histories. For more color, see the LocalArchiver.com article on The Importance of Preserving Historical Photos and Documents.

Family Photos - Share Sites are a Great Way to Start Sharing

I recently spent some time at Shutterfly to learn more about their free share site service. I was so impressed with the ease and flexibility of their template that I decided to create a sample family share site so that visitors to LocalArchiver.com could better visualize how they might benefit from creating one of their own. No web design experience is needed, and Shutterfly has made it easy and relatively intuitive to build a very customizable share site.

These share sites are much more than a place to park some photos for sharing. The many useful and powerful features will allow you to be very creative in customizing the share site for your own interests and needs.

Features can be useful to share images, thoughts, schedules, favorite links, and much more among members of many types of communities. These might include extended families, youth sports teams, and special interest clubs and organizations.

Want to post thoughts or articles and allow community member comments? Might it be useful to see current weather at multiple locations? Would a community benefit by sharing a handy list of favorite and relevant web links? Could a youth sports team roster or organization membership list be useful? Might a detailed calendar of events or project tracking be useful to an organization?

A Shutterfly share site may be just the thing for your family or organization. Learn more and access the sample family website by reading LocalArchiver's article on Building a Shutterfly Family Share Site.

Historical Society Membership - Encouraging Broader Participation

I have observed that many community historical societies appear to attract and cater to a retired population. This is understandable since years of age seem to be tied to the level of interest in personal and community history and heritage. It is also no secret that retirees generally have some additional time to volunteer and pursue their personal interests.

I believe there are many opportunities to expand the interest of young residents of a community in the activities of historical societies, and that this expansion of interest can benefit societies in multiple ways. These benefits include long term membership stability or growth, and the overall level of community support for a society's activities.

I suggest a few thoughts here and welcome comments from readers based on their experiences.

• Many off-season gatherings and presentations are scheduled mid-afternoon on weekdays, an inconvenient time for non-retirees. Perhaps substituting or adding a session at a more available time for working adults or teens would attract a broader audience.
• Developing a web presence and providing image galleries can be expected to expand awareness about society activities, and likely increase the overall level of community interest.
• Among the projects for societies described at LocalArchiver.com, there are suggestions for building some bridges to local schools. Any project that includes a conscious effort to get young folks involved in learning about community history can generate some level of additional interest. Project examples might include asking schools for help in developing a logo or web presence design (graphic arts), museum spring cleanup (community volunteer hours), assisting on history class projects (hands on history research), or help with computer cataloguing and indexing of collection images (computer science).