A Genealogy New Year’s Resolution
A new year beckons. With it comes the opportunity to begin a new genealogy project.
Since I left my day job, each year I have focused on researching the life and lineage of a set of my great-grandparents. At Christmas time, I have written a biographical sketch of the chosen person and distributed it to the family. I completed that project this year, and I would like to begin to move back in time to work on my great-great grandparents. I may do one of them in 2013.
But I have another project in mind that will take most of my time. Over the years I have collected many family photos, and they are out of control. I have my own family photos stored in boxes and many portraits of previous generations filed in archival albums. I have digital copies of numerous cemetery markers. I also have paper bags full of pictures I salvaged from my parents’ house.
I need to sort and file everything. I want to take the time to digitize the portraits I have collected and to post them on my website. I want to add the cemetery marker photos to the website and to FindAGrave.com. Organizing, scanning, and uploading everything will take a lot of time, but I cannot stand the mess any longer.
I do not particularly enjoy working with electronic gadgets, so I know I will stop working on photos periodically to do some research on a great-great grandparent. I have gathered quite a bit of information already on some of them. I can flesh out one of their stories for a biographical sketch next Christmas. This way, I can enjoy doing a little research and move ahead with my writing project while preserving some family history all in the same year.
Now, how do you run that scanner again?
Teri, Don’t worry. Just pull out the scanner & you will remember. Happy scanning. Do you have a particular method for labeling your photos? I am torn between starting with the year {if known] or the Surname. What do you use?
At this point I have my genealogy photos in archival albums, arranged by surname. It works out for me because I do not have a large collection. I have not decided what to do as I tackle everything that belonged to my parents.