3 Ways to Preserve Family Photographs
Are you trying to archive your family photographs? Are you nervous about preserving your pictures?
Here are 3 simple ways you can preserve and archive your family memories:
1. Organize Your Photographs
This might seem like an obvious first step but many people (including my family) keep many loose photographs in a picture box. Before archiving, asses what you have and separate your photographs into groups. As simple as it is, sorting your photographs into albums by year or trip will help everything stay organized.
2. Add names or labels on the back
Labeling the back of your photographs might be the best way to preserve your family history. Try to add a name, date, and location to the back of as many pictures as possible. If you don’t know who people are or where and when pictures were taken, schedule a time to sit with your parents, grandparents, or any family member who would be able to help. That information will give context for generations and allow others to organize your family history in the future.
Side note: The easiest returns for the Museum of Lost Memories have been the finds with names on the back. So if you ever do lose photographs or memories, having a name or information on the back is the best way for it to be returned to you or a family member.
3. Digitize & Archive
As the world becomes more technological, it’s important to transition our memories from analog to digital. For some, this means adding your pictures to iPhoto or a folder on your desktop and for other it means having 3 duplicate hard drives stored inside of fireproof safes in unique locations. I think most should land somewhere in between.
I recommend buying one large hard drive to serve as your family archive. Start by digitizing you family photographs and add them to the drive in organized folders. You should try to use a high quality flatbed scanner like this one for photograph digitization. If you can’t afford one, you should use your phone to scan photographs for now - it’s better than nothing. Many use a second hard drive to serve as a backup in case one fails. Alternatively, you can use cloud storage like IDrive to backup your files.
For more in-depth archiving information, check out this Family Photo Archiving Guide: https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/7/1414/files/2019/06/Photo-Archving-Guide.pdf