Every year around the “Gotta Get Organized!” time of year, I give away one free information product that helps folks just like you organize photo collections. This year, I asked my email list subscribers and readers to tell me about their greatest information need. We narrowed it down to two choices, and “How to Organize Photos Like An Archivist” was the winner. The final product will be a downloadable PDF file, but I’m getting this party started by publishing Part 1 right here on the blog.

Level of Description: What Does That Mean?

Most people assume that archival items (like photographic prints, for example) are cataloged individually. One at a time. Item by item. You know, the way books are cataloged individually. Or films. Or Weird Al Yankovic albums.

Here’s the thing: Those are individual works created for a specific purpose.

You can’t treat every memo in a large modern organization’s papers the same way as you treat the final print of a feature film. Imagine creating a title for every single document created by a large union over a 50 year timespan. Or every piece of outgoing and incoming correspondence for a U.S. Senator who served multiple terms. It’s not possible based on current staffing rates.

In my experience, item level description is the exception rather than the rule. Here in the real world, the amount of time it takes to create an item level inventory is much greater than the time it takes to type a list of folder titles. In comparison? The folder (or envelope) level seems utterly do-able. Which is why I’m such a big advocate for it.

Your Options (Other Than Item Level)

Basically, there are three other choices.

Collection level, box level and folder/envelope level. Nowt I’m gonna break it down in more detail for you below with examples. Ready?

Collection Level: This is the absolute minimum level of information to describe the papers of a single person or organization. There are oodles of reasons to organize based on ownership, but since we’re talking about family photo collections I want to keep it as uncomplicated as possible. JUST KNOW THIS: If you keep track of who owned which photographs, you have given yourself a fighting chance to identify the mystery ones.

Even when you’re only describing at the collection level, you can still convey some vitally important information.

• Anne Lyons Jacobs, 2 Photograph Albums and 3 Boxes of Loose Photographs, ca. 1880-1980 Note: Album 2 is acidic “magnetic” style, photo removal is HIGH PRIORITY.

Box Level: In my book, box level is just a skoonch below minimal acceptable level. It’s a great start, don’t get me wrong. I encourage you create a box level inventory as soon as you inherit someone else’s photographs. Therefore, I’m giving you two examples: One is an example of the kind of records it’s OK to leave at the box level, the other is how you describe it before your organizing project. This box level inventory helps you prioritize your bigger organizing project so you don’t lose your mind.

• 1 Box Recipe Cards, arranged alphabetically, ca 1940-1970 (1 cardfile box)
• Mom’s hat box with photos from her high school and college years (19xx-19xx).

Folder level: Me? I like to think of this level as the sweet spot. Totally do-able, but makes finding a specific photo quick and easy. The list doesn’t duplicate the collection, but it points you to the right place.

For example, you could put all the photos from one ancestor’s school years in a single envelope, or perhaps if it’s your own college years, the photos of your graduation weekend might take up an entire envelope or folder.

Don’t know the names of everyone in the photo? Or the names of anyyone? Simply put them in an envelope titled “unknown snapshots, ca. 19xx-19xx” When you put that folder title on a list, it’s under a heading that identifies who owned the photos. It’s hierarchical, which saves you from having to repeat the same information over and over.

Box 1: Anne Lyons Jacobs Photographs

• Folder 1: Lyons Family Photos, 1880-1910
• Folder 2: Unknown snapshots, ca. 1900-1920

What About Item Level?

Listen, if you have the time and patience to create an item level inventory for all the photographs in your care, then more power to you. Go for it! But if you have a lot of  unmarked mystery photos, item level description can be like a freight train to crazy town. How can you possibly create a title for each of your unknown photos? There are ways. The Photo Detective is there to help you, of course.

My main argument is this, and I’m putting it in all caps for the scanners, not because I’m yelling or anything…

GET FOLDER LEVEL CONTROL OF EVERYTHING

(YES, EVERYTHING)

BEFORE YOU GET BOGGED DOWN IN ITEM LEVEL DESCRIPTIONS.

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Got any questions?

Insights regarding your own photo organizing struggles?

Share then in the comments, below…

If you’ve got a large family photo collection that you’ve been meaning to organize and properly house, this is a chance to get the live version of my Joy of Organizing Photos class for the pre-recorded price.

Why is that a big deal? Because it means you can customize the class to meet the needs of your collection by asking on the live call, during the live web chat, or by emailing your question ahead of time. I’ve even set up a super seekrit email address that exists only for your questions. Not unlike The Batphone.  Just sayin.

Click here to visit the sales page for The Joy of Organizing Photos, which has all the details about what you’ll learn, how you’ll learn and even why it’s on sale.

If you’re on The Twitter, here’s a visual representation of what my tweets are about:

words used by @sally_j on twitter

[NOTE: This post originally appeared one year ago, July 30, 2007.]

Last year, Randy over at Genea-Musings found this wonderful photographic treasure in his Aunt Geraldine’s papers. He asked for input from readers to help date this pair of cased photographs. Randy’s post contains some great resources to help you date old photographs, so be sure to stop by. It’s nice to have resources pooled together like that. Thanks, Randy!

Dating old photographs is a very effective way to help identify who is in the photo. If you can narrow it down to a decade and you know your family tree, it’s much easier to figure out who is pictured in an unmarked photograph.

Here are two great books that will help you date your photographic treasures.

Uncovering Your Ancestry through Family Photographs
by Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective

As far as I’m concerned, Maureen Taylor is the Supreme Maven of Photo Dating. Lucky for us, she shares her expertise in easy to understand books written with genealogists in mind. This updated version of one of her classics is a must-have for every family archivist.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Every single rating on Amazon.com is 5 out of 5. Here’s the first review, click here to read them all.

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A beautiful and useful book, January 5, 2001

By	Mark Howells (Puyallup, Washington State, USA) – See all my reviews

This book is an outstanding way to expand your family history skills through photo research. It provides step-by-step advice on how to identify ancestors in photos using their poses, clothes, studio props, and other information.

After giving a history of photography with emphasis on identifying types of photographs by era, the author provides chapters such as “Looking for Clues”, “Identifying Costume”, and the very important “Identifying the Photographer”. The book also gives detailed information on how to build your own family photograph collection including the use of photograph worksheets and proper labeling.

The photographs used to illustrate the book are simply glorious. It is a visual treat to follow the pictorial examples given to explain the text. Each photo is an exquisite specimen of how our ancestors faced the camera.

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Oh, and don’t forget to visit Maureen’s Photo Detective blog.

Dressed for the Photographer
By Joan Severa

If you’re serious about dating photographs, there’s another book that will make your task much easier. You don’t need this book if you have an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of costume. What’s that? You don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of costume? Yeah, me neither…and I sourced historic photos for over six years. It takes a long time to build that expertise.

Once again, family historians are fortunate that an expert has shared her knowledge with the rest of us. Joan Severa is a former costume curator at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Joan’s book, Dressed for the Photographer, is PACKED with example photographs and arranged chronologically. The images are large enough for you to see the detail, and the book is printed on high quality paper (that’s why it’s so pricey). Joan points out all the hallmarks to look for when dating a photograph, including clothing, jewelry and hairstyles. She also does a fantastic job including photographs of regular working people, not just the wealthy. Amazing book. Nothing else like it out there.

[Photo Credit: Randy Seaver, Genea-Musings blog]
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Dating British Photos:

Reader Andrew Millard left a helpful tip in the comments section about a web site for dating British photographs:

http://www.cartes.freeuk.com/time/date.htm

Andrew says: “It has a wide range of dated photographs that you can compare to your own undated ones.” Thanks again, Andrew!

Other articles you might enjoy:
5 tips for preserving your one-of-a-kind family photographs
Where should I store my family photographs?
What to keep? What to toss?
Flash drives are NOT for long term storage
Why do archivists wear white gloves?

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You know how sometimes you click on a link and get an error message that says something like: 404 File Not Found?

Apelad created a set of illustrations for these kinds of HTTP error messages. You can see all of them in his flickr set.

My favorite is the one you see above. It’s for the 415 error message, which is “Unsupported Media Type.”
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While I was away on various summer vacations, I missed a major brouhaha in the online genealogical community. There have been many, many pixels spilled on this topic already, so I’ll try to be brief.

For those of you who don’t know, Ancestry.com is part of the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world. (Source: Wikipedia). Earlier this month, they cached (copied) entire web pages of genealogical content off the Internet and served them up as part of their “Internet Biographical Collection.” Initially, this content was available only to paying subscribers.

There was a major uproar, including accusations of intellectual property theft.

Ancestry.com quickly moved the collection to a section that required registration for access, but no fees were necessary to see the content. After continued criticisms, they pulled the “Internet Biographical Collection” entirely and apologized to the genealogical community.

If you missed the smackdown, Kimberly at genealogy.about.com has a nice summary, complete with links to posts by all the major players.

Oh, and speaking of nice…

At the same time this controversy broke, family history bloggers were busy spreading the love by tagging each other as Nice Bloggers.

I kid you not.

Denise Olsen of Family Matters started her More Naughty Than Nice post thusly: “Becky, thank you for including me as a nominee for the Nice Matters award although if you saw the steam coming out my ears at the moment, you might want to reconsider. . .” Then she tagged me as nice. Thanks, Denise!

So, my friends. What have we learned from all of this?

1. Family history bloggers are are tech savvy, and they keep in touch with each other.

2. Just because someone gladly shares information for free on their website, it doesn’t mean you can skip the part where you ask permission before you copy entire pages of his or her work. That’s not just copyright law, that’s good ethics and good business.

3. Nice doesn’t mean you don’t fight back when you feel cheated. Family history bloggers are an extremely nice bunch of folks, (it’s true, they really are) but they do NOT take kindly to you publishing their content without asking first.

4. Companies like Ancestry will change policy (quickly, I might add!) and apologize when faced with such resounding criticism.

But wait! Did Ancestry.com violate copyright or not?

I spent several years in charge of clearing permissions for a major children’s publisher. Even that doesn’t make me an expert. Basically, I know enough about copyright to realize that I don’t know jack about copyright.

Fortunately, Craig Manson (of GeneaBlogie) threw his expertise into the ring. Craig wrote a multi-part series called “Did Ancestry Violate the Copyright Law?” He teaches Law and Public Policy at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, and he is a member of the California Bar.

I highly recommend all of Craig’s posts about copyright.

P.S. I nominate Mary for a Nice Matters Award.
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I don’t know about you, but need a break from all the headaches of digital preservation. Lots of questions and speculation, very few concrete answers.

I’ll return to this topic in a while (I promise) but until then, let’s take a break and have a bit of fun, eh?

The video above is a delightful peek into Datamancer’s steampunk workshop.

What is steampunk?

This video from the Wall Street Journal is a nice introduction to the genre. For more info, check out the Wikipedia entry or visit one of my favorite steampunk blogs:

• Brass Goggles
• The Steampunk Home

P.S. I love how Mr. Datamancer weilds that leatherman tool thing-a-majig. A cross between a Zippo trick and a rock n’ roll drummer. Hooray for the tinkers!

UPDATE: According to Sneaky Business, there could be an off-the-shelf steampunk laptop available in the future. If it starts with a key, I will swoon.
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Sometimes, you put a question out to the universe and something marvelous comes back. Just last week, I featured DIY Maven‘s neat-o method for antiquing paper using instant coffee. I mused about how cool it would be to dye photographs using coffee. Ersatz sepia. (Read the original post here.)

Then I got an email from my friend Bob. Turns out his brother makes his own cyanotypes. Then he dyes them in wine. Or he dyes them in coffee.

The result is spooky-cool, and the images look like they’ve washed up from another era. Those hauntingly beautiful plastic hummingbirds you see above are just one example. There’s even an El Camino, be still my heart. Check out Mark’s photography blog.

What is a cyanotype?
To create a cyanotype all you need is two chemicals, negative film, sunlight and water. The two chemicals dissolved in water become a photo-sensitive solution that you paint onto paper. After exposure to UV rays and rinsing in water, the two chemicals react in such a way that you are left with a permanent dye called Prussian Blue.

If you’ve ever seen a vintage blueprint, you’ve seen a cyanotype.

The process was discovered in 1842, but it didn’t become photography until Anna Atkins got her hands on it a year later. Ms. Atkins — a scientist who is credited as the first female photographer — created a limited series of cyanotypes by pressing ferns and other botanical specimens onto the light sensitive paper and exposing them to sunlight.

Read more about cyanotypes in (on?) The Wiki.

[Photo Credits: Mark Hemauer, Anna Atkins cyanotypes via wikipedia.]

Fussy babies are nothing new. Photographers have always had tricks to calm the wee ones so they can be immortalized via photography.

Keep in mind that earlier photographic processes had much longer exposure times. In other words, they required a lot more stillness to avoid a blurry photo.

Last month, I showed you a slightly spooky photo where mom was cleverly disguised as a chair.

I’m happy to report that Swapatorium has a new vintage portrait to share with the world.

This time, mom is crouching behind and holding the child around the waist. You can see her behind the chair.

To hide her arm, the photographer hand painted a blue sash directly to the tintype.

Read a little more about this intriguing image at Swapatorium, a great source for online treasures.