APG-L Archives

Archiver > APG > 2009-08 > 1250083604


From: Kathleen McLaughlin <>
Subject: [APG] (no subject)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:26:44 -0700 (PDT)


Re: [APG] Photographs
Wednesday, August 12, 2009 9:16 AM
From:
"Kathleen McLaughlin" <>
View contact details
To:
"Barbara Ball" <>
I am of an age that I needed to find homes for four or five generations of family photos. This is how I am handling them:

1. I set up criteria about how I was going to sorted the photos and came to the conclusion that I would sort, first, by separating out those that had only one individual in the photo and, if that individual was still living, they would get this batch of phots. I gave my baby brother, now about 50, his photos when he viisted me last week. This, alone, set the scene for a discussion of events that occured prior to his birth that set the tone of his relationship with each of our parents.
2. If the photo had multiple individuals of members of one family, I sorted them by their residence at the time the photo was taken. I have not yet distributed these. I will be making that decision prior to our 50th wedding anniversery celebration, and it will probably become part of that event.
3. If the photo is/was embaressing, or if the photo had no special interest, I pitched it.
4. If there were no surviving offspring, and I can not find any reason for prserving the photo, it will get pitched; for example, the spouse of an aunt that had no children took 1,000s of photos many of which I will save, but he also took hundreds of photos of the same small bar he built and of his bright red mustang. Most got pitched, but a few remain in my collection.
5. If the photo has some historic, but no family value, such as that of an individual that served in the miliary, but never actually joined the family, and he/she had an exceptional post-military career in local politics. These photo will be offered to a regional repository.
6. A collection of photos that I inherited that contains a significant number of ethnic (Belgium) individuals that are not related to our family, will go to a repository within which the family lived, or the nearest repository that has a mission to preseve family history.
7. I have one box in which all the other photos that I have not been able to sort in any logical fashion are kept.
And I am probably forgeting a couple criteria that I started out with, so I would suggest that you develop your own criteria and write it down. then, 5 years from now, you will be able to respond to just this type of quiry.
8. I keep some odd-balls. I have one photo of a rotting tree near where my parents were buried. One, as long as it is around, it helps locate their burial site, but, two, it was a historical tree, believed to have been the setting of a treaty with the local natives (AKA "Indians").

I hope this helps.

Has anyone elso have suggestions? I am still in the process of refining my criteria.

Kathleen McLaughlin


Kathleen McLaughlin

This thread: