Tag Archives: scanning

Spring Cleaning: Digital Stuff

Genealogical Preparation, organization, ,

After getting settled in after moving, and getting my paper piles in some form of organization, I have a few piles that require scanning. I usually like to put on some music or watch some light-hearted YouTube Videos or something on Netflix, and fire up the scanner.

I use a ScanSnap to scan things that can be sheet fed. It really makes life a lot easier. Depending on what I’m scanning, I may store the file in Evernote, on my hard drive, or attached to my genealogy software. I have folders for newsletters and handouts from lectures that still come in hardcopy. I print some things so I can take notes in the margins. I’ll rescan those and store them so I don’t have so much paper. (It might be weird but it works for me.)

I have the 1300i model.

When it comes to getting organized, my most common answer to any question I get is most often “This is what works for me, but you have to do what will work for you.” And sometimes that takes a bit of trial and error. Later I might decide that I don’t need to keep some things on paper that I’ve been keeping, or I might decide to change how I organized my hard drive files, etc. I’ve changed how I do things several times over the years. As computers and the internet evolves, so has my organization system.

So, my goal for the next week or so is to get my scanning caught up. Any good Netflix ideas?

Box Adventures: Scanning is Slow Going

Family Artifacts and Photos, , ,

My daughter is staying home for the most part. She has a few safe-distance visits with a couple of friends, and they all wear masks responsibly (and if you are reading this in the future, I’m referring to the COVID-19 pandemic). She’s also knitted about 15 sweaters since staying-at-home started, and she reported that she’d watched every video on YouTube. A couple of times per week she comes and scans the photos and items from the box. She gets about 15 or 20 done usually.

The photos tend to fall into one of these categories:

  • childhood pictures of me
  • childhood pictures of my brother
  • pictures of ancestors
  • pictures of people I don’t know
  • pictures of scenery
  • more childhood pictures of me (I guess no one else wanted them)

So, here are a bunch of pictures of me at varying degrees of development. Enjoy!

Box Adventures: Organizing Physical Items (Part 2)

Family Artifacts and Photos, , ,

I don’t have much to report this week except to say that I received and email that my Gaylord order is being processed and shipped! Hooray!

In the meantime, the scanning and sorting is still slowly happening. My scanning assistant is done with school for the year. She has been knitting quite a few sweaters so if I can get her to put the needles down and get back to the scanning, we will be on our way to making more progress in the scanning department.

When I get the order of archival supplies, I will write another update with photos of what I purchased and how I’m planning to store the items.

Stay tuned! In the meantime, stay safe and healthy and happy scanning!

Box Adventures: Titling Photos

Family Artifacts and Photos, , ,

Copy of Box Adventures_ Titling photos-2

If you have read this Box series since the beginning, you know the size and scope of the photos I received ten years ago. It was a huge box with rather random photos and papers included. My daughter has been doing the scanning. We’ve been doing the titling together. Luckily, when I picked up the photos ten years ago, I managed to ask my grandma or aunt who certain people were and made notes. So they aren’t all completely unidentified.

If you undertake a project like this, you will likely develop your own system and methods. Do what works best for you and makes the most sense with your filing system. Ours goes like this:

  • My daughter, Ellie, scans an image. She asks me who about the image if there are no notes. If there are notes, she can figure out the title.
  • She titles the images along the lines of “surname-firstname-event or number-year” so that it might be “Dimick-Leland-1” or “Kindervater-Ernestine-Wedding-1895.” If we don’t know one of the elements (such as the year) then we just leave it off. These might change after I do some of the research, but for now, they are titled in a way that lets me know what is in the file.
  • She uploads the images to a shared Google Drive folder.
  • Later, I download the scanned images to my hard drive to the folders where I keep all of my family history photos.

The Google Drive looks like this:

Box-GoogleDrive

The eagle-eyed among you might notice a difference in file types. We had settings set up for .tif (my preferred file for photos). However, when we moved to a new scanner, we didn’t get the file type set for some of the photos and didn’t notice until she had done many. We decided not to redo all of those .jpg files for now. Someday we might go back to it. But for now, the images are digitized as well as in an archival box and that’s good enough for me.

Those digitized photos will sit in the Google Drive for a while. I have not decided if I will leave them there. My hard drive gets backed up to a cloud backup server, so I don’t feel the need to duplicate them in another location. However, I will leave them there until I get my filing done on my hard drive…just in case.

Mainly, when tackling a large project like this, figuring out a system and sticking to it is the most important. Then it’s just a matter of hiring a teenager to do the repetitive tasks. If you don’t have a teenager you can hire, especially in these times of social distancing, the task of scanning and titling your photos is not difficult.

Put on a movie or audio book or music and get scanning!

Box Adventures: Get the Right Tools

Family Artifacts and Photos, , , ,

Copy of Box Adventures_ Sorting and PlanningWe unpacked the box and sorted it into types of items. I then hired my daughter to do the scanning for me. We discovered my old scanner was just not working fast enough. A job that should take a small amount of time was taking forever. Since I’m paying her by the hour, and she was getting completely bored waiting for the scanner to do its thing, I decided to upgrade my scanner. My old scanner was a built-in scanner, copier, printer. In computer years, it was old. It still works, mind you, but it is slow. So, the need for speed got me shopping.

ScannerI opted for an Epson Perfection V600 photo scanner. It has some features I need for a price I was willing to pay. You can find it on Amazon here. I am not here to tell you this is the best scanner ever and the one you should order. That’s not what this blog is about. This is the scanner that had the features I needed at a price I was willing to pay. And it has worked out great. It scans faster, the images are turning out great, and my daughter is finding the software easier to use.

So, in between online class zoom meetings, school work, and her private flute lesson over Skype, my daughter has been scanning away and finding some great little tidbits. Here are just two, I’ll share more in the future:

Miller_Cari_NP-1976 Flag Day

 

 

 

 

This is me, little Cari Ann Miller in 1976, the bicentennial. I wore a stars-and-stripes covered outfit, undoubtedly handmade by one of my grandmothers, and was caught waving my flag at the town parade. We lived in a little town called Weston in Wood County, Ohio. This clipping does not have any date of the newspaper but this was most likely published in the Daily Sentinel-Tribune out of Bowling Green.

 

 

Miller_Kenny_NP-Fireman of the Year

And this is one of my dad who was a volunteer fireman in Weston. Apparently, he was named Fireman of the Year one year and then passed off the honor to another man the next year. Again, no dates were written on these clippings but this would have been sometime prior to 1980.

 

Stay tuned for more Box Adventures. I will post some of the delights that I find as we move through the process of unpacking the old photographs, newspaper clippings, slides, artifacts, and more!