Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Are you storing family keepsakes properly?

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Take time to properly store inherited itemsI had a wake-up call this morning. My one-year-old standard poodle, Bix, and I came down to my office to start work for the day.  No sooner had I sat down at my computer when I heard him chewing on something. Thankfully I didn’t ignore the sound like I sometimes do; I immediately investigated. There was Bix, lying on the floor chewing on page 34 of the epic 37-page letter my grandfather wrote my grandmother in 1927. Bix responded to my thunderous “NO!” and dropped it, but the damage was done.

At first, I couldn’t figure out where he got it. I looked all around for where I had stored that precious letter. I found it up high, stored loose on top of the Adams archival photo box in my office closet. That’s right, on top of the box. (How lazy can I be?) For some reason, that particular page had fallen off the top of the box and Bix noticed it on the floor. I hurriedly put it back and started plucked bits of paper off of Bix’s legs. Before I knew it, the page fell off again.

Clearly, this is a very poor way to store a delicate item that’s precious to me. I’ve already scanned and transcribed the letter, so the torn words aren’t lost to me. But I’m heartsick that my carelessness resulted in damage.

So I’m taking action this morning to properly store the letter. It’s shameful–I even have the supplies on hand to store it properly. I actually have acid-free tape, which I picked up at a genealogy conference, so I will see if I can tape the fragments back onto the damaged letter. I consulted my copy of How to Archive Family Keepsakes, by Denise May Levenick, so I know I should carefully unfold the letter and store the pages flat, in order, in an archival file folder inside an archival document box. As soon as I post this, I will take care of it.

Do you have any precious inherited items that you could be storing more safely? I encourage you not to wait until you get a wake-up call like mine: take the time to properly store them now. If you need help on proper storage, Denise’s book is excellent.

We’re creating history for our descendants

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thanksgiving-tableThis Thanksgiving week, I’ve been thinking about how the ordinary lives of my ancestors are endlessly fascinating to me. As I slowly plow through my great great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, I get very excited when I come to a form he filled out 125 years ago that has a little extra information in it (like the names and birth dates of his children). Any peek into what his life was like is a special treat.

It got me thinking about how mundane aspects of our lives today might be really interesting 100 years from now to the people below us on the family tree.

Of course, we fill out fewer paper forms now. And genealogy will probably look very different in the twenty-second century. But I think photos and records will always be valuable.

This year, as we celebrate Thanksgiving (or really just go about our lives), we have the opportunity to create history for our descendants. We can be mindful of our legacy as we’re taking pictures. We can take care to label them (or add metadata to digital photos) so future generations know who the people in the photos are. We can do oral history interviews and carefully preserve them with labels for future generations.

If you have older relatives around your Thanksgiving table, I urge you to ask questions and preserve those conversations for generations to come (as well as for your own genealogy research). I sure wish I had. Wouldn’t it be great to put your hands on a recorded interview with one of your ancestors? You could be the person making that possible for your descendants.

Thanks to smartphone technology, it’s so easy for us to record conversations and take videos. Let’s do that while we can and mindfully tag and back up those recordings. (And hope that the medium will still be readable decades from now.)

As much as I urge my organizing clients to part with paper or other items that don’t serve any purpose any longer, I do sometimes encourage them to hang on to documents or photographs that might be of interest to their descendants. I encourage you to be mindful of that and store those items that so that they might be passed on to family-history-minded descendants when you pass.

Remember: Every day we have the opportunity to create history.

Photo by Robert and Pat Rogers via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Testing out my SHOTBOX

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shotboxopenLast fall I blogged about SHOTBOX, a portable light studio that was part of a Kickstarter campaign. I was excited about the prospect of using it to take pictures for my blogs as well as photographing delicate documents for my genealogy research. The SHOTBOX studio plus the SideShot attachment that allows well-lit photography from the front, seemed like an answer to a problem I’d had for a long time. (Just take a look at many of the photos on this blog or on my organizing blog to see what I mean. There’s room for improvement!)

My SHOTBOX arrived in December, literally at the same time my puppy, Bix, joined our family. So I haven’t had the chance to use it as much as I will. But I did set it up right away and take a few shots.

Here’s my overall impression:

  • The packaging was excellent. It arrived safe and sound from China with no damage at all.
  • The instructions are good and hardly necessary because the product is simple and intuitive.
  • I was able to get it up and running within minutes. I’ve since used it one other time and it’s remained easy to set up and use.
  • The neoprene carrying case is excellent. All the components fit securely in the case and the collapsed SHOTBOX takes very little room to store.
  • I’m delighted that it comes with four different colored backdrops (white, black, green and blue), which are very easy to switch out.

Here are some photos created by the SHOTBOX team that show the connectors and also how everything fits into the neoprene bag. (They also provided the photo above.)

shotboxsideshotsetup

shotboxincase

How are the pictures I’ve taken with my SHOTBOX?

Bear in mind that I’m not much of a photographer and I have some learning to do. I intend to look for camera apps other than the one that came with my iPhone so I have a little more control. (A reviewer on the SHOTBOX website recommends camscanner app for documents and camerapro for three-dimensional objects. I’m going to check those out.) But these quick photos are so much better than what I would have taken without the SHOTBOX!

Here’s a photo of my grandmother’s autograph book, given to me by my father in December. It’s taken from above.

beasbook

Here’s a photo of a small needle-felted replica of my departed poodle, Kirby. (It was created by Janet’s Needle Felting if you’re interested in having one of your own made.)

needlefeltedkirby

On my organizing blog, I wrote about organizing my coloring supplies recently. So I took some photos of my coloring supplies using SHOTBOX. Here are a couple of examples. The first was taken from the front, the second from above.

reds

boxofpencils

SHOTBOX gives me much-needed assistance in creating viable photos for my blog, with minimal effort. I love the that it gives me a blank backdrop. And, of course, I love the fact that the photos are well lit. A bonus: It takes up so little space when not in use.

At $199 for the Deluxe Bundle (which includes the SHOTBOX, the SideShot, the backdrop kit, and the neoprene carrying case), I think this product is huge bargain. Click here to order or get more information.

I look forward to using it more!

Full disclosure: The links above are affiliate links, which means that SHOTBOX gives me a percentage of the sale, but that doesn’t affect the price. And it doesn’t affect my opinion of the product.

SHOTBOX can help you digitize documents

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One of the RootsTech vendors I was most excited about was SHOTBOX, a tabletop photo light studio. This portable lightbox makes it easy to use your phone to take good-looking, well-lit photos of three-dimensional objects, which is great for those of who blog. It would also be really useful for folks selling items on eBay, etsy or craigslist.

What’s great for the genealogist, though, is that it provides the ability to easily take photos from above, which can be very useful for digitizing documents or photos (or photo album pages). If you have delicate documents you wouldn’t want to put through a sheet-fed scanner, or if you don’t have a scanner at all, SHOTBOX might be the tool you need to use your phone to digitize documents without risk of damage and without shadows.

Right now, SHOTBOX is running a Kickstarter campaign while they work with the factory to finish the manufacturing and ship by October. I pledged and pre-ordered the SHOTBOX plus the SideShot Kit (a lighted attachment to hold the phone or tablet steady for photos taken from the front), for a total of $149. Once the product is in production, the anticipated retail price will be $149 for the SHOTBOX and $89 for the SideShot. [Note: The Kickstarter campaign is over, but you can now pre-order at a discount directly from the SHOTBOX website.]

Go to this page to see examples of photos taken with SHOTBOX.

I’m really excited to receive my SHOTBOX this autumn and put it to use!

Another note: The links above are affiliate links, which means that SHOTBOX gives me a small percentage of the sale, but that doesn’t affect the price at all.