Anyone else OVERWHELMED with family stuff?

[Quakerfriend]

:hi:

I am up to my eyeballs, and need some advise. I know that many of you have done enormous amounts of work tracking down every detail you can find about your kin. Do you ever feel that you just can't do it anymore?!

I have hundreds of photos, and many, many books- How do I get it all together so that the info won't be lost to future generations? One of my great uncles wrote more than 230 scientific articles and at least 9 books; another was the 'Father of the Sewer System' in america, and I have hundreds of maps of sewer systems from Toronto, to NYC, to Frankford Germany and beyond; another did the longest running comic strip for 40 years; g,g,g grandfather and uncle wrote music and opera ETC, ETC.

I have been buying up some of their works on ebay, so that I might have some of these things to give to my children. And, thanks to the internet, I have been able to download songs and lots of other info and file these things digitally. I have also archived hundreds of photos- across several generations of families.

I am so thankful to have everything that was once theirs. I know you can all relate to the thrill of putting the pieces together!!

Here is my current dilemma: Having been a research scientist for many years, I put great value in their professional writings and would like to make these available to everyone in the family. However, much of what is on paper or in books is VERY fragile (from 1800's) and I feel that things will get very damaged if I try to scan individual pages.

Anyone have any suggestions?? And, thanks for listening to this rant!;)

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. My suggestion:

in the case of something you think might be too fragile to scan, photograph anything that's on paper (if you take good clear shots of individual pages at high resolution, well-lit, the text should be readable, and you can make Adobe pdf files of the resulting jpegs, or possibly even print them out and then scan and OCR THOSE instead of the originals). Digital archiving isn't a long-term solution, necessarily, though (considering that at some point in the future current data file and storage medium formats may become obsolete).

[Quakerfriend]

3. Thx Spider!

[fudge stripe cookays]

2. Me!

I had to take a mental health break this weekend so I wouldn't get burned out. You know, sometimes you look at stuff so much you don't even see it anymore.

And with 10 large branches, I sometimes feel a little exhausted keeping up. But I know more about this family than anyone, and need to make sure the knowledge gets passed down. I keep very good records, and try to print all my e-mails.

Several weeks ago, I finally cleaned out my filing cabinet of all the unnecessary junk to make room for more Smith records. Then I made more folders and filed EVERYTHING that's been sitting around for months needing filing.

My husband has instructions on which cousin gets the bulk of the research if anything happens to me before I publish, and my scrapbooks are to be donated to the State Historical Society at the University of Wisconsin. Instead of making them cutesy-poo, I have tried to make them huge, historically accurate documents. But they are beautiful works of art. I can empathize!

We're not having children, so I want as many folks as possible to have access to the records.

[Quakerfriend]

4. You sound very well organized fudge stripe cookays!

I am reluctant to give things to a museum or Historical Society. I went to visit some of my g grandfather's 'effects' at the museum of the hospital he founded and, OMG you would not believe how they kept the stuff!! -Everything sort of arbitrarily tossed around in cardboard boxes! My sister and I nearly had a fit. And, none of it can be viewed except thru private meetings with the two archivists of the library. And, they have yet to put anything on line for the public to view. My aunt gave them all of the family relics nearly 25 yrs ago!! Luckily, we still have many of them.

I also found out that my aunt gave ~2000 letters of correspondence between my great grandmother and Woodrow Wilson's wife and niece to a university in Iowa. They too, are unavailable for public viewing. x(

But, forward we go, right?!

And, thx for inspiring me F.S.C.! Please, do let us know when your book comes out. I'm quite sure there will be many Smiths around the country who will want a copy.

[fudge stripe cookays]

6. Well, you have definitely made me re-think the archives angle.

I want them to be available to the viewing public-- especially anyone who reads the book years down the road and wants to see more.....

That frightens me. Those amazing letters and no one can SEE them??? I thought family would be able to if they were donated by that family....how screwy!

[cornermouse]

5. Give everyone in the family a set of cds of the things that you scan

Hopefully, it will never really get "lost" or "forgotten" again.

[fudge stripe cookays]

11. I like this one!

I have SOOOO many pictures...if my hard drive crashes I'm screwed. MOst of them are backed up onto CD, but I"m constantly getting new ones.

[Daphne08]

7. These are all excellent suggestions.

I make copies of everything (usually scan them if they are hard copies) and then burn them to CDs before I print out hard copies as well. (I just sent my sons hard copies of everything I've found so far and told them to keep the papers safe even if they weren't interested in the information.)

Sometimes you MUST take a break from all this because the searches can be so frustrating.

I've been doing family genealogy work for almost seven years now, and I honestly believe that if I had not taken breaks (some lasting for several weeks at a time), I would have burned out on this years ago.

Best of luck to you all in your searches.

[sybylla]

8. I've taken a long break, in part because I'm not sure how to continue

I got to a point, after 16 years of research, that I had so much research and so many documents that I refused to do any more until I got the rest organized, filed, scanned and properly stored. Imagining how to do that was difficult and I still haven't gotten back to it. That was two years ago.

Now I'm working on a political campaign and have even less time.

It's been good to take a break. The few times I've done a bit of research or gotten back to organizing, I've benefited from the fresh perspective.

I think I'll make it my New Year resolution for 2007.

As for your current dilemma, it's essentially what I'm facing. I've found a free database to keep track of my book collection. http://www.spacejock.com/BookDB.html?BookDB2 I'm also going to use it on my laptop for my genealogical documents. I hope it will help me keep track of what materials I have, where I got it from and where I can find it in my collection (home file, cd-rom, safe deposit box, Aunt Sheri's, etc.). It's something I may have to upgrade in a few years as technology changes but for now it's a start.

[Montauk6]

9. With over 6,000 individuals in my family file, YEP!

I'm just hoping I won't suffer long-term effects of constantly eyeballing the chicken scratch on these old census forms. And all this time I'd been envious of folks in the old days having superior penmanship. BAH!! PHOOEY!!!!

[dropkickpa]

10. I am on a long break from the "search" at the moment

I do this every couple of years, I just get so burned out and, because of where I'm stuck at, I pretty much will have to make overseas trips to find any of this stuff out. I got lucky a few years ago and a distant cousin (met through geneological circles) actually went to Ireland a couple years previously and slogged through lots of church records and got us back another generation and gave us some good clues on where we might look for more info if ever either one of us makes it back to Ireland for further research (we're the only two people we've found researching this particular line, and I don't know that I'll ever be able to afford to go to IRE for research).

I've got a couple lines traced WAY back, and some fizzle out withing about 5 generations (my mother's side particularly).

I've been doing this stuff fo close to 16 years now and find taking breathers definitely helps a LOT, I bring a renewed enthusiam and perpective to it. I'm only 29, but mum got the bug after we inherited my paternal g-grandmother's possesions upon her death, (they'd all been in storage for 10 years) god bless my dad's family tendency towards pack-rattedness. Gamma kept EVERYTHING, newspaper articles, pictures, reports cards, EVERYTHING!! Wish someone on mum's side had that particular trait. They are all/were very sensible farmer-types, though, so very little pack rat tendencies. Dad's side is full of dreamers, artists, and writers (mostly amateur), but that romantic streak led to a lot of sentimentality, a dream for the amateur genealogist!!