This is Organizing and Preserving Photograph Collections. My name is Ari Wilkins, and I work at the Dallas Public Library in the Genealogy Division. But my very first position at the library was in the Texas Archives Department, and my job was to catalog and identify 12,000 photographs from a photographer's collection.

So our personal photograph collections can be one of our most precious possessions. When we're staring at a huge pile of photographs, it can be very overwhelming. When there's hundreds of photos, we think, how can we best protect and preserve them for the future?

When we're sitting in front of this big pile of photos, we need to assess the situation. First, we need to determine the scope of the project. How many photos do I actually have? What do I want to do with my collection? And then, what are my end goals? What am I even able to do for the end goals of this project?

So we have to carefully consider our time, our budget constraints, and exactly how enthusiastic we are for this project, always asking ourselves, how much is this going to cost and what can I really afford?

So now let's discuss the basics of photograph collections. Some of the very early photographs will be cased images. Daguerreotypes are usually encased between glass and matte, and the image has to be viewed from an angle. When the image is viewed from straight on, it's a tintype. And then ambrotypes can be viewed from all angles.

Early black and white photographs were usually mounted on cardboard. Identifying the type of the black and white photograph you have can help you date a photo. So visiting cards were popular between 1859 and 1882, and then cabinet cards were popular between 1866 and 1900. And so cabinet cards were a little bit bigger than visiting cards, but this is definitely going to help you date these photographs.

So when we're thinking about protecting our collections, we need to think about what damages photographs. Air, such as fluctuation in humidity. This is an example of how humidity has caused the glass to stick to the photo. You see my hand is underneath and it's stuck between the photo and the glass. So you want to remember that whenever you inherit a collection, you want to take the photographs out of their frame, because eventually they're going to start to stick to the glass. Exposure to light can also cause fading and darkening of photos. Contaminants, such as dust and acid, can also damage photos. Pests, such as mites and rodents, will eat away at your photos. And then people's rough handling and oily fingers can damage photos.

This is a picture of my great-grandmother. And you see how the photo has started to mildew behind the frame? And so all of these pictures need to be taken out of their frames.

So when we think about storing our collections, we want to create a protected environment. For short-term, we want a clean, clear space to lay out and sort our photographs. For long-term, we want an organized space where the photos are elevated up off of the floor.

We want a nice dark room that doesn't get a lot of sunlight. Ideally, you want a cool room that's going to slow the rate of chemical decay and cut down on insect activity. And then you want to keep the humidity below 65%, because it's going to help prevent mold growth. So you definitely want an air-conditioned room, and you might even want to consider an interior closet for storing your collection. So this is our photograph collections at our library, the Dallas Public Library. And this is my ideal environment for storing collections. The photos are stored in clean and climate-controlled spaces. The photos are labeled and organized, and the storage boxes are nice and uniform. Everything has a place.

So now I want to show you my home office and some of the do's and don'ts of storing your photograph collections. So one of the great things that I've done is I've organized and I have a climate-controlled space.

I've sorted and elevated my loose and unprocessed collections up off the floor.

My processed collections, here in the middle, are stored horizontally in archival-safe boxes.

And then I have a clean work surface for laying out and processing my collections.

I usually stick about two or three desiccants near my collection. Desiccants absorb moisture and help control the humidity in the room, and they're very inexpensive. You can buy them at the dollar store, and they just suck up water. So I buy them all the time for my collection. So now we're going to talk about some of the things I've done wrong.

One of the bad things that I've done is that my unprocessed collections are not stored in archival-safe boxes. I bought these inexpensive boxes before I knew better. So you know what they say. Once you know better, do better. I got to buy new boxes for all of this storage here at the top. Right now, I'm storing my scrapbook on their spines, and they should be stored horizontally within their own boxes.

I have photo albums that are stored in cheap plastic bins, and we should never store anything in plastic bins. You think that they're good, but acid forms within these sealed containers and can damage the photographs.

Another problem that I have is my office is on one of the exterior rooms in my house, and it's near a window. So if a storm came along and shattered my window, my entire collection would be vulnerable. Another terrible thing is that the hot water heater sits on the other side of this wall. And so if the hot water heater explodes, there's another potential for water damage. And so these are just some of the things to consider when we're planning a home for our collections.

So now we're going to talk about how to tackle and assess your photograph collections. First, you want to make sure that you do no harm to your pile of photographs. You don't want to ruin the order in which you found the collection. You want to maintain the piles and the layers of photographs. There is no such thing as finding these photographs in random order. The order may not mean anything to you, but it meant something to someone else, whether it was your grandmother or your parent that put all of these photographs in an order. So you want to keep them and maintain that order that you found them in. So now going back to my library experience. The Texas Centennial Collection was one of the collections that I worked on within the Archives Division. And when I first received this collection, the photos were bound and they were already numbered.

But I pulled it all apart and tried to reorganize the photos in a way that made sense to me, and I ruined the order that the photographer had them in. So that was definitely a huge mistake that I made when I was first starting.

So you want to consider some of the obstacles of your collection. Is the collection already bound or have the photos been mounted on a scrapbook page? You don't want to tear photos out of scrapbook albums, looking for information on the back. I can't recover the pictures that have been torn from these scrapbook pages here. The ones in the red boxes are pages that either have been torn or the glue deteriorated and they fell off. But I don't know where these photos are now, and so I can't recover what's there. And what's great is--I don't know if you can see very well, but they're labeled on the page. Edna and Mom and Dad. And so they would have already been labeled for me, had someone not ripped it out or had it not fallen off.

So this is a photo of my great-grandmother that was torn out of a scrapbook. Tearing a photograph out of the scrapbook is--number one, it's going to destroy the integrity of the scrapbook. I don't know what book it came from, and there's no descriptive information written. There could have been descriptive information written on that page.

So when you're looking at individual photos, you're going to want to assess what damage has already occurred. This could be the glue and mounting them in scrapbooks. It could be photo corners that have damaged them, ink. This picture has every--it falls in all of the gamuts here. There are creases and folds. I have rolled up photographs. And then you want to really think about how you can best preserve your collection.

So this is a really large cardboard-mounted photograph of my great-grandparents. And if you notice, it's extremely fragile. It's already torn in half, and I had to piece it together. It's torn in half here, straight through the middle. And I had to piece it together just to scan it. So this photo definitely should not be handled any more. It needs to be scanned and turned over to a professional for the best possible preservation.

So now we're going to talk about the best ways to preserve your collection. Preservation is about slowing the effects of time and protecting your collection from dust, moisture, and pets--pests. Pets and pests. [LAUGHTER]

So you'll want to invest in archival-quality storage products. First, we want to look for products that are acid-free. Remember that all products that are labeled acid-free aren't always guaranteed to meet archival standards. So you want it to meet the highest standards. We want to look for products that have been P.A.T. certified.

The photographic activity test is an aging test, and it's going to predict which kind of storage materials are going to cause faster deterioration of photos or the staining of photos.

So again, this is the ideal situation for photo storage. We don't want to bend or curve a photograph when we store it, and we want the photographs to be as flat as possible and store like with like photos when possible.

Here are some of the major manufacturers that carry archival-safe products, and they're listed in your handout.

So when we're looking at storing cased photos, we want to store them in close-fitting individual folders inside an archival box. You don't want them sliding around or getting scratched.

When we're storing prints, they should be stored in archival folders or clear plastic sleeves. Storing the same-sized prints together in the same box will help it to avoid scratching.

We'll want to store the prints in a sealed box. And when you're looking for a box that's sealed, you want it to have no holes, no handles or vents. When I showed you that picture earlier from my home office with those inexpensive boxes, they have handles on the sides, so sunlight and pests and all sorts of things can get into them. And then, again, you definitely don't want any plastic bins. You think that they're good and inexpensive and they're dust-free, but they actually trap moisture. And they grow mold and mildew, and then they give off acid. So they will cause your photographs to deteriorate.

So you'll want boxes with folders that fit exactly inside your box. You want to store your photographs in flat boxes. And then you want to look at your options and see how you want to store your photos, the kind of space you have, and what really works for you.

So our library uses corrugated gallery boxes. And one of the great things about these gallery boxes is that they have a drop-front here. So you can pull down the side of the box, and you don't even have to reach down and pick up a folder. There's no chance to bend the folder or bend the photograph. So that's one of the great things about the drop-front boxes. I chose to use a three-ring clamshell box for my collections.

So if you wanted to store the photos the way our library does, you'll need the corrugated gallery boxes with the drop-front and then acid-free folders to fit inside the boxes. And when you look through the catalog, you'll usually be looking for like a letter-sized one to fit within the boxes. But our library usually has to cut down the folders to make them actually fit within the box.

So my criticism of our library system's way is that within this box, they might have an 8 x 10 photo or a 3 x 3 photo within the box. And so the photos can move around a whole lot within the folders. And then there's pretty much one folder per photo. So this starts to get really bulky and expensive. Think about if you have thousands and thousands of photographs in your collection. Do you really want to buy 1,000 different folders to fit this in?

So for my personal collection, I chose the three-ring clamshell box albums and polypropylene pages. And I like this system because the clamshell box is still going to allow me to store my photos in a flat, horizontal position, like the libraries. But then I can easily see what I have in my collection just by flipping the pages versus opening up each folder.

So I have all different sized photos within my collection, and the pocket pages come in a variety of sizes and will keep the photos from moving around inside the box. And then the clear plastic sleeves are going to allow me to see the front and the back of the photo without having to touch it. So notice at the bottom of this catalog image, all of the products have passed the P.A.T. test. So as you're searching for your products, you always want to look for this little symbol here, that it's passed the P.A.T. test.

So when we think about preserving negatives, we want to store the negatives in plastic negative sleeves. You want to store them in a box that's going to protect them from dust and light and then in a cool, dry location that's going to protect them from humidity.

So now we need to think about how to process and catalog our collections. What kind of order are we going to put them in? And how will we label them?

So some of the items that you'll need to process the collection is a soft lead pencil to label your photographs, a black Sharpie to label your plastic sleeves, a white vinyl eraser is going to erase any mistakes that you make on the plastic sleeves.

And then--hold on. Yeah, the white vinyl eraser will erase what's on the plastic sleeves. And then a pink rubber eraser is going to erase any mistakes that you make when you're labeling the photographs. And then a ruler to measure the photographs and cotton gloves to handle the photographs, because you don't want to get any fingerprints or transfer oils onto those photographs.

So your first step is going to be to name the collection. You want to give your collection a title. And then you're going to want to write a description of the collection--what you know about it, what it consists of, who it originally belonged to, the time period that's covered, the family that's included, even how you came to possess the collection. Anything that you know about it, you want to write that in the description. Think about if you get hit by a bus tomorrow and somebody else comes into your office and is looking at this collection. And they don't know you. You want to be able to tell them everything that you can about the provenance of this collection.

So I labeled my collection the Thornton Family Photograph Collection. The description I wrote for this collection was: The collection consists of black and white and colored photographs from the 1910s to the 1980s. It's primarily made up of the Victor Thornton family and his descendants. And the collection was inherited by Ari Wilkins from Debra Dickens around 2008. So that gives me a lot of information, but it tells somebody else, who may receive my collection afterwards, all of the things about it.

So the next step is going to be to number each photo on the back in pencil. And you want to order it in the order in which you found it within that pile. So you're going to want to use a pencil with a dull point so that it doesn't make an imprint on the front of the picture. And make sure that you're not using ink, because the ink may bleed through. And some of these photographs you may see, even like this one--my aunt labeled these in ink. And so these are bad things that have happened to this photograph, but I didn't do it this time. I'll admit when I make the mistakes, but this time I didn't do it.

So you'll want to begin a naming convention for this collection. And so I chose TH for Thornton. And you see on the back of the photo, in the bottom right-hand corner, I wrote TH-01. So I'm just, TH-01, TH-02, TH-03.

So you want to create a numbering system that makes sense to you and your collection and is going to be easily recognizable. I have two family surnames that start with the letter S, so I want to differentiate between them. One collection is numbered SA for my Satterthwaite family. The other one is labeled SE for my Seabron family. And then I just start SA-01, SE-01, and label each photograph. I also have a father and son set of William Seabrons, but they have different middle initials. So now I want to differentiate between their collections. So I added a first and middle initial, and I created the WMS collection for William Manson Seabron. And so when you're creating these naming systems, these numbering systems, you want to think about how easily zeros and the letter Os can start to look alike. You want to think about the number one and the letter L and the letter I and how easily those can be confused. And so I try to avoid using those letters in my naming system. And sometimes if I do use it, I'll put a dash in between my letter part and my number part to differentiate between those two. But you see here, this Wilkins Family Photograph Collection--instead of having a WI-01, I just changed it and made it WK-01 instead. So no one can really confuse which letters and numbers you're looking at here.

So now let's talk about how to protect and organize these photos. You're going to want to place each folder in an acid--sorry, place each photo in an acid-free folder or an archival plastic sleeve and label the plastic sleeve using your black Sharpie with the photo ID. If you're labeling a folder, if you choose the library's way to do it, you can use a pencil to label the folder.

Using the plastic page now, I'm able to see the front and the back of the photo without having to take it out of its sleeve and handle it. So I'm reducing the damage for this photograph. You want to choose your sleeves according to the size of the photo. I don't want the photo to be able to move around very much within the sleeve. And then I've labeled each pocket with the photo ID using my black Sharpie. You see right here on the side? And so if I take it out to scan it, I know exactly where its home is. I know exactly where it belongs.

So after you've done this, you can place your plastic sleeves in the three-ring clamshell box.

And once I've numbered my photographs from the original pile, I can organize the pictures into categories by person or theme. I've also used some section dividers so that I can easily find like photographs. So if I'm looking for pictures of my great-grandmother, I might put all my great-grandmother's pictures together so that I know that I have three basic photographs within my collection. They might be numbered TH-01, TH-95, and TH-200, but they're all together within that plastic sleeve in that one place.

So you could organize your photos by size or type. You could organize them by family or the collection of photographs. Or you could organize them by decade. It just depends on how big your collection is.

So now that we've labeled and organized the photos, we're going to create a spreadsheet to inventory our collection.

You can create a very simple spreadsheet within Excel.

You'll first want to just create columns for important information about each photo, and then you can tailor the spreadsheet for your needs. So I created columns for the photo ID, the description, the place where the photograph was taken, the size of the photograph. I have a column for if the back has been stamped, for the date, if the photo is black and white, or if it's a black and white colorized photograph, or if it's a true color photograph. If I knew who the photographer was, I have a column for that. Or it could be a professional studio photograph, or it could be an amateur candid photograph. If I've scanned the image, I can include the name of the image file. And then I have another column for notes for anything else that's not covered in all of these columns. And so when you're creating a database, you want to think about a variety of ways that you're going to use it and the way you're going to sort that information.

So now we want to identify and document the photograph. Think about who's in the photograph, about the time period that the photograph was taken, and what's happening. Imagine if you were describing the photo to a blind person. Imagine if you're describing it to a stranger who doesn't know that this is my great-grandmother here. You want to list the people from left to right and describe who's standing versus who is seated. And then you want to use all of the context clues that you can find within the picture.

So dating photographs can sometimes be based on the type of photograph that you're looking at. Remember we were talking about the tintypes and the ambrotypes and the visiting cards and the cabinet cards? So that's going to help you date that photograph. You can interview relatives about the photograph. I'll interview numerous relatives about the same photograph, because every person--they may tell me that this is all the same person, that this is Caroline Williams Thornton. But somebody else may tell me a memory about when the photograph was taken or some little extra tidbit. And I'll even go as far as to hound my mother. And I'll ask her three different times in a period of 10 years, tell me about this picture. Because something might trigger a memory. And then I'll be like, I asked you about this 10 years ago and you never told me this. And she's like, I wasn't thinking about it. So you just keep asking the same questions over and over again and ask a lot of people about these photographs. Even showing these photographs to people who don't know the person in the photo, they may see something within that photo that you don't see. So you can use newspapers, school yearbooks, and church bulletins to either identify unknown people or date photographs. Or even the people that you know might tell you part of the background within the photographs. Within that 12,000-photograph collection at Dallas Public Library, I went through at least 30 years of the newspaper and could actually place a majority of those photos from that newspaper and identify the people in the photographs. And then you want to use social media, like Facebook and Instagram--not for just the people that know the person within the photograph but even, again, unknown people may be able to help you with information about the photograph.

So in my spreadsheet, I describe this photo as Caroline Williams Thornton dressed in a white sailor's dress and hat. On the very back of the photo, in between where it was torn out of the scrapbook, if you look underneath it, it says "postcard" right here. So I included that it's a postcard, but it's a studio portrait with my description down here at the bottom.

I know that Caroline Thornton died in 1941, so I know that the photo has to be taken before that year. I can't really place exactly when it was taken, but I can at least say between 1901 and 1941 I know that this photo was taken. I know that she lived with her son-in-law, Charles Washington, who was a professional photographer, so it's possible that he may be the person that took this photograph.

So this is a studio photograph of Leola Thornton, and it's encased in an art deco cardboard folding envelope. And so I googled this style of this folding envelope and found that it was popular in the 1930s. So in my spreadsheet, I noted in one of the columns that it was a black and white colorized photograph. And for the date, I said that it was possibly taken in the 30s. And then I also noted that the photographer was likely Charles Washington, again because that was Leola's husband. It could have been used as a marketing piece within their photography studio.

So this is another photograph of my great-uncle Emmanuel. And look at the details. Notice that he's wearing a World War I uniform. Notice that someone else has already labeled the photo down the side of it here, and it says M.H. Williams of Camp Grant, Illinois.

So if we flip the photo over and look for details, even though the photo's been trimmed, probably to fit in a frame or something, there's still a whole lot of great context clues on the back of this photograph. We see, first of all, that it's a postcard.

It says that it's from M.H. Williams. Even though it says "Will" here, because of the front that already said "Williams" here, we know that "Will" is "Williams." And it's of Camp Grant, Illinois. So he's riding from Camp Grant, Illinois. And then it's addressed to his wife Mrs. M.H. Williams of Elizabeth, Louisiana.

And so then if we look very closely at the top, I looked over at the stamp box. And so I googled this stamp box, and there's all sorts of different types of stamp boxes.

And so when there's two triangles facing up and two triangles pointing down, it means that the postcard was printed on AZO paper between 1918 and 1930. Because Emmanuel is wearing his World War I uniform, we could probably deduce that the picture was taken closer to 1918 rather than 1930. So I can add all of that information now to my spreadsheet. So let's look at another photograph now. Besides a girl standing next to a tree, what else do we see? Very lightly written here in pencil at the bottom, it says "Teen."

And then notice this decorative border here.

If I turn the picture over, I see that it's signed from Teen, and it's addressed to my grandmother Nevada. I know that Teen was a nickname for my cousin Tinola. And she says that I'm standing in Uncle Jerry's yard, or I'm in Uncle Jerry's yard. So now I need to go figure out who Uncle Jerry is, because I never heard of Uncle Jerry before.

If I further rotate this picture now, I see that it's stamped with this Foxtone photo stamp. So I googled Foxtone photos. And I found that Foxtone photos were known for their rounded corners and their art deco white borders. And they were printed between the 1930s and the 1950s. And they had photo processing plants in Dallas, Houston, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. And I knew that Tinola lived in both Louisiana and Texas, so now this narrows down where she could have possibly taken this picture. And so now, again, I can add all of this information to my spreadsheet.

So I don't know who this person is, but her picture was part of the collection. From the photo, I could describe this as a portrait of an unknown woman in a dark dress with a ruffled white collar. If I flip the picture over, I see that it has a Charles Washington Hollywood Studio stamp on it. From my research, I knew that Charles Washington had married into my family. And so this could be one of the reasons that it's part of this collection. I could be related to this person. She could have been friends with my aunt or something, or it just could have been part of his studio collection. But it's still something that meant something to someone else for my family to keep it. So even though I don't know who it is, I'm going to keep it as part of this collection.

So now we want to remember to look for the context clues within the photograph. The front of this photograph is labeled Alexandria, Summer Normal. When I flip the photo over, the back tells me that it's addressed to my Great-Aunt Leola Thornton, and it's stamped from 1916. It's written to her from--I think this man liked her. I'm not sure. I think he had a crush on her. So I googled the Summer Normal Institute, and I found that it was a teaching school for colored teachers. And I knew that my Aunt Leola later became a teacher in Shreveport. And so it's possible that, number one, Leola could have attended the Alexandria Summer Normal Institute in 1916, and it's possible that she could be within this photograph and I just can't see her within the photograph.

So when I look at this photograph, I know that this is a photograph of my grandmother and her four siblings. And I can even name all of the people within this photograph. But when I look at the date at the top of the photograph, August of 1941, I knew that all of the siblings were living in different parts of the country due to the Great Migration. So I ask myself, what event could have brought them together to take this photograph? I go back to my research and realize that their mother passed away in August of 1941. And so looking at the way they're dressed, I could reasonably deduce that this could have been taken at their mother's funeral.

So now when I look at all three of these photos, which aren't particularly very interesting photographs--they have no particular importance to me. They're part of the collection, but they have no particular importance to me. I don't recognize either of these two houses, and I don't recognize this woman. But when I flip the photos over, first of all I see very lightly stamped on all three photos is the number 031b, which means that they were developed from the same roll of film. So number 95 is labeled as Cousin Gussie's house. Number 96 was labeled as Christine Davis's house in Mossville, Louisiana. And then number 97 was listed as Christine, our cousin.

So if number 96 was taken in Mossville, then it probably means that the other two photos were probably taken in Mossville. Number 97 alone is just Christine. But number 97 with number 96 gives you Christine's last name and the relationship that she's my cousin. So now this is another relative that I need to go and research and find out who is Christine and why I've never heard about her.

So once I've completed my spreadsheet, I can sort my spreadsheet by stamp, by date, by photographer, anything. Think about if I found in a whole other box another photograph that was labeled 031b. I can probably now put it with that other set and get more information from it. I could do a keyword search for things like World War I uniform or Foxtone to find that Foxtone one. Or to go back and find that art deco photo, I could just type in "art deco" and search through my hundreds of photographs and find which one I'm looking for. So once I've completed my spreadsheet, I keep an electronic copy on my computer. But then I also like to keep a printed copy inside my box. Because think about what if my computer crashes. What if my digital files are separated from their prints? What if the computer gets stolen? Then all of this research I've done for hundreds of photographs is now completely useless. And somebody else has to go back and re-identify all these photographs again. So I like to keep it together, and I'll update it from time to time within the box.

So now that the collection has been organized and processed, we need to consider the future of our collection. We need to ask questions like, how fragile is the collection? How valuable is it? Do I have the resources to properly care for and house this collection? Does the collection need to be stored off-site? And then what would happen to my collection if my house was destroyed by natural disaster?

So you're going to want to think about digitizing your collections. Digital photographs can be stored now in more than one location. They can be easily viewed and shared without handling the originals. And then they can be enlarged and enhanced. So photos that are already faded now, you may be able to use software to make the pictures better and more recognizable. So you'll want to scan the photographs in the highest resolution possible. You need to scan the photographs at at least 300 dots per inch. But if possible, you can scan them at 600 dpi. The higher resolutions are going to create a clearer picture.

You'll want to save the files in a TIFF or PNG format. You can scan the entire collection, or you can scan just parts of it, depending on the amount of computer storage that you have, the amount of time that you have, all sorts of things you're going to want to consider.

So when we look at scanners, you could use your own portable scanner, or you can use the high quality scanners at your library, which are going to be really great for large scanning surfaces. And it's going to give you a much higher resolution and much more detail within your photographs. Our scanners at Dallas Public Library--we have people that come in and just scan all day long. So you really want to make use of your library's technology.

So I like to name electronic files to match my original naming scheme. You can incorporate this information into your spreadsheet also. And then I like to scan the front and the back of each photo, because as we've seen, the back can give you so much information.

After scanning the photos, you want to make sure that you're backing them up in cloud storage. Just in case your computer crashes or it's stolen, you aren't losing any precious photographs.

You also want to think about how you can share your photographs with others. FamilySearch has a great platform for adding photographs to your research. You can add photographs to their gallery area, or you can attach them to your tree online.

This is a great way for you to share with multiple relatives across the country, people that you might not even be related to or even distantly related to, and they didn't know that you had a picture of that person. So it's a great way to share this with family members, especially also when you have people that aren't going to give up their photos, their original photos. This is a great way to share your information. So you can also use social media, like Instagram, to share your collection. I like to post all different parts of my collection on Instagram. These are both pictures of my grandmother, and here she's with my mother. And these are things that--even my mother has never seen some of these photographs in this collection. So when I post them, she's like, where'd you find this picture, I've never seen this. So you can highlight photographs on social media and make it interesting for other family members. I like using--Allen County Library has a theme called Genealogy Photo a Day, and I like to use that to highlight my collection. And one of the cool things, too, is it makes you think differently about your collection. Whether the theme is siblings or gathering or something like that, it makes me think, what do I have in my collection that I can use for this hashtag for the day? So this is a photograph that I described here. This was the North Shore Chauffeurs Club Installation Dance from 1939. And even though I can't identify all of the people, I know that my grandfather is seated on the front row, fifth from the left, and that he founded this chapter in 1936. So there's all sorts of really cool things. And when you give it a whole bunch of different hashtags, there are people now from Glencoe that know that they might reach out and say, I can name all of these other people within this photograph. I can help you with this photograph information. So this is another one. This is a photograph that we discussed earlier. And for the Genealogy Photo a Day, the theme was for siblings. And so I labeled this and put this on Instagram, and I knew who all of the siblings were. And then my uncle calls me and says, you've got the brothers mixed up. Freeman's first, Spurgeon's second. And so it's something that I hadn't even thought about, because I'd never met these men. Somebody once labeled these things for me, but somebody else is now looking over your shoulder and checking your details. So I can switch those men back and forth.

And then you'll want to think about the future of your collection after you're gone. Think about adding a genealogical codicil to your will. You can designate an heir or leave your collection to someone that will really appreciate it and take care of it. You could consider donating your collection to a library, a museum, or a historical society. But you just want to make sure that your collection is well-preserved and has a future.

Thank you for listening. Any questions? [APPLAUSE]

I think they might have a mic. I'm sorry.

They're coming up with the mic. Why did you say T-I-F files, TIFF? The TIFF and the PNG? TIFF and the PNG. Why those two files?

The person asked, why would you consider using a TIFF file or a PNG file? These are files that are less likely to get corrupted. I can't remember the correct name for it right now, but-- Glossy. Glossy file, correct. And so JPEG is more likely to become a corrupted file, and it's also going to lose some of its quality every single time you open it. So that's why you want to consider using the TIFF or the PNG file. Did you want to come over to the microphone that's over here? OK.

So one of the collections that I have inherited is a scrapbook that my grandmother put together. My grandmother was born in 1888, and it is on black paper with white chalk writing. How do you do what you just showed us with that, without picking those apart? You're going to want to put buffered paper in between each page of the black pages. And then you'll want to store the scrapbook within an acid-free box where it doesn't move around very much. And then you'll also want to consider scanning each page. Thank you. You're welcome. Hi. Hi. In police or detective movies or TV shows, they always have these apps that look at facial recognition and then tell you who that person is. I'd like that for all my unknown persons to at least know all of these are the same unknown person. And then I could use those clues. But they're not coming necessarily side by side. They're different ages. Do we have that magic tool? We don't have that magic tool, but there's websites like Dead Fred. What was that? Dead Fred. There's websites like Dead Fred that have a lot of photographs of unknown people on them. And you can even post your photographs to Instagram with the hashtag #DeadFred so that other people looking for them--even if you can say, I know that this photograph was taken in Louisiana or Illinois--you can give as much information as you possibly can. And somebody else may be able to recognize that photograph. OK. Thank you. Mm-hm. Yes. Hi. Thank you for your information. Thank you. I have inherited some 19th century photographs. They are in very nice photobooks. However, some of them are not identified. Should we go ahead and try to see the back of it? No. Most likely, there's nothing on the back of it, and you're going to ruin that scrapbook. No, don't tear it apart. OK. Thank you. Hello. Hi. My question is similar to the one before me. The kind of scrapbook it is, is they slide in and out. And they're rigid, black and white, kind of brown, probably from the turn of the century. But the cover is coming apart. And it's got this velvet crumbs everywhere. Do you recommend that we take that apart? I would say take it to a restoration photographer and ask him what he thinks either is going to best preserve that cover or if he thinks taking it apart--what he thinks to do.

Thank you. [APPLAUSE]