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Photograph & Heirloom catalogue
I have been building a family archive. It just occurred to me that I could add the photographs and possibly heirlooms to Zotero.
I have a number of photograph & slide boxes both mine and my parents. My parent's slides are labeled as:
Box 1
Feb 1955-Mar 1958 and so on.
My photograph boxes have multiple envelopes that are labeled in various ways. Some by location some with a date, others are labeled by the type of photographs like nephews, friends or 1st house.
My thinking is I could just put a label on the boxes like:
Ann Photographs Box 1
Then use Zotero's notes or the extra field to list what is in each box. The advantage is I wouldn't have to try and put these photographs into any particular order.
Theoretically, I could print out this list and add it to the box as an inventory. I am still working out how to do heirlooms. I am thinking that the stories that go with the heirloom could be put into the notes.
Has anyone tried something like this? Any thoughts or ideas of other ways to do this?
That's a great idea, Ann. You're cataloguing!
I've come across the same issue of dealing with such collections and it's made me question my genealogical file organization as a whole. A recent response from Donna regarding where she stored items that could fit in several places in her PEOPLE, PLACES, TOOLS etc. hierarchies got me thinking more deeply about this. So; I felt I should share my thoughts, as others may benefit from them.
MANY (not all) of the genealogical filing-schemes out there try to mix the objectives of information storage/retrieval with that of information analysis. And... At some point; they fail miserably.
The archival concept of fonds solely addresses information storage/retrieval in a solid and extensible way. It is based on filing by provenance and broad type of item, not by the specific attributes of the item. This approach is what one definitely needs in filing things like photographic collections, which tend to already be physically organized in a fonds-like manner. And... That is where Zotero can be a real benefit. It allows you to add attributes to your items filed in fonds and quickly access the records based on those attributes.
There are so many other items for which we, as genealogists, should definitely be using the fonds concept. Emails, for instance, also lend themselves to being filed as fonds. They can cover several topics in a single email and so are often impossible to file in a single location under many of the popular schemes.
Unfortunately; we tend to be lured away by the tempting idea of doing analysis as part of our filing because we can't easily answer how we are going to use items filed as fonds to spot gaps and inconsistencies in the information.
For myself, I am trying to develop a personal workflow that will allow me to file everything in a standard archival way yet still analyze the stored items for genealogical purposes. I "think" that this is where the Research Like a Pro workflow would help. It uses reports to collect all the relevant information into a research project document and does the analysis within the context of the research project. For simple Birth-Marriage-Death information, which may not require analysis, Zotero can directly find the information no matter how it's stored.
Now; I should note, those research project reports are just another fonds in my information storage and retrieval system.
Obviously, this is a lot of work to set up if one has been doing genealogy for a while. So (for me) it's a major decision and one I'm really thinking about before I do it. Of course; I'd appreciate any input on the matter. :>)
Hi History Hunter,
I will have to check out Research Like a Pro. Did you purchase the book? Thank you for the tip.
I haven't sorted and filed all my stuff. It is taking a lot longer than anticipated. My sister and I have been sorting family photographs for a while now. Photographs and Images are Series 7 and Scrapbooks are Series 8 in the Family Archives.
So far this is what I have:
- Series 7. Photographs/Images
- Sub-series A. Ann’s Prints
- Sub-series B. Ann’s Slides
- Sub-series C. Ann’s Negatives
- Sub-series D. Mom & Dad Prints
- Binder Box 2005: 24– 31 July 50th Anniversary Party & Disney
- Binder Box 2003: 29 May–July 14 European River Cruise
- Binder Box 2004: 4 May–17 July
- Binder Box 2001: 12–25 August Ireland/Scotland
- Binder Box 2001: 25 August–15 September Enchanting Europe
- Sub-series E. Mom & Dad Slides
- Box 1 February 1955–March 1958
- Box 2 April 1958–December 1960
- Box 3 January 1961–December 1964
- Box 4 April 1965–August 1966
- Sub-series F. Mom & Dad Negatives (3 ring binder boxes, & cross-referenced to the actual prints. APS film stored in photo boxes with contact sheet)
- Sub-series G. The Schindler Girls’ Prints
- subSeries H. Other Ancestor Photographs/Family Photographs
- Series 8. Scrapbooks
- Sub-series A. Ann’s Scrapbooks [Living Room]
- Box 1 Disneyland 2005
- Box 2 Disneyland/California Adventure 2005
- Box 3 Transatlantic Crossing 2007
- Box 4 Cruise to Mexico 2008
- Box 5 Holy Land Trip 1966
- Box 6 Schindler Family Responds to Bernard Pivot
- Box 7 Christmas with the Gilchrest's Book 1 1955-1968
- Box 8 Christmas with the Gilchrest's Book 2 1955-1968
- Box 9 Moms Cakes
- Sub-series B. Mom’s Scrapbooks [Hallway]
- Box 1 Wedding Album Jack & Pat Gilchrest
- Box 2 50 Years of Marriage Book 1
- Box 3 50 Years of Marriage Book 2
- Box 4 50th Anniversary Celebration Letters 24 July 2005
- Box 5 Schindler Family Responds to Bernard Pivot
- Box 6 Christmas with the Gilchrest's Book 1 1955-1968
- Box 7 Christmas with the Gilchrest's Book 2 1956 -1968
- Box 8 Moms Cakes
- Sub-series A. Ann’s Scrapbooks [Living Room]
Note: There are some duplicates in the scrapbooks. Box 9 in Sub-series A is the same as Box 8 in Sub-series B are the same scrapbook. The covers are different but the pages are the same. I made 5 copies of this scrapbook. Even though Box 6 in Sub-series A is the same title as Box 5 in Sub-series B. They are slightly different. The one in Sub-series A is "real world" scrapbook. The one in Sub-series B is a digital copy of the "real world" scrapbook.
I choose to use Sub-series to differentiate between Mom & Dad's collections and my personal collections.
Ann
I should note that I have started a collection called Family Archives. I am still reworking this collection so that it will match my Family Archives.
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Anne;
Yes, I purchased the Kindle edition.
I find it to be helpful for getting one's mind around the research process, but I must admit that I read it and then did a mockup of the documents/workflow in Scrivener. Once I did that I truly felt I understood it. You see, the process is "circular" and each pass refines your document set a bit more until you fully achieve your objective. I didn't feel that was stressed quite enough in the book.
The really great thing is the forum that they have for those who buy the book. I've gotten a LOT of help there. They also have templates and examples for the various documents, but I felt that I wanted to "roll my own" because that's how I tend to learn best.
By the way; you may find the following article "Guide to archival arrangement and description" to be very helpful in your current project. It's a nice concise description at a high enough level to not overwhelm a novice.
URL: https://www.eclibrary.ca/site/content/guide-archival-arrangement-and-description
Anne and Donna;
I've been doing some detailed research to see how "the professionals" archive email. You likely want to start reading at section 4.2.1, Capturing Email, on the bottom of page 42, in the document referenced below.
Archiving email is definitely an evolving and a rather complex subject since it is often subject to conversion errors when transferred outside the host system. Suffice to say, for the home user the use of MBOX format (for groups of messages) and EML format for single messages are seen as the least error-prone and most transportable methods at present. To gain a full understanding of the issue, it is suggested that one read, “The Future of Email Archives: A Report from the Task Force on Technical Approaches for Email Archives1,” released in August 2018.
1 Kelsey O’Connell, “The Future of Email Archives: A Report from the Task Force on Technical Approaches for Email Archives,” The American Archivist 82, no. 1 (March 2019): 214–17; imaged at The Council on Library and Information Resources (https://clir.wordpress.clir.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/08/CLIR-pub175.pdf : downloaded 18 October 2020).
History Hunter,
Thank you for the links. My head is spinning with the email information!
I have done a couple of blog posts about setting up my family archives. In the first one, I talked about how and why I chose to set things up the way I did. In the second post, I talked about the changes I made to the first plan. I am still tweaking my plan as I scan and log more into Zotero.
The first post is "Setting Up the Family Archives" At the end, there are links to suppliers and a couple of links to examples of archival systems.
https://renaissanceann.com/2019/10/09/setting-up-the-family-archives/
The second is "No Plan Survives First Contact The Gilchrest Family Archive Series 6 Military Papers is now Series 4 Military Service"
https://renaissanceann.com/2019/11/09/no-plan-survives-first-contact-the-gilchrest-family-archive-series-6-military-papers-is-now-series-4-military-service/
Anne;
I can understand that the email discussion sets your head spinning. That is why I boiled it down to mentioning MBX and EML files. A lot of people default to PDF and very soon find that the output doesn't always look like the original and is sometimes missing information. That is why the bottom line is, use MBX and EML files. The document is there to let you see just how involved it is even for professional archivists. The two formats mentioned are nice because they are understood by most email programs that we non-professional archives might use (even across platforms) and they carry the email attachments with them. I tend to use EML because I can drag and drop emails from my email program into my storage location. Technically; I should use MBOX for sets of emails, but that requires a bit more complex workflow. However; I'm looking into that now.
I appreciate you providing the references to your posts. I've read both and found them interesting.
Anne;
Just tried a test on my Mac and found that Mac Mail will export and re-import an entire structure of mailboxes without any issues at all. So; if one sets up the archival structure for a collection of emails in Mac Mail, one can export them as a collection to an external location for storage and later get them back. This avoids the issue of having to rename files with the same subject but different dates/times. The only issue is that for you to catalogue them in Zotero there are three files to which you need to link and you can't click and have the email open as you can with an EML file. This would be a pain for structures of mailboxes, so I guess one would need to use EML and number email EML files that have the same subject. Nothing's simple, is it?
