How Do I Digitize Home Archives?

hello this is tom perry again with the preservation authority at extreme genes family history radio and extremegenes.com you can always contact me at help justasktomp.com i'm happy to help you in any way i can that's why we're here i've been asked to do this segment on how to digi how to digitize home archives easy for me to say and easier to do so if you need help with scanning photos and documents those are some of the biggest things that people really have tons and tons of that have been handed down from generation to generation sometimes they're the great big huge ones sometimes they're little tiny post dead stamp size ones there's all kinds of ones that we need to get scanned we need to get them digitized because the colors will fade all kinds of things will have problems you'll find ones that are cracked you'll find ones that have water damage all kinds of things like this so what we need to do is we need to get those digitized we need to get those all set up now there's a lot of people that do a lot of different kinds of things on them where they might want to go in and repaint them they can do different things colorization and all these things but i always completely 100 recommend before you touch anything you always want to scan it even if it's almost unlegible what it is take the time to scan it first because a lot of things can be cleared up in photoshop or digital darkroom or many different programs like that but you always want to start off with the best scan you can so scan at the highest dpi you can and make sure that you store all these things in a place that they'll always be safe now once you go in and start doing photoshop and different things like that that's fine but always make sure you keep your original before you're going to make any changes because you might go in and do something you think oh my goodness this was better before or hey i've got somebody that's more skilled to go and do what needs to be done so if your pictures need work on them and you don't have time to do the work that's fine you have to start someplace let's get them scanned that's the most important thing there's a lot of different kind of scanners on the market i really like epson has some good products canon has some good products and kodak has some amazing products in fact if you're going to be doing a lot of scanning i recommend you rent one of the higher end kodak scanners it has both a sheet fit scanner for your documents and some of your photos and also has a flat bed for things that are damaged or things that are in books that can't go through the auto feeder and you can rent these for a week at a time whatever through places like easy photo scan in the us and i'm sure there's places in other countries that do the same options and a lot of the family history libraries where they do genealogy and family history also have centers where they can do it so check with them find out if there's somebody in your area that can do it right for you can do it at a reduced fee maybe sometimes you'll even do it free or get together some different friends and buy a scanner yourself then when you're done sell it on ebay or go to ebay and find somebody's got a real nice one that wants to get rid of it they don't need it anymore you can buy it do all your scanning then sell it on ebay so it hardly ends up costing you anything but like i say it's worth spending a little bit more money and getting a real good quality one and if possible buy a high-end good kodak one or a good canon one and you'll usually be happy and a lot of the vendors that you'll run into at the virtual roots tech will probably be able to steer you in the right way and help you find some real good ones and like i say there's a place in the u.s you can go to ez photoscan.com just the letters e the letter z and then photoscan.com and they'll be able to help you they can tell you if there's people in your country that do the same thing if you can't find anybody go ahead and shoot me off a letter at the email address right here and i'll be more than happy to help you and see what i can do to help you find great people like linda and max are there to help you and through the connections we have with them we'll be able to find somebody that can help you no matter whether you're in russia you're in portugal you're in brazil you're in mexico us whatever we'll do everything we can to get the information that you need to help you so what you want to do is you always want to scan things and scan them very very carefully and i always recommend you scan them with a scanner that has leds versus light bulbs the problem with light bulb is some of them can actually damage your photos if you have photos that are really damaged as it is you don't want to make them any worse than they are so i really recommend if you can get one that uses led light it's more consistent light it doesn't have hot and cold spots it's a lot more consistent so i really recommend that like i say the kodak scanner is wonderful now you want to be careful when you're doing all your scanning you want to do things in groups so i recommend highly recommend that you organize everything first organize things by size organize things by thickness organize things by quality so if you have some really good photographs that are 8 by 10 and they're really crisp without any problems put those in the stack if you have some more eight by tens that are kind of cracked and have a little bit of damage put those in another step if you have ones that are really really bad faded and things like this put those in another stack because when you go through you can scan them and do them if you need to do them in the flatbed scanner you've got that if you can do them in the sheet scanner that's great like kodak sheet scanner is really really fast it's amazing how fast you can go through and scan them and the neat thing about kodak system he'll scan both sides at the same time if you want so if aunt martha wrote some different notes on the back saying oh this was so and so at such and such a place when you scan it you'll scan the front and they'll scan the back together so when you go and look at them you can see oh this is the front this is the back this is describing what it was on this um particular photo so that makes it really really nice too so do all your ones that have need to be scanned both sides put those in separate stack and obviously your ones that could be sheet fit you want to do that because the kodak scanner and others do really really good jobs they do it at a high dpi and they'll make it really great for you now when you go to the next size where you have the little teeny ones you're going to really want to do those on a flatbed scanner and many people like kodak they have software so you can put several photos on your scanner at the same time just make sure you leave a little bit of space between them and keep them as straight as you can and then go through and scan it as a batch then once it scans all those photos as a batch it'll let you go out back and actually do each one individually so you don't have to scan them you're just going to go in and properly okay this is a photo this is a photo this is a photo this is a photo but always keep your back scanned too just in case you missed one or there's a problem with one of your scans that aren't just right on and i always double check everything because nothing's worse than going to look at a phone and going oh my goodness a corner of it's missing and that's really important part of it so you want to make sure you do things like that and so go through and scan those and archive your things in the cloud or some place where you're going to be able to keep them and access to them pretty easily so it's very important you do that and with documents same thing if you have documents that are double-sided find a scanner that will scan both sides at once because that's going to save you a lot of time it might cost a little bit more but the time you're going to save is going to be worth it so i highly recommend you do that also same thing with your documents you'll have some documents that are on really thin paper you have some documents on thick paper and you have to go through and try different things to find out what works best if you're not sure find a blank piece of paper that's the same type and try scanning that first and always do one sheet at a time until you make sure it's going to be able to handle the product that you have right and if you have any ones that come out of those old what we call the magnetic ones back from the 60s and 70s there were actually wax that really can mess up your pictures i really highly recommend you get them out of those asap if they've already damaged your photo with wax on them you want to get something like a good archival onion skin and put between each picture so that when you put them together it doesn't transfer that sticky stuff from the back of one to the front of another if that's already happened that's a whole nother topic we'll go into at another time where we're not so pressed for time and be able to teach you how you can clean the wax off of those pictures but most importantly you want to get those out and like i said at the very beginning of this episode if they are in those plastic sleeves before you do anything go and scan them scan them in the sleep they're not going to be the best scan but at least you're going to have something to start with in case they're damaged as you as you remove them same thing with those cute little corners that we either licked or pasted down and put things in sometimes the glue from those eats through the paper and can damage your photos you want to be careful with things like this if you have photos that are torn and they're actually physically separated scan each piece separately and then with photoshop yourself or other people can go in and help you you can splice the pictures back together go in and color correct it's just absolutely amazing what technology can do now the things that will be able to go in and fix your pa pictures repair your pictures they called photo that have been faded or damaged and made make them almost like brand new again in fact sometimes even better than new you can edit people out you can have people in there's so many different things you can do but the first thing you want to do is get that high quality scanner and organize all your things now another thing when you're preserving documents and such if you're going through aunt martha's at it and she's got tons and tons of stuff and there's just dust all over everywhere you want to be really careful not to contaminate what's inside the box with what's outside the box so you want to get all these documents and all these photos have been stored forever get them out of the attic and you want to go to some kind of a place where you can actually spread out like if they're covered with dust and things you can get don't use a spray stuff i really don't recommend that because all that does is throws everything up in the air and it's going to settle on something else anyway so what i recommend is getting a vacuum like they have for computers that are pretty reasonable price and go in and vacuum all that stuff off if you don't have access to that you can get squirrel hair brushes and then you can go in and you know brush it off the best you can but make sure you do all that in one station where all your dirty things are then move all those things to a next station where then you'll open your box you'll break the sale take things out and then start separating those out because you want to keep all your clean stuff with your dirty stuff it's going to be bad you want to make sure you go into different stations of dirty semi-dirty starting to clean things i got clean that way you won't contaminate your nice documents with what's off your bad ones and you want to be really careful with rat droppings and things like that make sure you wear gloves when you're handling boxes for the first time because you don't know what's been on there so you want to just do that to preserve yourself make sure you use good hand sanitizer when you're done and then just make sure you put everything in separate areas on the website we'll go in and be up teach you some different things you can do to keep moisture out of the documents you go back and restore so that's the most important thing get all your stuff nice and clean and get everything prepped properly before you start your scanning there's all kinds of good tips and tricks to go into a lot more detail on our website on many other websites out there that's one great thing about all the different search engines that are available out there go in and type what you're looking for and chances are you'll be able to find something that's going to be able to help you be able to do exactly what it is you need to get your stuff done so just don't look at it as one big project how can i do this start small do little things if all you can afford is a small little scanner hey that's a good place to start just make sure take all care of all your documents when you're done put them back in a nice clean box seal them up really really good and do everything you can to keep moisture out of them and rats and different things that will go in and can actually damage your item so that's what i really recommend is get everything in a good systemic way to do things and in the other segment we talked a little bit about uh preserving videos but there's a lot of different ways you can do that too and i'll touch lightly on this if you want more go into it as you can see i've got several different formats of videotapes here you always want to store them on the side don't store them flat because flat can sometimes damage them because the control track is right at the edge of the tape which tells the vcr that you're running in it what the stuff is how to run it what speed and things like this and if the control track gets damaged you can lose everything else on your tape so you want to preserve your control track so that's why i always stack my tapes on the ends to make sure that they're in a good quality place keep away from heaters a lot of people make the mistakes they take a box they think oh i'm gonna put in my closet and put it up on the top shelf not realizing that there's a heating duct that runs right along below that top shelf or right behind it in the wall and that can cause all kinds of problems we've had people with that are brought in stacks and stacks of eight millimeter super eight 16 millimeter tape and the ones on the bottom were just basically dust because of the heat and the ones in the middle fortunately we're preserved if any of your film is starting to smell chemically then you know something's wrong you need to get those done fast and just because you have things that are damaged don't think oh nothing be done this photo i can hardly even see i'm going to throw it out always make sure you scan everything first because there's a lot of new things that are coming on that can take photos that are almost don't even exist anymore and you can scan those run them through those processors or make them look great again so just be patient take your time don't get overwhelmed with what you need to do all at once and you'll have a great time if you have any questions make sure you just email us right here and i'll be happy to help you in any way i can doesn't matter what country you're in whether you're in mexico you're in brazil you're in portugal you're in russia you're in the sudan wherever we're held to help you in any way we can everything that's going to be on our new website it's going to be free we'll get more longer videos up there to be able to help you and answer your questions so if you need anything let us know network at roots tech talk to as many people as you can virtually go into different rooms and learn ask questions post things and find out that's the way we all learn and this is tom perry your preservation authority at extreme genes family history radio and extremegenes.com signing up have a great day and enjoy yourself you

Channel: FamilySearch

Views: 2,177

Rating: 4.8823528 out of 5

Keywords: How Do I Digitize Home Archives?, digital home archives, home archives, digitizing home archives, ancestry, archival research, archives, documents, family history, family history research, family search, family tree, familysearch, genealogy, genealogy basics, genealogy research, genealogy research plan, genealogy research process, genealogy research tips, getting started, historical records, preservation, preserving family memories, rootstech 2021, rootstech connect 2021, Safeguard

Id: QZMZ8NGl-60

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021