What to do with old family pics??

[WDW&MK]

Happy Independence Day everyone!!

Wondering if any of you have any ideas about this? My mom is in a nursing home with dementia - so I cannot ask her about our family pictures. I am cleaning out her house and have a TON of old pictures to figure out what to do with. I have no children and my brother has 4 very small kids - he lives several states away.

Some of the pics I know who the people in them are. Many I do not . To compound the matter - several of them are VERY LARGE - at least 16 x 20. These are the old vintage b&W pics in very old elaborate frames. We have no other close family relatives to help with this as my mom is an only child.

What would you do with all of these?? Any thoughts or ideas.

Thank you!!
Kari

[TinkRocks]

Our family has a lot of old pics as well - some are in albums, a lot of them are loose in drawers and boxes. We are in the process of scanning the photos, labeling the photos (if possible), and storing them on an external hard drive.

Regarding the elaborate frames that you have - do you think your brother's kids would enjoy these when they're older? If not, perhaps inquire about / sell the frames at an antique store. You could store the photos until a later date.

[Katzateer]

I have gone through the same problem. My mom has dementia and is in nursing home. Our family home is cleaned out and sold. My mother in law passed away a couple of years ago. We inherited all these family pictures and my girls have no interest in them ( right now- they are 18 and 23 so will be more interested in future I am sure).

Have kept one copy for me, one for each of them, and as painful as it is, have started throwing out extras. We have no other family to share with. I made one photo album with old photos from MIL and mom. Am trying to scan and put on disk some the albums. I used to scrapbook but no more. Tons of Disney pictures- only
keeping the best.

As far as knowing who some of the pictures are of, I got rid of the ones we could not identify. Most of them were childhood friends or relatives we never met. Kept the relatives we could identify. Over the years, I asked MIL and mom about different pictures, so could identify most of them.

Good luck - hard to let go of the memories but as long as I can put a disk in computer- I can enjoy those old pics.

[faline]

I, too, have scanned the old family photos and have them backed up externally. I'm still in the process of scanning family photos from more recent years (but pre-digital). It's a time consuming process but I will continue even if no-one in the future is interested in having any of them!!

[Mickey'sGirl]

I am the keeper of the photos in my family. I have several of the very old oval frames with old tin photos, accented with pen or paint by hand. Really fabulous old photos (some are well over 100 years old). Even if you do not want to keep them for yourself, I am sure there is a market for such things. The frames themselves are likely worth money.

If you are asking for suggestions on how to identify people/places in the photos, I do not even know where to begin. Maybe one of those ancestry websites could help?

With my parents' photo albums, one of my friends scanned them all for me several years ago, and we were able to give a file of them to each family. We travelled a LOT, and there must have been about 50 albums in all, so that was not small feat! We still love to go through them (and laugh at our clothing and haircuts )

[AvaNellMouse]

If there is a geneology society or museum in your family's historical "home town" you might offer extras to them. We are in NM but my mother, who has done extensive research, has shared pictures and information with museums in TX and OK and they were very happy to have them. You may be surprised at the extended family connections that want info and pictures to complete their research.

[Disney Doll]

Your nieces and nephews are young now, but one day they may be interested in family history. I would scan the ones you can identify and record the names of those people so that more information is not lost to future generations.

I made a family history scrapbook several years ago with some of our old family pics. I would definitely recommend that. Having tons of scanned photos is nice, but having something that you can pull out and look at easily is also nice.

[WDW&MK]

Great thoughts! Thank you!!

For those of you that scan your pictures, do you have a special machine or do you just use your computer printer/scanner?

Kari

[faline]

For those of you that scan your pictures, do you have a special machine or do you just use your computer printer/scanner?

Kari

I bought a special machine to scan the slides. For all the others, I just use my printer/scanner/fax.

[Altair]

I'd put the ones of relatives in a slip-in pocket photo album. These are hard to find, but Walgreens still carries a nice one with room for 500 photos. Looking at too many photos on a computer can end up being torture for some, like the old vacation slide shows.
The ones of nothing in particular I would tend to throw out or just put in a box.
Hard copies will always be around, you never know about scanned stuff.