View Full Version : What data should we keep?
Pocket randomly suggested this article to me and it got me thinking. As the article mentions, I'm one of the people that takes 1000's of photos every year including dozens (hundreds?) of my cats both past and present. Will anyone really care after I, and they, are dead? Probably not. Will it help if I curate my collection of photos down to the few that are the best. Still probably not. I don't have children and I'm not likely to become famous so there are few, if any, people who will care about me or my history after I'm gone.
Of course to take that thought further, will anyone care about the few pictures I have of my parents from their youth? I prize them because I only have a few so they sit on a shelf where I can look at them whenever I want to. Once I am dead there won't be anyone left to care about these strangers from long ago. Assuming that I still have them when I die, which is hopefully decades in the future, I expect that whoever deals with getting rid of my stuff will probably toss them in the trash because they no longer matter to anyone still alive. Is deleting a mass archive of thousands of digital photos and other electronic stuff really any different?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210715-the-online-data-thats-being-deleted
I actually have the morbid thought that the next great catastrophe following Covid-19 will be a massive outage and deletion of cloud storage data. We recently bought an external HD for storing favorite digital photos. DH can spend snowy winter days filling it up and who knows if in the future such technology will even be accessible anyway. I do enjoy looking at old photos of ancestors but without children to pass on to, I doubt they are worth saving at some point.
iris lilies
7-29-21, 10:11am
I assume the thousands of images on my ICloud account will disappear some day. I just hope it’s not an “oh sh*t” event that comes as a surprise to me. I pay $.99 per month for storage.
I have put a few special photos in a Pinterest file, as a backup.
I do wonder where a few select pictures of my parents, I’m talking no more than three, should go. Seems like someone should remember them but we don’t have a younger generation in my family since my brother didn’t reproduce either, so I guess it all will go into the landfill. My cousin has a daughter, maybe she could get stuck with some stuff but I don’t even know her so I’m not gonna stick her with much.
Not only did my brother and I not have children, but our closest cousins didn’t reproduce with one exception and he had only one child.
I have a scrapbook from when it was just my husband and I. A couple photo albums from when my boys were little. After that, I uploaded photos to online places like Shutterfly and Snapfish. I should go through and start printing out that sort of stuff because when I die, the passwords die with me. We aren't a sentimental bunch in my house so we never look through old pictures but my boys may want them after my husband and I pass to show their kids one day. Will need to work on finding good photos from the past 10 years or so! Oy vey!!
catherine
7-29-21, 10:20am
Once I am dead there won't be anyone left to care about these strangers from long ago.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210715-the-online-data-thats-being-deleted
I have mentioned here that it gives me grief to know that I am the last keeper of my beloved aunt's memory. She was married to a CT Supreme Court judge, so there are digital pictures and obituaries of him, but she was a typical woman of the early 20th century, and has no data, print or digital to prove her existence. I keep a shadow box of a sepia photograph of her taken when she was probably about 30 years old, wearing a classic '20s hat and a broach. I happen to have the broach, and so I pinned it inside the shadow box, and it makes me feel closer to her.
But I digress... I, too, am grappling with all the digital stuff--some good, mostly crap that I continue to preserve because I'm too undisciplined to do regular purges. So there's that. In addition, I think about what happens if the Cloud disappears. So I've given some consideration to doing an annual photobook through Snapfish or Shutterfly with just the top pictures of the year. Like a photojournal. As it is, my regular Christmas gifts to my adult kids are calendars with the best photos they've texted me of their families from that year.
I do think any old photos have to be identified by name and labeled somehow. I'm also on Ancestry, so I do have some digital pictures attached to specific relatives in my tree. I think I must have been an archivist in another life, because I hate seeing data disappear.
Great article. I'll probably bookmark it.
I love your calendar idea, Catherine. Maybe I will start that tradition and do a best of the family calendar or something--I could put someone's picture on their birth month, for example.
catherine
7-29-21, 11:02am
I love your calendar idea, Catherine. Maybe I will start that tradition and do a best of the family calendar or something--I could put someone's picture on their birth month, for example.
That's exactly what I do. I usually map the months to the prior year's picture. For instance, I make sure I have a picture of the kids playing in the snow on the January page, and swimming in the lake on the July page.
I started looking through my uploads on my online photo sites. I have been good about uploading so printing them out shouldn't be hard. What I am finding is that the last picture I took of either of my kids is when my oldest graduated in 2019. The rest are of my two cats literally from the day we got them until a few days ago. Haha!! I guess with Covid, there were no school events to photograph for the youngest. This is his Senior year so hopefully I will have some opportunity to get some photos this year.
I often wonder why I take my genealogy so seriously. I doubt my daughter will care much about it after I'm gone. But, maybe her daughter or someone along the line later will be curious about the family like I am, wishing to make a connection to the past.
Next month DH and I are taking a trip to the Midwest to search out family traces again. I'm drawn to one great grandfather for some reason. I want to see where he lived and speak to his gravestone. It's a strong urge I can't explain.
My impatience cost me some money. Instead of waiting until I got home to see where the pictures stopped in the photo albums, I decided to guess and ordered a bunch that I didn't think I had. Got home and looked and see that I ordered a bunch that I already had. Oh well.
iris lilies
7-29-21, 7:37pm
I often wonder why I take my genealogy so seriously. I doubt my daughter will care much about it after I'm gone. But, maybe her daughter or someone along the line later will be curious about the family like I am, wishing to make a connection to the past.
Next month DH and I are taking a trip to the Midwest to search out family traces again. I'm drawn to one great grandfather for some reason. I want to see where he lived and speak to his gravestone. It's a strong urge I can't explain.
Those oldsters can be interesting! If you’ve done solid genealogy research yes do document at all and save it for your descendants. Somebody coming up will want it. Off and they’re not interested until after they get well into adulthood.
happystuff
7-29-21, 9:04pm
I've gone through about 4/5ths of the physical photos and albums, and have scanned them all. I have a very large external drive that they are stored on, as well as some special trips saved on various sd cards for both storage and to be displayed in a digital frame.
Data is cheap/free, and getting cheaper everyday.
Network bandwidth, same.
CPU capacity, same.
Search & image recognition algorithms - same.
I'm saving everything, life is too short to spend finite seconds of my life worrying. If my descendants or any other researchers care, things will only become easier for them as time passes, and good luck to them.
Data is cheap/free, and getting cheaper everyday.
Network bandwidth, same.
CPU capacity, same.
Search & image recognition algorithms - same.
I'm saving everything, life is too short to spend finite seconds of my life worrying. If my descendants or any other researchers care, things will only become easier for them as time passes, and good luck to them.
I agree. Let some future data archeologist sort it out.
Maybe selfies will be the potsherds of the thirty-fifth century.
iris lilies
7-30-21, 11:09am
*IF* you value a few important images as important images to preserve, you (the generic you) HAVE to curate them by removing them as wheat from the chaff.
Bae and Ldahl have children. Surely you guys value a few key image from your child’s development, images that tell their story, images that will have value beyond your own generation. Yours is a self centered point of view I think. You parents are the custodians of children’s images as children. Share them.
For me, I don’t have children. And I already gathered up family photos of the ancient ones, copied them, and distributed them to various relatives. The archiving work is done here.
My own iCloud stash of thousands of photographs have no value to anyone but me. Therefore, when I expire, I don’t expect anyone to sift through them searching for the gold. There is no gold to be found, the photographs are only kept by me because I like them.
*IF* you value a few important images as important images to preserve, you (the generic you) HAVE to curate them by removing them as wheat from the chaff.
Bae and Ldahl have children. Surely you guys value a few key image from your child’s development, images that tell their story, images that will have value beyond your own generation. Yours is a self centered point of view I think. You parents are the custodians of children’s images as children. Share them.
For me, I don’t have children. And I already gathered up family photos of the ancient ones, copied them, and distributed them to various relatives. The archiving work is done here.
My own iCloud stash of thousands of photographs have no value to anyone but me. Therefore, when I expire, I don’t expect anyone to sift through them searching for the gold. There is no gold to be found, the photographs are only kept by me because I like them.
The kid is welcome to sort through it and keep whatever he likes. I doubt it will take more than an afternoon. There simply isn’t that much of it. We never really accepted the proposition that the undocumented life is not worth living.
happystuff
7-31-21, 8:39am
Data is cheap/free, and getting cheaper everyday.
Network bandwidth, same.
CPU capacity, same.
Search & image recognition algorithms - same.
I'm saving everything, life is too short to spend finite seconds of my life worrying. If my descendants or any other researchers care, things will only become easier for them as time passes, and good luck to them.
I agree. Let some future data archeologist sort it out.
Maybe selfies will be the potsherds of the thirty-fifth century.
I agree. I am doing/have done tons of photo scanning and saving, etc, but that is because it is a project *I* wanted to do. If anyone else wants it, it's there. If not, it's easily deleted.
Teacher Terry
7-31-21, 2:23pm
I have saved all the photo albums for my kids. Now I just take pictures with my phone and when my phone died I lost them all.
I have saved all the photo albums for my kids. Now I just take pictures with my phone and when my phone died I lost them all.
I take all my photos with my phone too but I am pretty good about uploading them to a online site like Snapfish. Then I can print them for something like 7 cents a piece.
I have saved all the photo albums for my kids. Now I just take pictures with my phone and when my phone died I lost them all.
Why don't you back them up somewhere? Android - Google Photos is the easiest. iCloud for Apple. I do iCloud, plus Google Photos, AND MS One Drive. Redundancy. :D
iris lilies
8-1-21, 12:38am
Your children are not interested now because they are young. Why should they be? It isnt realistic of you to think they should be .
But they may be interested when you are old or dead. Their children may be interested when you/your kids are old and dead. I guarantee that someone in that chain will be interested. Sadly, they will have no photos of you or your children in their youth.
Pretend you have a great-great grandson and great-great grandaughter, and they look like you. They would be fascinated to know that! But too bad, they will never know because their great great grandparents could not be bothered to spend two hours of their lives picking out 10 key photographs of the person, time and place that signified lives, and marking the images them with that info.
It was just too difficult!
I really want to slap all of you around. :~)
Pretend you have a great-great grandson and great-great grandaughter, and they look like you.
LOL. I will never have a great-great-grandson or granddaughter that looks like me. ;) (and I'm okay with that!) I don't expect things that are important to me, to be important to anyone else. It's nice if they are, but not an expectation on my part.
Teacher Terry
8-1-21, 11:23am
I don’t have grandchildren and never will.
Got all my printed photos that I ordered from Shutterfly and Snapfish. Got my photo albums that I ordered from Amazon. Went through all the photos last night and tried to pull out as many duplicates as I could along with the "why did I print this one?" photos. According to the last photo album, I stopped printing and organizing photos back when my boys were 9 and 12. They are now 17 and 20. I am going to start putting photos into the new albums today and hopefully will get it done within a day or two. The problem is going to be trying to put them in some chronological order because I don't remember when some were taken. Guess it really doesn't matter as I doubt if anyone ever looks in the albums, they won't look through all of them in order. I have 3 full albums and the new one will make #4. Hopefully it will have enough pages to get me up until my oldest graduated HS in 2019. It will be easier now to keep track of what photos need to be printed and hopefully I can keep up doing so by year. I didn't really take any family photos in 2020 because we didn't really do anything or go anywhere. Only photos I took last year were of our new kittens which I made them their own album. Haha!!
I did this, Klunik, although not on Snapfish, printed them myself.
It took me nine months, though, not 3 days, but I had over a hundred years of family photos.
I love my albums! Now I have to catch up since we moved as I have not kept up with the current year album.
I did this, Klunik, although not on Snapfish, printed them myself.
It took me nine months, though, not 3 days, but I had over a hundred years of family photos.
I love my albums! Now I have to catch up since we moved as I have not kept up with the current year album.
I used to have a little photo printer but decluttered it years ago because it wasn't being used. Honestly, if it wasn't for this thread, I probably wouldn't have printed out any for the rest of my life. Figured uploaded online was good enough until I realized that when I die, the passwords die with me. Not sure if any of my boys would want the albums unless I micro-organize them for each kid so they can take their album when they leave for good. They do have their individual "memory bins" so maybe stick a few photos in there of major events and call it good.
Teacher Terry
8-4-21, 3:22pm
When my mom was dying the 3 of us picked photos and slides that we wanted. Honestly maybe a total of 30 each at the most. The rest went in the garbage. Aside from keeping the photo albums that takes the youngest through his early 20’s no more physical pictures have been taken. No way am I wasting my time preserving crap that will get thrown away. Honestly how many pictures of past relatives does anyone really want?
With my phone I take pictures of stuff on vacation and my kids and dogs. My kids take pictures of me with their phones so have their own pictures. That’s why I don’t back them up. When I think of the time and effort wasted on this stuff it makes my head hurt.
iris lilies
8-4-21, 3:52pm
When my mom was dying the 3 of us picked photos and slides that we wanted. Honestly maybe a total of 30 each at the most. The rest went in the garbage. Aside from keeping the photo albums that takes the youngest through his early 20’s no more physical pictures have been taken. No way am I wasting my time preserving crap that will get thrown away. Honestly how many pictures of past relatives does anyone really want?
With my phone I take pictures of stuff on vacation and my kids and dogs. My kids take pictures of me with their phones so have their own pictures. That’s why I don’t back them up. When I think of the time and effort wasted on this stuff it makes my head hurt.
30 is a good number.
1 picture of an ancient one is sufficient. That, Clearly identified with name, time, and hopefully place is enough. Fortunately those agents didn’t spend a lot of money on photography and so a studio portrait is a pretty big deal and there’s only a couple of them.
In today’s world we suffer from quantity not quality.
In today’s world we suffer from quantity not quality.
I agree, although I do think quality is there - it's just lost within the quantity, and who wants to spend the time looking? (rhetorical question - lol)
On Sunday I was able to show my granddaughter a picture of my grandmother at her age (four) and they are pretty much identical. But I'm here to explain the relationship, and she can see the resemblance with her own eyes.
I really want to slap all of you around. :~)
My daughter has full access to the entire family photo dataset already. And has spent hours on her own interviewing family elders and documenting their stories.
I take nearly a thousand photos a week. Most of them are pure data for astronomy, or people and sites that are quite ephemeral. The especially interesting ones get placed on various social media platforms, which I presume will vanish by the time I have grandchildren.
Heck, who even knows how to store data in a format that future generations will be able to open and manipulate? Applications and standards evolve, and are deprecated, with such frequency that the "maintain data forever" problem is "hard".
So slap someone else.
iris lilies
8-4-21, 9:14pm
My daughter has full access to the entire family photo dataset already. And has spent hours on her own interviewing family elders and documenting their stories.
I take nearly a thousand photos a week. Most of them are pure data for astronomy, or people and sites that are quite ephemeral. The especially interesting ones get placed on various social media platforms, which I presume will vanish by the time I have grandchildren.
Heck, who even knows how to store data in a format that future generations will be able to open and manipulate? Applications and standards evolve, and are deprecated, with such frequency that the "maintain data forever" problem is "hard".
So slap someone else.
if your daughter has already taken the family photo data sets that’s all that’s necessary.
All the other images you take as your hobby are not what I’m talking about. Maybe she’s interested in those maybe not but those are mostly for your own interest. As far as storage forever, no one knows what that is, but you can make a reasonable approximation for the length of your Lifetime. Let the next generation preserve it for the length of their lifetime. Every digital iteration will probably degrade the original image but thems the breaks.
The Rosetta Project has done a fair bit of thinking on how to preserve digital data for the ages:
https://rosettaproject.org/
I really want to slap all of you around. :~)
The line forms on the left.
If my posterity survives the various promised doomsdays, and wants to pursue various genealogy, scrapbooking or ancestor worship hobbies, they can sort through the detritus on their own.
Finally finished the last photo album so everything is up to date now and it will be easier to know where I left off because the last batch of photos are of my oldest's HS graduation in 2019. I only took photos of our kittens in 2020 because nothing else was going on last year. Haha!! I tried to keep the photos in somewhat chronological order based on how young the boys looked. Definitely not in any sort of month/season order as I have Christmas photos on the same page as Summer photos mixed in with random pet pictures. But at least this project is done and checked off my to do list.
This one I can celebrate, as I felt great when I was up to date. Now I am half a year behind because of the months we have lived here, and I am out of sorts with the albums. This is a good August project for me, to catch up.
One more note about writing on the back of photos, and slapping people for not--I actually don't do that and find it freeing because if my kids don't remember who these people are, they will be freer to toss if they want.
But I will show them to granddaughters first, and if they are real interested, I will probably make notes for them, like my grandmother did.
I don't feel I have enduring responsibility for this stuff, and have passed a lot on to others if I figure it is their part of the family, to do with as they will.
Sometimes, I have felt, as I burned this stuff, that I am doing everyone a service, to send it off to the infinite.
iris lilies
8-7-21, 9:10am
Finally finished the last photo album so everything is up to date now and it will be easier to know where I left off because the last batch of photos are of my oldest's HS graduation in 2019. I only took photos of our kittens in 2020 because nothing else was going on last year. Haha!! I tried to keep the photos in somewhat chronological order based on how young the boys looked. Definitely not in any sort of month/season order as I have Christmas photos on the same page as Summer photos mixed in with random pet pictures. But at least this project is done and checked off my to do list.
major accomplishment, yay you!
iris lilies
8-7-21, 9:15am
This one I can celebrate, as I felt great when I was up to date. Now I am half a year behind because of the months we have lived here, and I am out of sorts with the albums. This is a good August project for me, to catch up.
One more note about writing on the back of photos, and slapping people for not--I actually don't do that and find it freeing because if my kids don't remember who these people are, they will be freer to toss if they want.
But I will show them to granddaughters first, and if they are real interested, I will probably make notes for them, like my grandmother did.
I don't feel I have enduring responsibility for this stuff, and have passed a lot on to others if I figure it is their part of the family, to do with as they will.
Sometimes, I have felt, as I burned this stuff, that I am doing everyone a service, to send it off to the infinite.
Well, when I think about generations down the road, I believe I only have an obligation to pass on a handful of things representing ancient ancestors. That’s it.
No one has the obligation to save 47 cat pictures from the year 2017, as example.
I say save the best image of one person for future generstions and toss the rest.
save the best childhood photos of your children for them, toss the rest. Their children can cull the collection down to one photos or two of old gramps.
Well, when I think about generations down the road, I believe I only have an obligation to pass on a handful of things representing ancient ancestors. That’s it.
No one has the obligation to save 47 cat pictures from the year 2017, as example.
I say save the best image of one person for future generstions and toss the rest.
save the best childhood photos of your children for them, toss the rest. Their children can cull the collection down to one photos or two of old gramps.
That makes total sense.
Well, when I think about generations down the road, I believe I only have an obligation to pass on a handful of things representing ancient ancestors. That’s it.
No one has the obligation to save 47 cat pictures from the year 2017, as example.
I say save the best image of one person for future generstions and toss the rest.
save the best childhood photos of your children for them, toss the rest. Their children can cull the collection down to one photos or two of old gramps.
I thought about that as I was putting multiple pictures of the same event into the albums. Maybe one day I will take the time to go through them and take out the ones that are pretty much duplicates. But for right now I wanted to keep as many as I could to fill up the albums. Time is running out on taking pictures of my boys as kids. Last one I took of oldest was HS graduation. Probably the next one I take is college graduation. I am sure now that school is back I will have chances to get some pictures of the youngest during his Senior year and graduation. Then probably not until he graduates college in 2026.
Related:
I received an Epson FF-680W photo scanner the other day. It is $600 new from Amazon, I purchased a "refurbished" unit from them for $350 or so.
You can put entire stacks of photo prints into it, and it swiftly (2-3 seconds/photo) scans in the pile at 600dpi (or more). For each scan, it delivers: the original scan, an enhanced scan (color correction and damage removal) and a scan of the back of the photo. It has a reasonable scheme for filing away the scans neatly.
I set it up near my laptop yesterday, and whenever I thought to, I dropped in a pile of prints from the various shoeboxes of old photos I have cluttering up the place.
By the end of the day, without any real apparent effort on my part, I had scanned about 5000 photos, going through the bulk of the prints that I came across in my first pass through the attic closet.
They then "magically" uploaded to Google Photos, and a couple of clicks added the pile to the shared family albums to crowd-source annotations and triage.
I see now why the seemingly-new unit was "refurbished" - by the end of the day I really had no further use for it, as it had satisfactorily devoured my entire archive of prints.
Of all the things fed through it, it only had 2 jams, which were cleared within seconds without damage to the photo.
I recommend this critter, though I'd buy it in consortium with other people who had the same problem with old prints and share it around. Or, like the previous guy, just return it when done if that's your bag.
iris lilies
8-20-21, 2:31pm
That is amazing speed and efficiency.
I actually love looking at old ancestral photos and DD seems to be much more interested now that she is a mom. I have one photo that I want to enlarge and posterize. It shows my mom and all the other farm cousins loaded up on a wooden produce cart among a pile of pumpkins - circa 1925.
iris lilies
8-20-21, 3:03pm
I actually love looking at old ancestral photos and DD seems to be much more interested now that she is a mom. I have one photo that I want to enlarge and posterize. It shows my mom and all the other farm cousins loaded up on a wooden produce cart among a pile of pumpkins - circa 1925.
that sounds like a great image!
I consider this one a keeper. My grandparents were hardscrabble cattle ranchers yet they managed to get dolled up and go to town for this 1929 family portrait.
3913
That is amazing speed and efficiency.
The big win seems to be in the crowd-sourcing of the annotation and curation effort - various relatives seem to be having a field day, and I'm just sitting here having coffee watching all the work get done :-)
rosarugosa
8-20-21, 6:39pm
That is a great picture, Pinkytoe.
Teacher Terry
8-20-21, 7:02pm
Great picture PT!
Such a cool picture, pinkytoe!
rosarugosa
8-21-21, 6:48am
Bae: Will you be keeping your original hard copies, or just keep everything in digital format?
Bae, where do you store the crowd-sourced albums that family can access? This is really good info you are sharing.
I have a bin and more of photo albums and no one wants the physical bins but a family-centred online album might be perfect.
Razz, I think he said they were on Google Photos.
Razz, I think he said they were on Google Photos.
I understood that the scanned were easily uploaded to Google Photo and then he moved them to the family albums 'elsewhere'. I was wondering where is the 'elsewhere' ?
I was assuming the albums are elsewhere on Google Photos. Maybe not.
I was assuming the albums are elsewhere on Google Photos. Maybe not.
Exactly this, just other albums on Google photos. Everyone involved already used Google for collaborative efforts on documents and such, so it was a no brainer
Teacher Terry
8-21-21, 2:18pm
So my aunt died and my cousin ended up with a big box of photos of my mom and hers. The 3 of us said send us 10 photos each when she asked. Now she is having trouble making the decision to get rid of some of them.
happystuff
8-21-21, 6:10pm
So my aunt died and my cousin ended up with a big box of photos of my mom and hers. The 3 of us said send us 10 photos each when she asked. Now she is having trouble making the decision to get rid of some of them.
I scanned over 4000 physical pictures when I undertook the *digitize photo albums* project about 2 years ago. I got through a lot of them, but - unlike bae - I scanned these one at a time. I really didn't mind, though, as it was a wonderful trip down memory lane. (I still have a couple albums left to do... sigh.) I understand how your cousin feels, as it's hard to determine what to do with some pictures - even after digitizing. Good luck to her.
Today's discovery: if you have old prints that are sorta-stuck together, putting them into a ziploc bag in the freezer for a couple hours makes it trivial to separate them.
happystuff
8-21-21, 6:55pm
Today's discovery: if you have old prints that are sorta-stuck together, putting them into a ziploc bag in the freezer for a couple hours makes it trivial to separate them.
Geesh! Wish I had known this 2+ years ago! Great tip - thanks!
Geesh! Wish I had known this 2+ years ago! Great tip - thanks!
The other approach my Mom recommended was to soak them in distilled water for a bit, then hang to dry, correctly pointing out that this is part of the original development process anyways. I'm glad the freezer trick worked though, it was far less mess and bother.
Today's discovery: if you have old prints that are sorta-stuck together, putting them into a ziploc bag in the freezer for a couple hours makes it trivial to separate them.
Thank you for that!
Teacher Terry
8-27-21, 2:46pm
My cousin has one son who doesn’t want all those pictures. I told her to throw them away after she picks out her favorites.
Well, after uploading all these thousands of photos to Google photo albums, I am a fan.
Google has pretty good built-in image recognition, and it's pretty easy to do searches by name, and have it find "most" of the relevant photos on-demand, a task that would take forever with physical photos. It took mere moments to sift out all my pets, for instance.
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