I would like to thank my extended family and my wife’s extended family for appointing me to the position of Photo Archivist for both clans. The subtlety of the appointment was impressive.  “Gosh, Aunt Helen died and we are cleaning out her homestead. Our storage space is limited.  Could you possibly keep some of the family documents, birth certificates, baptismal certificates, and Ovaltine Club membership cards at your place?  Oh yes, and there may be a couple of photographs.”  Very innocuous.  When I agreed, four boxes of photos and documents were delivered from Aunt Helen’s estate.  Because I didn’t recoil from this charade, I was immediately and permanently appointed Czar of the extended family photos.  Siezing opportunity, my wife’s siblings very quickly shipped three boxes of photos that had been stashed away by their parents.  

My sisters (Lucretia and Mad Madame Mim) jumped on the bandwagon for the Sinelli family.  “Mom has a few old family pictures.  Her ancestors have been in Washtenaw County for five generations and we would hate to lose this handful of mementos.  Can you hold on to these documents and pictures for a little while?”  Five more boxes.  Eventually, the storage requests revved up to high gear.  “Uncle Alex and Uncle Mike Sinelli  have no heirs.  Here are eight boxes of artifacts.”  “When Joanne moves to assisted living, get a U-Haul and load all of the valuable pictures and documents to store someplace at the ranch.  Good thing you have all kinds of storage space!”

So, the process went from an initial request for holding a few documents to assuming that I was the official Archivist for all historical documents and pictures for both families.  The aggregation of documents continued unabated.  Last week I asked google “What are the world’s largest collections of photographs?”  AI responded: number one is World War II, number two is World War I, and number three is the Blond and Sinelli Family Photo Archive.

For many reasons, it became clear that keeping random boxes of photographs in a storage locker was not very helpful to anyone.  As Official Archivist, I committed to a plan to convert all of the photos and other documents to a digital format.  It would certainly minimize storage.  Everything could easily fit on a $50 terabyte portable hard drive about half the size of a cell phone.  Organizing the pictures with a rudimentary indexing system would facilitate access to any particular photo in a few seconds.    

I am proud to say that I completed the scanning and archiving process on July 18, 2026.  The count of scanned files in my portable hard drive is 20,432 photos.  When I started the process I assumed that the most time consuming effort would be scanning and we should outsource that activity to some other professionals for a fee.  What would happen if we sent 20,432 pictures to a scanning company?  We would get a massive file that would have no value to anyone.  Are you going to search through that many pictures to find a couple of nifty photos of four year old Kevin to display at his 50th birthday party?

So, we set up a test program of three hundred photos.  The critical path event that required the most expenditure of time, by far, was reviewing the photos to see how we should index and store them.  Once that was done, the scanning was fast and easy with the spiffy new photo scanner I purchased for the process.  We could easily scan 400 photos and hour.  Clearly, we had to do the sorting and indexing whether or not we outsourced the scanning.  “Insourcing” the scanning allowed us to stretch the process out for years and do it at our convenience, one box at a time.    

Reviewing and indexing are a lot more complex than you would assume.  First, it seems that nearly all Americans have developed the same process for storing their photos and documents.  They toss everything into a box in the closet.  When the box is full, they get another box and toss in more stuff until it is full and they keep repeating those steps.  We processed somewhere between twenty and thirty large boxes.  They were all the same.  A complete hodgepodge of loose photos, photo albums, framed and unframed portraits, birth certificates, death certificates, grade school report cards, safe driving awards, expired drivers licenses, draft cards, discharge papers, diplomas, and souvenirs from various sporting events and vacations.  Second, finding suckers Archivists to store your photos has been continual over the years.  For example, when we reviewed Aunt Helen’s boxes it was very clear that a lot of her collections had been dumped on passed along to her by loving relatives.  I could not simply include her photos in the indexing.  I needed to expand the cataloguing process to encompass her extended family members. 

A lot of the collections included the same photos from the same events.  For weddings and portraits in the Drawe family dating back to the 1920’s, we found more than ten copies of the same photos totally scattered over ten different boxes from different relatives.  If we were processing two hundred pictures, it would be easy to eliminate the duplicates.  It is impossible to do that when you are scanning 20,432 photos out of different boxes over two or three years. 

Similarly, you have to electronically store a number of family photos, multiple times.  A great group picture of all the siblings needed to be posted to the right slot for everyone.  So, we would scan and copy a lot of pictures. One copy for Bubba’s folder, one copy for brother Bob, one for sister Hermoine, etc.     

Finally, it was very hard to determine who was in a number of photos. Great picture.  Do we know any of these people?  For example, I spent several hours pouring over an arial shot of the entire Rose Bowl with a magnifying glass.  Who do I know in this picture?  I finally found my nephew and father in law.  Unfortunately, Dad had his eyes closed when they snapped the picture.

When the scanning was complete, I sent out thirty seven thumb drives with all of the indexed photographs, uniquely tailored to each family member.   The inventories were not perfect.  There are some crummy pictures, some blurry photos, some embarrassing pics and a lot of duplicates.  No doubt, I included some pictures that were actually sent out by the thumb drive recipient to other family members. Notwithstanding, there were a few great gems for everyone.  With the indexing, it should be easy to find and enjoy many years of pictures.  

Along with the thumb drive, I gave the following notice to the extended family members.

The good news is I am excited to continue my work as the Document and Photo Archivist for your family.  However, we need to make a few changes. To streamline sorting and indexing, I will require some additional steps in the submission process.  First, for each photo you submit, identify the people in the photo, the location of the shot, any ceremony or event that is taking place, and the date the picture was taken.  In addition, render a minimal processing fee by taping a ten dollar bill to the back of each photo you are submitting.  Unfortunately, any photos that do not satisfy these requirements will not be accepted by the Archivists.

Enjoy the pictures.  We look forward to the next 20,432 photographs!

I have perfected the Archiving process.  I have the software, digital hardware and scanning capabilities.  However, the flow of new pictures, for some reason, has stopped.