In the past folks would write things down - important events
like births and deaths - in the family bible and future generations could read
them, see the handwriting of their ancestors, feel connected.
In the past families would be buried together in the family
plot at the family churchyard and future generations would come on Decoration
Day to gather with cousins and talk and share stories and compare family
traits.
In the past pictures would be taken on special occasions and
put into frames or albums and labeled with names and dates so future
generations could see where they got their freckles or how tall their uncles
were.
In the past folks would write down stories and publish them
in hardback books that would sit on dusty shelves for years or maybe centuries and
someone generations later would discover them and could just pick one up and
read it, using only their eyes and mind.
Nowadays information and pictures and books are all on the
computer or floppy discs or CDs or flash drives or memory sticks or e- or i-
devices where future generations can… uh… wonder what these gadgets are and wish
their family history didn't stop in 2000 when great grandpa got a computer. They
will find and hold and read all the old classic books and wonder why folks
stopped writing books around that same time.
What do you think? Progress? Or not?
The digital age is great - just take cameras for example - no
more buying film or processing film and paying for prints. Now you can take as
many pictures as you like - it's free! You can edit them and enhance them and
delete the ones you don't like, and save them and… then what? Do something with
them! You might get a computer virus or a hardware glitch and whoosh!
Everything is gone. And even if nothing happens to them, they are stuck there
in the machine, forgotten, never to be seen again.
Computers are great, the internet is wonderful for looking
up stuff, sending messages etc., temporary stuff, but the long-term storage
use?
And what about all those things you are saving onto discs
now like precious family photos and important information - what is going to
happen to it…
kind of like all those ballet recitals and school events that
you lovingly recorded on VHS tape in the 1980s
and the trip around the country in the 1970s photographed with
slides
what about the old home movies from your childhood in the 1960s that your dad used to show in the living room with the lights out using the
movie projector and a sheet hung on the wall
So what is the answer? What to do about this rapidly
changing format for storage of pictures and info? Every so often do we need to pull out the old
stuff and upgrade it to the new format, keep doing this over and over, as new
storage is created? Is that the answer?
Is it too late for some of that stuff, are the old 8 mm home
movies too deteriorated from being stored in the damp basement, or did you lose
some pictures in a house fire, or maybe you inherited albums full of photos but the only people who can identify them are long gone. Don't let this happen to you!
The Washington Post has an interesting and timely article
about doing something about it, NOW. One of the ideas listed is to use one of the
online book making websites like Shutterfly or Blurb:
"Choose
a focus for the book, perhaps zeroing in on images from a particular period of
your life or one specific place you lived. Then write long captions related to
these photos, sharing personal observations and details with future generations."
I like this idea - it accomplishes several things at once -
old photos are identified with dates and names, and right along with the
pictures - the family stories are told and recorded in print - and it is in a
tangible form that can sit on the coffee table or gather dust on the shelf, to
be brought out and passed around whenever families gather, and best of all to be found one
day by a yet to be descendant who can say, "This is my family!"
