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How to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn How to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia and Genealogy Records
Organize your family photos, heirlooms, and genealogy records In every family someone ends up with Mom's and Dad's stuff?a lifetime's worth of old family photos, papers, and memorabilia packed into boxes, trunks, and suitcases. This inheritance can be as much a burden as it is a blessing. How do you organize your loved one's estate in a way that honors your loved one, keeps the peace in your family and doesn't take over your home or life? "How to Archive Family Keepsakes" gives you step-by-step advice for how to organize, distribute and preserve family heirlooms.
You'll learn how Organize the boxes of your parents' stuff that you inherited Decide which family heirlooms to keep Donate items to museums, societies, and charities Protect and pass on keepsakes Create a catalog of family heirlooms Organize genealogy files and paperwork Digitize family history records Organize computer files to improve your research Whether you have boxes filled with treasures or are helping a parent or relative downsize to a smaller home, this book will help you organize your family archive and preserve your family history for future generations.
You'll learn how Organize the boxes of your parents' stuff that you inherited Decide which family heirlooms to keep Donate items to museums, societies, and charities Protect and pass on keepsakes Create a catalog of family heirlooms Organize genealogy files and paperwork Digitize family history records Organize computer files to improve your research Whether you have boxes filled with treasures or are helping a parent or relative downsize to a smaller home, this book will help you organize your family archive and preserve your family history for future generations.
206 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 16, 2012
38 people are currently reading
201 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 15, 2016
In How to Archive Family Keepsakes, Denise Levenick has created an amazing reference for anyone who has inherited a collection of family letters, documents and personal items. For family historians and genealogists, this is an essential guide for organizing and managing the family archive. She uses her own experience to demonstrate archival issues then offers easy-to understand solutions.
The book begins where many of us got started - what to do with grandma's trunk full of photos, letters and papers. She, very correctly, defines this collection as an archive and by doing so defines it as a valuable resource that deserves proper attention. She then proceeds to describe how to evaluate, catalog, organize, preserve and manage that archive with common sense tasks and affordable tools. Her resource sections are well-documented. Best of all, she provides workflows and checklists that help you break down a massive project into manageable parts. I wish I had this book years ago when I inherited my grandmother's archive. Denise's section on evaluation and the initial organizational steps would have made my efforts so much easier.
The chapter on organizing for the future makes several very good suggestions for planning what will happen to your archives after your death. Today's digital world adds some interesting quirks to those plans.
There are chapters on preservation covering papers, photographs, jewelry, tableware and even military medals. Once again, there are both common sense recommendations for the care and storage of these items along with plenty of resources.
An entire section is devoted to digitizing photo and paper archives. In addition to details on the equipment and software necessary to build a digital archive, Denise provides step-by-step instructions along with useful tips, checklists and workflows. I found the discussion on naming conventions full of useful suggestions.
In the last section, research strategies are discussed which includes topics on research plans, types of sources, citation styles and how to cite items from your archive. Thanks to today's technology, research is no longer done in a vacuum and she demonstrates where and how to make research connections online. Her organizational skills are impressive and she shares many of those tips with the rest of us.
I hate the idea of marking up my print copy of the book and I'm waiting for the day when I have the ebook permanently installed on my Kindle where I can easily search for specific topics along with my highlights and notes whenever I need them. How to Archive Family Keepsakes is a great reference and one you'll want to include in your library of research essentials.
The book begins where many of us got started - what to do with grandma's trunk full of photos, letters and papers. She, very correctly, defines this collection as an archive and by doing so defines it as a valuable resource that deserves proper attention. She then proceeds to describe how to evaluate, catalog, organize, preserve and manage that archive with common sense tasks and affordable tools. Her resource sections are well-documented. Best of all, she provides workflows and checklists that help you break down a massive project into manageable parts. I wish I had this book years ago when I inherited my grandmother's archive. Denise's section on evaluation and the initial organizational steps would have made my efforts so much easier.
The chapter on organizing for the future makes several very good suggestions for planning what will happen to your archives after your death. Today's digital world adds some interesting quirks to those plans.
There are chapters on preservation covering papers, photographs, jewelry, tableware and even military medals. Once again, there are both common sense recommendations for the care and storage of these items along with plenty of resources.
An entire section is devoted to digitizing photo and paper archives. In addition to details on the equipment and software necessary to build a digital archive, Denise provides step-by-step instructions along with useful tips, checklists and workflows. I found the discussion on naming conventions full of useful suggestions.
In the last section, research strategies are discussed which includes topics on research plans, types of sources, citation styles and how to cite items from your archive. Thanks to today's technology, research is no longer done in a vacuum and she demonstrates where and how to make research connections online. Her organizational skills are impressive and she shares many of those tips with the rest of us.
I hate the idea of marking up my print copy of the book and I'm waiting for the day when I have the ebook permanently installed on my Kindle where I can easily search for specific topics along with my highlights and notes whenever I need them. How to Archive Family Keepsakes is a great reference and one you'll want to include in your library of research essentials.
May 30, 2013
Taking on the responsibility of caring for your family’s collective archive may seem like a daunting challenge for many. This newly released book, by Denise Levenick, provides detailed and up to date information on how to get organized and how to safely store your archived materials. How to Archive Family Keepsakes is helpful and comprehensive while remaining realistic to the average person’s time and budget realities. A must read for anyone thinking of taking on a family archiving project.
February 23, 2013
The first 2 sections of the book are an absolute "must have" for any genealogist. The last section is on digital organization, which is covered in many other places. That being said, she still has many good resources in that area.
February 18, 2015
Lots of good information on what to do with that box of stuff.
January 28, 2020
Overall this book is designed for someone who has recently inherited an unorganised collection of ‘stuff’ that includes boxes of documents and/or entire houselots of stuff. If you’re in that situation and a bit bewildered as to where to start, this is the perfect book for you.
If you’re like me, and you’ve inherited a few small heirlooms or photos at a time from one grandparent or the other and maybe accumulated your own lifetime’s worth of stuff, this book is less relevant. There were still sections in it that I found useful though.
However, none of the links I clicked on worked. I clicked half a dozen, mostly for the worksheets that the author referred to and expected the reader to complete, and a couple for external sites. I understand that the author can’t be blamed if an external site goes offline or changes their address, but it was very frustrating not to be able to access the worksheets, especially when the author generally didn’t describe the contents of the worksheets. The reader is told to 'complete checkpoint such-and-such by doing the worksheet' but without the link working, there's no way for the reader to know what they were supposed to do. For instance, inventory your collection without cataloguing it. What does that even mean?
There’s a lot of information on how to care for different types of documents and items, everything from photographs and slides to books and garden tools. There was a LOT of repetition. Personally, I learned to remove the staples, paperclips, etc. from paper documents, to store letters flat instead of folded in envelopes (but still with the envelope) and to take a copy of newspaper articles and store the newspaper clippings far from all other documents. I don’t have much that isn’t from my own lifetime, but I know my mother-in-law has some of her grandfather’s letters and documents.
The paper/digital filing system discussion was somewhat interesting. The recommended digital organisation system is not significantly different to what I was already doing, although I don’t have a ‘database’ of my digital documents. I’ve maintained some level of digital filing system since I started doing genealogy, so I’m pretty au fait with that side of things. I’ve been more concerned with the non-digital stuff. I can see that some would need the guidance on this aspect though.
I thought the sections on genealogy research were really beyond the scope of this book, and as it’s such an extensive topic, it didn’t seem particularly useful to skim over it in a book about archiving family keepsakes, especially when the author had already covered what to do if you inherited someone else’s genealogy research. What with the sections on what spreadsheets programs to use and what tasks to use spreadsheets for, how to do citations, when to use a database and which one, what to consider when choosing your genealogy software, how to subscribe to genealogy blogs, etc., this felt more like this book should have been called ‘Everything you need to know when you’re suddenly appointed as the Family Historian’.
As I say, if you suddenly find yourself with boxes or houselots of things to sort through and/or you suddenly find yourself the Family Historian with no previous experience or knowledge, this book is perfect. For someone who has a slowly growing collection of heirlooms that she just wants to catalogue, it was only somewhat helpful.
If you’re like me, and you’ve inherited a few small heirlooms or photos at a time from one grandparent or the other and maybe accumulated your own lifetime’s worth of stuff, this book is less relevant. There were still sections in it that I found useful though.
However, none of the links I clicked on worked. I clicked half a dozen, mostly for the worksheets that the author referred to and expected the reader to complete, and a couple for external sites. I understand that the author can’t be blamed if an external site goes offline or changes their address, but it was very frustrating not to be able to access the worksheets, especially when the author generally didn’t describe the contents of the worksheets. The reader is told to 'complete checkpoint such-and-such by doing the worksheet' but without the link working, there's no way for the reader to know what they were supposed to do. For instance, inventory your collection without cataloguing it. What does that even mean?
There’s a lot of information on how to care for different types of documents and items, everything from photographs and slides to books and garden tools. There was a LOT of repetition. Personally, I learned to remove the staples, paperclips, etc. from paper documents, to store letters flat instead of folded in envelopes (but still with the envelope) and to take a copy of newspaper articles and store the newspaper clippings far from all other documents. I don’t have much that isn’t from my own lifetime, but I know my mother-in-law has some of her grandfather’s letters and documents.
The paper/digital filing system discussion was somewhat interesting. The recommended digital organisation system is not significantly different to what I was already doing, although I don’t have a ‘database’ of my digital documents. I’ve maintained some level of digital filing system since I started doing genealogy, so I’m pretty au fait with that side of things. I’ve been more concerned with the non-digital stuff. I can see that some would need the guidance on this aspect though.
I thought the sections on genealogy research were really beyond the scope of this book, and as it’s such an extensive topic, it didn’t seem particularly useful to skim over it in a book about archiving family keepsakes, especially when the author had already covered what to do if you inherited someone else’s genealogy research. What with the sections on what spreadsheets programs to use and what tasks to use spreadsheets for, how to do citations, when to use a database and which one, what to consider when choosing your genealogy software, how to subscribe to genealogy blogs, etc., this felt more like this book should have been called ‘Everything you need to know when you’re suddenly appointed as the Family Historian’.
As I say, if you suddenly find yourself with boxes or houselots of things to sort through and/or you suddenly find yourself the Family Historian with no previous experience or knowledge, this book is perfect. For someone who has a slowly growing collection of heirlooms that she just wants to catalogue, it was only somewhat helpful.
April 28, 2022
A must have, since I helped downsize, cleanout, and sell both my inlaws' and my parents' homes. I've ended up with lots of boxes of memorabilia, from both sides of my family, and from both sides of my husband's family. (I also help clients in downsizing, as a Professional Organizing Assistant.)
I needed ideas and help!! This book gave me just that. I may need to recheck this book out from the library, over and over, since it is no longer in print.
"Whether you have boxes filled with treasures or are helping a parent or relative downsize to a smaller home, this book will help you organize your family archive and preserve your family history for future generations."
I needed ideas and help!! This book gave me just that. I may need to recheck this book out from the library, over and over, since it is no longer in print.
"Whether you have boxes filled with treasures or are helping a parent or relative downsize to a smaller home, this book will help you organize your family archive and preserve your family history for future generations."
June 27, 2022
This is the very best book on how to get organized and create a family archive. She includes checkpoints and lists for objectives, organization, cataloging, care and preservation, you name it this book covers it and well. I looked for an updated version, but honestly, this covers everything except digital, cloud and social media archival practices, and that could likely by an entire new book, which is why I gave it 4 stars. She has a wonderful website as well, so check out that resource too. Great book, even though an older book, it is completely still relevant and a great read.
Read
February 7, 2021After feeling overwhelmed with the problem of how to organize my thousands of digital photos, I stumbled on this book. Written by a genealogist, it was exactly the encouragement and guide I needed to start sifting through and identifying the photos that are truly important and worth being enjoyed and preserved.
April 27, 2019
A very in depth book on how to deal with the archive you may have inherited from family.
February 8, 2022
Good handbook on safely archiving family documents and keepsakes. Nicely layer out with sections about various issues. I believe there is an updated book that gets into digitally saving documents.
March 7, 2024
Excellent basic and readable book on organizing and preserving your family "stuff." A little outdated in some of the details, but overall very solid.
January 16, 2013
Check out my interview with the Denise Levenick, author of How to Archive Family Keepsakes. An essential book for anyone trying to organized their family stuff. Practical, hands-on advice, with checklist, cheatsheets etc. Denise helps you see the big picture without feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand.
Interview with Denise Levenick
Interview with Denise Levenick
August 24, 2013
This took me awhile to read but so glad I did and so glad I own it because now I'm going to take a chapter at a time and not necessarily in order to begin to preserve and record my research, etc. in a way that I can pick it up after an absence and others could use my research as a foundation to build upon.
April 16, 2016
Helpful if you want to become a full time family archivist. This is not my intention! However, I did find some useful information about identifying the era of old photographs. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone starting a genealogy project with family keepsakes. The lure to this project is intriguing, but with limited time, this didn't make my bucket list.
October 11, 2012
Good overview and includes resource lists by chapter if one area is more relevant to your needs. I skimmed some of the chapters because I am primarily concerned about pictures and digital storage.
July 14, 2015
Lots of good ideas for the family genealogist. I would have given it 5 stars, except there are no illustrations/photos which would have been useful.
April 30, 2017
GREAT information, if a touch out of date (it's hard when technology changes so quickly). I need a copy of this
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews