Have You Cleaned Out Your Shoebox on Ancestry.com?

Be honest with yourself.  When is that last time you logged in to your Ancestry.com account for the sole purpose of working on those records you’ve saved to your shoebox?

Your shoebox is a holding bin for those items you find, but don’t have the time at that moment to scrutinize or figure out where to put it.  A nice touch, I think, because I use it A LOT.  But, if you’re not self-disciplined enough to come back to them regularly for clean-up, you’ll find your shoebox may be overwhelming!  Not to mention, you may be missing a key piece of information which could help you with your research.

Here’s a page from my shoebox:

Generally, these are not my direct-line ancestors or I would tackle them right away and not save them here for later because I like to stay on task and not be distracted by another find, though there are some exceptions. 

Once in a while, I set aside time to go to my shoebox and work exclusively for a specific period of time.  I usually set a timer for an hour, for example.  Otherwise, it’s never getting done.  After an hour, the timer goes off, and I can come back another day.  But at least I’ve given an hours time to working on something that I would otherwise put off entirely because I don’t think about it! 

Practice self-discipline to tackle those things that you don’t want to have to do – some people call it “eat your frog”.  I keep a list of long term or ongoing projects like this called “Current Initiatives”, inspired by the book by Mark Forster called Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management.   I address these projects a little at a time knowing that I am making progress on all of them.  That gives me the satisfaction of knowing that I am not neglecting them or forgetting to work on them at all.

Did you know you can also go here to find items you’ve downloaded or printed? Look at the image above  at the tab behind the “saved records” tab.  I really like this feature for going back to a history of what I was working on last.

So, have you worked on your shoebox items lately?  How do remember to go back to it?  Maybe this post was just the reminder you needed!

Copyright © 2010 Joanne Schleier

Insomnia Does an Archivist Good!

OK so first, I do not recommend this to all of you genealogists working on your archiving projects (little disclaimer there), but I can’t tell you how happy I am that I was able to plow through a ton of negatives last night this morning!  

{Doing happy dance… oh yeah}!

Every once in a while I get these bouts of insomnia.  For me, that means that I can’t sleep and don’t feel tired until sometime way after midnight.  Going to bed would just mean tossing and turning, so I stay up and do something relaxing until I feel sleepy (while my husband is catching up on some major zzz’s and REM sleep including the occasional snore… {jealous}).  I don’t think that this happens often enough to interfere with my daily life and I don’t like allopathic doctors or medications.  So, I just deal with it take advantage of it when it happens.  My mom and grandmother were night owls too.  We get our creative bursts of energy after the sun goes down.  “No I’m not a witch, I am you.”  (Sorry, I just had to).

Well, last night I went to bed at 3:30am!  I tossed and turned until 4:00am which was the last time I looked at the clock.  WHAT!?!?  WOW, that was HIGHLY unusual.  The thought occurred to me that I might not sleep at all!  Which would be fine with me until it catches up with me later!

Fortunately, I have several projects in the works and the one I chose to work on allowed me to sit on the couch with the TV on.  I had already compiled all of my negatives, sorting them by type, 35mm, 110 and disc camera films.  My focus was on the 110 size negatives stashed in an old can opener box.  (For Shame!)  WELL!!!  At least I saved them all!  The biggest mistake I made was separating them from the prints in the first place and not noting the date, subject, location or anything! ~I can’t tell you how much I’m learning!

I set up my little area, brought in the films and supplies and got to work.  I went through each image on each film and found the corresponding print which wasn’t to hard ‘cuz I already” sorted” in the previous phase of the project.  On the back of the each print in the corner I wrote (using my archival safe pen) “110” for the type of negative and then “N#”, “N” for “negative” and the number on the strip that correlates to the image. 

To see the itty-bitty image, I used both my floor lamp and desktop Ott-Lites.  I wore some reading glasses (I don’t wear  prescription glasses) and added some clip on Magna-Clips magnifiers in a +3.00 for when I couldn’t see anything without them.  I love these things for my hand sewing because they flip up and down.  Figured they’d work for this too – BOY HOWDY – they sure helped a lot! 

Some of the prints were collected already by subject in folders and I made a spreadsheet to help me locate each set.  I better save how I set that up for another post.  Just know that this is NOT  the initial stage of my project, or the last.  Still other prints were in an album – not chronological, but all mixed together (what was I thinking?).  And best of all (just because I like sarcasm) they were in one of those albums with the sticky glue behind the images – I think they call it a magnetic album.  YIKES!  I only have one of that kind of album and now it’s half empty {grin}.  Mostly “Germany” and “Spain” are out of it.  

I put each set of negatives in it’s own archival sheet protector, temporarily, with the prints I could find and a note with how many prints on the strip, the size of the prints (this helps to find missing ones because I can look at the size of the  prints) and subject or anything that might suggest a possible match for one missing like “Kera (my daughter) wearing yellow sunglasses”.  

I put all the sheet protectors in a 3” binder, temporarily again, and labeled the binder “WIP Germany” for “Work in Progress”.  That sets it apart from sets where all the prints are found and ready to put into archival page protectors for the particular print size.  Which is the next phase…

For now, all the 110 negatives are accounted for!  Thanks to a sleepless night (I think?)!!!  Now the negatives for the disc film is going to be worse because they’re even smaller!  Fortunately, their aren’t a whole lot of those – because those cameras were crap, cheap, worthless poor quality.  But good, I guess, if you’re in the sandy desert fighting in a war…

I hope I’ve given you some help if you’re struggling with what to do with all of your images and negatives.  I’m no expert, but I have learned a lot and want to do the best I can to have it all make sense to the poor soul lucky person who inherits all my neatly organized, indexed and labeled photos!   

NOW GO TO BED!  {Just kidding}.

*I have no affiliation and I am not being compensated for or by any of the products or companies I’ve linked to.  I just wanted to answer the questions before they were asked.

Progress: Archiving Photos and VHS Tapes

Well, I am still progressing, ever so slowly, with my archiving project. I am rather proud of myself because I am very much a "starter". I have loads of enthusiasm and motivation when I begin a project and generally find that I don't like to finish up what I've started because the "newness" of it has worn off! To date I have endured watching a total of 17 tapes! Mind you that some of these are probably 8 hour tapes! Here's the breakdown:

5 - Christopher Lowell
2 - Room by Room
2 - History Channel
4 - HGTV
1 - Football
1 - Blank tape
1 - Cheerleading competitions
1 - Sci-Fi Channel

So far, I haven't found any of the home movies or televised video of my family to actually capture from the tapes. In other words, I am not recording all of these shows to DVD. I'm only playing all of them to search for those key pieces I wish to record. Also, I learned of a neighbor's elderly mother who still records her TV shows on VHS and I was happy to donate my old ones after I viewed them! LOVE THAT! ReCyClInG at it's best!

My stepdaughter's mother also gave her a box of VHS home movies and I started converting those to DVD for her. So far, I've converted four.

Not bad, I'd say, as my pile is getting noticeably smaller! The downside to this, which turned out to be a good thing in the end, is that I find myself anchored to my desktop computer. I did manage to get quite a few tasks caught up at the beginning and then ran out of things to do. So, also part of my archiving project (which is why it turned out to be good), I started scanning photos to digital. I have a bookshelf of many photo albums which I attempted to archive many years ago.  These are those chunky mini albums about 4" x 6" in size but thick.

After educating myself on the "proper" way to do this since then, I realized my first attempt was ALL WRONG! The books themselves were not archival quality. Although they are labeled, there is no index to speak of for quick retrieval. And I really would like a uniform look to all my photo books so they don't appear to have been bought at different periods of time.

The solution? Start scanning photos to digital! After learning I could "gang scan" photos, which I'll cover in another post, I started whizzing through the pictures. I already have one and a half albums completed! I also purchased archival page protectors and books from Light Impressions.

I'll try to write more about my process and hopefully that will inspire you to get started archiving your own photos and videos. Also if you have any questions I might be able to answer, just leave me a comment.

Copyright © 2010 Joanne Schleier

Converting VHS Tapes to DVD

Do you have shelves or boxes full of VHS Tapes? Are they labeled or indexed so that you even know what's recorded on them?

Here's my stash of VHS tapes in my closet...


Yes, they have been there for YEARS...and I don't know what's on them. This is Phase II of the project because I already separated the Purchased Tapes from the Recorded Tapes. This stash is only the tapes I recorded. I do know that there are some tapes within the stash that have some precious recordings on them that I will want to preserve by converting them to another type of media.

This has been one of those PROJECTS that is going to take a lot of preparation and a lot of time to complete. I call anything that requires more than one action or task a "project". This has been on my list of things-to-do for a very long time.

So, it was time to tackle this - as VHS tapes are prone to deteriorate over time. I did keep them in a controlled environment away from direct sunlight, temperature controlled and with low humidity, i.e. my office closet.

I pulled our old VCR from the living room, the only one left in the house, into my office and researched how to connect the cables from it to my computer. Now, I already have a program installed on the computer which will copy and burn to DVD. You will also need some kind of conversion device as VHS is ANALOG and it needs to be converted to DIGITAL.

That was all finished and the first test run was done. The result? The old VCR ate my tape! I tried another and it didn't play either - therefore, it wasn't the tape, but the machine.

So, it went in the garbage and I found myself purchasing a new VCR! I know, at this day and age they are almost obsolete and I am buying a new one! But it's needed. I bought one from Wal-Mart with a VCR and DVD player combination. They had a machine that plays a tape and burns to disc all-in-one. But I saved the money knowing that I already have the software needed to do it on my computer. You could pay the extra few bucks and save yourself the trouble of the computer software and conversion device.

So, here is the new VCR in my office attached to my computer. I also pulled out the old "rewinder" machine. It is exclusively used to rewind your tapes and save the wear and tear on the VCR.

Now, when I am sitting at my desk, I play a tape with the volume up loud enough to hear the content but not distract from my task at hand. I am playing an old HGTV episode of "Room by Room" as I write this.

I know that I mostly have HGTV and DIY recorded as well as some History Channel programs. But, I am mostly interested in finding an old image of my grandmother. She was a model in New York and always told me about how she was a "Chesterfield Girl" on a billboard. She described being a platinum blond with big white teeth holding her cigarette in a red convertible with a red scarf blowing in the wind. She was 5'9" and beautiful.

I never saw the image. Or any of her other modeling images because they were destroyed in a flood in the basement. That only added to my desire to see one. I also found in the 1930 census that she was 21 and a "saleswoman for ladies wear". Then one day, I was watching TV (and can you imagine that I happened to be recording?) when her image flashed up on the screen! I was beside myself in shock! It was one of those spiraling images that flashed up large and then disappeared for another to follow just behind it. I couldn't believe my eyes! I played it over and over, paused it and watched it in slow motion! It was her! Exactly as she had described it. Sadly, I couldn't tell her about finally seeing it as she had passed away.

I also have some TV commercial I was in and other TV shows. Nothing big - no voice, just an extra in most of them. I'll be sure to post some images once I find them.

It has been a week and I have gone through four tapes. I only recorded one segment off of "The Christopher Lowell Show" of a beautiful room redo that I had not forgotten about. The rest went into the trash. BOY DOES THAT FEEL GOOD! Finally started the project and finally cleaning out the closet to capture the memories I want to keep and discard the junk!

If you have VHS tapes that you wish to preserve, I highly suggest that you convert them now to a newer media. Don't procrastinate, get started now.

Copyright © 2010 Joanne Schleier