Creating A family History "Vault"

[Fargo872]

Hello -

 I have a large trove of family history documents and artifacts...

I am the last living person of my immediate family--so it's up to me to determine the
fate of those.

I have toyed with the notion of creating an online family "vault" wherein scans of the originals
could be posted--with access limited to relatives.

However, scanning of so many documents would be prohibitive, too time-consuming, and expensive!

So, I'm at my wits end figuring out how to accomplish such a gargantuan task--any suggestions
from RootsChat members?

Thank you!

[still_looking]

Hello,

Here are a couple of suggestions:

Make a simple list of what you have and then take a few photos of groups of documents/artifacts to illustrate it. Don't worry about the visibility of the details of documents as the purpose is just to get across the scale of what you have/what is available.

Scan a select few items and share them along with what you know, the impression you had of the people you knew, the stories you were told of those who had gone before.

S_L

[Fargo872]

Thanks for those hints!

I do have an enormous amount of family documents, so It behooves me to be discerning with my choices.

My main concern now is: which online platform is most appropriate and secure for this endeavor.

[David Nicoll]

Hi,
   Welcome to RootsChat. I think many of us are in similar positions with our collections.
   You do not say what form your collection takes. But I will give you my experience.
   I have a traditional scanner, which though it gives great results, as you say is time consuming.
   I have therefore adopted two approaches.
   Fujitsu ScanSnap sheet feed scanner or similar, this is great for letters, research notes etc, it’s fast and if they are on similar size paper will scan in bulk to a pdf file.
   Small autofocus camera which has a remote control function, mine works with my phone.
   Mounting this on a small tripod allows you to put books, more fragile photographs and objects below it and take photographs very quickly. A modern 20 megapixel camera gives very good results, very quickly. For all apart from archival purposes nearly as good as a scanner.

[Fargo872]

Hello -

 Most of my Family archives are in the form of very old photographs.

I do have a very excellent Canon Canoscan scanner--but I have so many documents to scan,
I may just farm them out to a local enterprise.

Most importantly too, I want to choose a reliable and secure online platform for a Family Archives Vault--any suggestions?

TY!

[David Nicoll]

Hi,
   The sheer number of pictures is why I resorted on a camera, 200 plus cartes de visite were going to take a long time to scan on both sides.
   I am not sure that there is such a thing as a secure on line vault. Dropbox or Google amongst others, but they might just decide to get out of the business. I had files on BT’s cloud for close on 20 years when they decided to do just that.
   I am sharing my pictures with as many on line relatives as I can, but I am also trying to write “books” about the family stories that I and the family have gathered. These have generated more interest than just the tree’s.
   A relative in Canada did just that for family in the 1930’s and it has now become a historical reference text.

[Fargo872]

Good to know!