I recently read someone post that they had digitized all the census photocopies they had made early in their research. Preservation is good and we all digitize what we have, but if you’ve got a great quantity of material, there are some things to preserve digital images or records of first:
- Items that no one else but you has—includes paper items, clothing, antiques, etc.
- Ancestral stories you’ve been told but have never recorded.
- Your own stories and memories.
Federal census records are readily available digitally in a variety of places. An old family history published in the 1880s may already be online on multiple websites. Those letters from great-grandma? Those pictures from that 1920 family reunion? They may only exist in your collection. Preservation and digitization should initially concentrate on what you have that’s unique.
I have a copy of a family history of one of my families published in the early 1980s. I could digitize it. I may eventually, but I know there’s a copy of it online at FamilySearch and perhaps elsewhere. Unless there’s unique handwritten annotations in my copy, digitizing mine can wait until I’m finished with things I have of which I have the only copy.
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