Keeping Memories Alive (photos and stories)
I love old family
photos and old stories. For a few decades I have been collecting
them. So has my brother.
In fact we have boxes and boxes of them.
I realized two important things:
1. If people of my generation do not preserve them they may be lost forever.
2. My children may not find them relevant, and send them to the nearest dumpster after I die.
Many years ago I was
contacted by a distant cousin, who said "When my grandfather
learned that his father had died, he came back to Canada, cleaned out
the farm house, burned everything, and sold the farm. I never even
knew that our family was Scottish."
To preserve the old
photos:
At first I made copies to share with family.
Then I discovered
the economies of scanning them and making CDs to share with others.
But I was
delighted when FamilySearch created Memories.
https://www.familysearch.org
Now I had a safe place where I could store family treasures where they would still be available for free to later generations of my family, whether or not my children were interested. I served missions in FamilySearch Support, where I learned to help people preserve photos, documents, stories and audio recordings.
The maximum file
size is currently 15MB and only certain file formats are supported.
All items should be tagged to someone. The maximum number of memories
that can be tagged to any one person is 1000. This seems like a lot,
but I try avoid unnecessary repetition. Some of the restrictions will
make more sense if you remember that the site is designed to respect
the privacy of living people, and to respect the ownership rights to
certain file formats.
I would like to
share some ideas with you.
Preserve Your
Photos and Family Memories
https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/preserve-your-photos-and-family-memories
Photos
To copy printed
photos, a flatbed scanner usually produces the best results, although
phone cameras can still produce fairly good copies. If you are
scanning use at least 300 dots per inch (pixels per inch), Otherwise
it may look acceptable on the screen, but not as a printed copy.
Some photos: https://www.familysearch.org/photos/gallery/album/3399
PNG format is
probably the most favored file format at present. My scanners have
usually saved images as JPEG/JPG and I have found the results to be
good despite it being a "lossy" format, After all, old
photos are not usually perfect to start with. Any photo is usually
better than no photo, in my opinion. Photos saved in PDF format
cannot be rotated in Memories, which is inconvenient.
Black and white
photos can be colorized for free at sites like
https://www.myheritage.com/incolor which can also correct the color
of colored photos. Note that colorization can produce stunning
results if the black and white original has good contrast. Faces can
be especially realistic, although the software may guess the color of
hair and clothing incorrectly. Colorization really does bring the
photos to life.
The Strengths of
Albums
You can easily
create personal photo albums on the Gallery page of FamilySearch
Memories. These have some special advantages.
You can rearrange
their order.
You can include
photos, documents, stories, and audio in the same album.
You can give the URL
to anyone and they can view the album whether or not they have a
FamilySearch account.
You can view the
album as a slideshow.
You can cast the
slideshow to a smart TV. This is GREAT for family gatherings.
An album organized
but not fully tagged.
https://www.familysearch.org/photos/gallery/album/529402
What about
Video?
MyHeritage can also animate photos too, and even have
them tell their life story. But video cannot be stored in
FamilySearch Memories. There is a work-around. You can store the
videos on another site, such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Youtube and
put the link in FamilySearch Memories. Of course we don't know how
long the videos will remain available online, and once they are gone,
the links will no longer work.
Jane Buchanan Watson tells her life story:
Disclaimer: I am not
sponsored in any way by MyHeritage, but I love their photo tools.
What is a
Document?
In Memories, the
distinction between a "photo" and a "document"
and a "story" may be confusing. Something showing a
person's face is considered a photo and something showing text is a
document, but what about an image of a family home or a treasured
possession? In any case, "photos" and "documents are
both uploaded to Memories by selecting "File".
What is a Story?
A "Story"
is an un-formatted text document, usually composed directly in
FamilySearch Memories. Warning: The editor can time-out after
30 minutes, so it is safer to create the story in a word processor
then paste it and save it.
War Veteran Albert Lidgett (click to read)
Why use PDF?
Portable Document
Format can include formatted text, with different font sizes and
enhancements, and photos, maps, etc. So, for longer accounts it is a
much better format than "Story". I prefer creating longer
documents in my word processor then exporting/saving/printing to PDF
format. (Memories does not support proprietary file formats, but
Adobe has released their rights to the PDF format.) How long can a
PDF be? I have one PDF document that is over 1000 pages of text.
But like all Memories items PDFs have a maximum file size of 15 MB.
And as mentioned, photos in PDF format can not be rotated to correct
their orientation.
Here is a 68 page PDF with photos and formatting
Ancestors of Ernest (Robert) Kinney
Audio Recordings
These are most easily made using the Memories mobile app. This app
limits the length to 5 minutes. Some time ago I found an old audio
cassette of my grandmother talking, She died in 1986 so this was a
rare find. I used the free Audacity software to record the cassette
on my computer. By adjusting the sampling rate I was able to fit it
into 15MB and then I uploaded it to Memories. The playback quality is
still acceptable to me.
A 23 minute recording
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/K6H5-HQJ
A
life saved by a short plank
https://www.familysearch.org/memories/memory/195467541?a=1347260
Tagging Memories
to People
A photo, document, recording or story is useless unless it is tagged
to someone.
If you upload items without tagging them, you are the only person who
has access to them.
And when you die, no one will have access to them.
If a deceased person is tagged, that item is
accessible to all FamilySearch Users.
If only living people are
tagged, that item will remain private until at least one of the
tagged people dies and their death is reported to FamilySearch. Then
the tags to deceased people will be shown but not the tags to living
people.
Mass Tagging
This is possible but should normally not be used. If you select
Memories from someone's Person page and upload files, they will
automatically be tagged to that person, whether that is what you
intended or not. Of course, mistaken tags are easily removed,
Removing Tags
Even if you did not create a tag, you can still Detach it.
I love FamilySearch Memories. The Utah Genealogical Society
(FamilySearch's parent) was created in 1894 and has been preserving
family history ever since then. I hope that the Memories feature will
preserve memories of my relatives for future generations.
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