You and your personal archives -what are you going to do?

[Don Denton]

Hi Everyone:

What do you do with your personal work to archive it. Are you just saving to a drive(s), many many drives or are you making prints as well. Do you keep a tear sheet file? What do you plan to do with the images when you are depart this earthly photo shift? Donate to a museum, local archive, national archive or just dump the boxes etc on your kids?

I've been thinking about these things and just wondered what others are/have done?

Any contacts or good articles to recommend on the subject?

Thanks.

dd

[David Buzzard]

To date, I've been keeping them in envelopes stored in a cardboard box in my attic.  Amazing enough, most of the negatives survived a major fire we had about 5 years ago, although almost all my B&W newspaper prints were wiped out.  Incidentally, my hard rives which were sitting on my desk all survived, despite the only potation being a tarp the fire fighters put over them.

A buddy of mine in South Africa is writing book about some of the fighting that went on after the main 1994 elections, and asked me to contribute some photos.  It took about a week of searching through the attic to find the box of negatives, then I had to dig out my negative scanner, then a 10 year old iMac because my modern machine wouldn't run the negative scanner, then spend 20 minutes per image to scan them in high-res (I'm going to punch the next kid who tells me film is the only true photo medium).  Scanning work you did 18 to 20 years ago is a very strange thing, the images come up like they were shot yesterday, and the ability to get details in negatives you thought (in the pre and early digital days) were un-printable is wild, so a lot of it is like new material.
 

[Warren Toda]

Perhaps the Library and Archives Canada donation program? Provincial governments, like Ontario, may also have their own archives.

[Don Denton]

I am currently trying to place a variety of photo material (negs/scans on disc etc) from the last 15 years (roughly) from the Victoria area papers I work with as we are moving to much smaller offices in the new year with very little storage space.

The reaction has been interesting.

The BC Archives told me the material is too local, they want material that covers the whole province.

The city/municipality archives have given a variety of responses, mainly they can't take the material because:

1. No space to store the donation.

2. No staff to scan/input data from donation

3. They electronically archive every newspaper copy now so don't feel they need for hard copies (or extra digital copies) of photography.

4. One archive actually told me the material was too new.

One of the archives I contacted asked me if I wanted 10+ years of newspaper copies as they had them all scanned so were going to turf the physical papers.