Tuesday's Tip – Find Your Family Photographer

[Editor's Note: Today's post was written by Richard Hanson. Photo courtesy of Richard Hanson's Hanson-Olson family history photo collection.]

Photos are both an important source of information and critical to creation of interesting family history publications. All of us inherit photos and make an effort to get copies from known relatives. But for many of you, there may a pot of gold out there awaiting your discovery. As you identify your historical extended family, pay special attention to their occupations and hobbies. Look for that professional photographer or photography hobbyist. That person would likely have accumulated a vast collection of extended family photos (portraits, family events, residences). Try to find out what happened to that photographic collection. I found one such person in my father's family, a grand uncle named Edward Olson.

Edward Olson and his home-built motor-bicycle. Photo taken during 1920s or 30s. Edward Olson (1879-1946, son of Louis Olson and Hilda Anderson) was a professional photographer, musician and inventor – the family techie of his era. Joined in the migration of his Olson family relatives from Minnesota to Sacramento during the 1930s, himself having arrived in 1936.

Virtually everyone had some of Edward Olson's photos. He must have widely distributed some  photos which made him easy to identify. But what happened to his collection? Edward Olson had no descendants and no wife when he died. As my father and I contacted the extended family we found various people had caches of his photos, starting with my Olson grandmother. I subsequently inherited most of her cache of photos. Relatives must have divided up his library of photos. We made copies of those belonging to others usually by personally visiting them with 35mm cameras and tripods (pre-digital camera era). One trusting relative in another state mailed us a big packet of 1920s-era photos to copy. I currently have all the photos cataloged, scanned and saved as high-resolution TIFF files. I provide a complete set of scanned images on optical media to all interested extended family members. Phase II of my search begins with me coming up with a better way of categorizing the photos so that recipient relatives will easily be able to determine which ones I am missing. Likely, many more of his photos are out there waiting to be found.

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, in Bay Area

What a wonderful opportunity being offered by our friends at the California Genealogical Society and Library in Oakland, California.

A Day with Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective

Wed. June 6, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kathryn M. Doyle, Communications Director
510-545-2476, kdoyle@californiaancestors.org, @CAancestors

Oakland, CA – March 29, 2012 – The Wall Street Journal called Maureen Taylor “the nation's foremost historical photo detective.” Taylor is bringing her blend of photo curation, genealogy, and history to Northern California at a special event hosted by the California Genealogical Society (CGS). Join us for A Day with the Photo Detective on Wednesday, June 6, 2012, 8:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m., at the Veterans Memorial Building, 3780 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette, CA 94549.

Let the Photo Detective teach you how to identify the clues to solve your own photo mysteries and further your genealogy and family history research.  Maureen Taylor will present four lectures:

• Hair-sterical & Mad as a Hatter: 19th Century Photos in Your Files
• Eight Basic Steps to Preserving Your Photos
• Google Images and Beyond: Adding Pictures to Your Family Collection
• Kodak Moments and Technicolor Dreams: 20th-Century Photos and Films in the Family Archive

The “early bird” price (through May 6, 2012) is $48 for the seminar and lunch. To learn more about the seminar and consultation, visit the event website: A Day with the Photo Detective at http://cgsphoto.weebly.comcgsphoto.weebly.com/.

About the Photo Detective
Maureen A. Taylor is an internationally recognized photo curator, genealogist, writer and photo identification/preservation expert. Maureen has been featured in top media outlets, including "The View," Martha Stewart Living, and "The Today Show." Maureen is the author of a number of books and magazine articles, as well as a contributing editor at Family Tree Magazine.

About CGS:
The California Genealogical Society, founded in San Francisco in 1898, gathers and preserves vital records, offers research services and online databases, and maintains a library in Oakland. CGS disseminates information through publications, meetings, seminars, workshops and its website: CaliforniaAncestors.org.
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submitted by Kathryn Doyle
posted by Denise Hibsch Richmond

For Your Calendar

Webinar Title: Digital Preservation: Fundamentals

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Start Time: Pacific - 12 PM, Mountain - 1 PM, Central - 2 PM, Eastern - 3 PM

Presenter: Jacob Nadal

Webinar Link: http://infopeople.org/training/digital-preservation-fundamentals

The uncertainties that go hand in hand with new technologies in digital preservation can make “once and for all” preservation approaches impractical. This first in a series of four webinars will present basic concepts and approaches to dealing with crucial digital preservation issues today and make decisions that will position you for success in the future.

Topics include storing digital objects, choosing and understanding risks in file formats, planning for migration and emulation, and the roles of metadata in digital preservation.

At the end of the first one-hour webinar, participants will:

• Have a framework for making sense of preservation
• Know about the principal methods for storing digital objects
• Understand the benefits and risk associated with standard file formats
• Understand the roles of metadata in digital preservation

Presented by the California State Library and the California Preservation Program, future webinars in the series will provide a deeper introduction to file formats used in digital libraries and the core issues in reliably storing digital content for the long-term:

• Webinar #2: Tuesday, January 10: Text and Image Formats
• Webinar #3: Tuesday, February 7: Storing and Managing Digital Collections
• Webinar #4: Tuesday, March 20: Audio and Video Formats

This webinar will be of interest to library staff and archivists who are involved in developing digital projects. No special technical background required.

Webinars are free of charge and registration is only done on the day of the event on the WebEx server. No passwords are required.

This webinar will be presented with Closed Captioning.

Submitted by Lois Shumaker

Posted by Ron Setzer