How I did it:

1. i gathered all my prints and negatives in one place and mercilessly slashed the pile using the techniques in "clutter control":http://www.amazon.com/Clutter-Control-Putting-Your-Home/dp/0440503396/ .  (sorry for the mess, the 43things link inserting system is broken.)
2. i threw out the many i deemed not worth keeping and shipped the rest to http://www.scancafe.com/ .
3. i upload the resulting scans to http://flickr.com/ .
4. i printed proof sheets of the resulting collection and sat down with them to figure out a scheme for sorting into sets and collections, setting dates and map locations, etc.
5. i had an assistant in the philippines do the bulk of the organizing work.
6. i added some final touches and made the photos visible to everyone.

the results are up at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffcovey/collections/

it's great to have it all there and to be able to point some of the people in the photos to their 20+-year-old selves!  :)

Lessons & tips: see my posts regarding this task.  read the fine print on what a scanning service will and won't do and their procedures for doing it.  use a service like flickr which lets you set dates, descriptions, locations, etc. for your photos so can add information about them while you still remember it!

Resources:

• http://www.scancafe.com/
• a virtual personal assistant
• http://flickr.com/
• http://code.google.com/p/offlickr/

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Jun 04, 06:00PM PDT | 2 comments | 1 cheer