I want you to think for a moment about the preservation of a very expensive commodity: Fine wine.

A true wine connoisseur with a state-of-the art wine cellar knows that storing bottles upright in the heat of a kitchen is a terrible way to store them if you want the wine to taste any good years from now. Yet most connoisseurs have wine they store in exactly this way. These are "kitchen wines" for immediate enjoyment.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that a wine lover who shells out $11,000 for a case of 1982 Rothschild Bordeaux keeps those bottles on their sides with the corks pointing downward, at 55 degrees with 70 percent humidity, in a very dark cellar. Because that is the ideal condition for long-term storage of first-growth Bordeaux.

But what does this have to do with your family photo collection? And how can you tell the difference between a kitchen photo and a wine cellar photo?

One of the toughest skills an archivist needs to master is what we call ?appraisal.? But this is not the Antiques Road show kind of appraisal. The question is not: "How many dollars is it worth?" but rather: "How valuable is this item to future researchers?" For a family collection, the question is: "How valuable is this photograph to my family? To future generations?"

Here are some helpful guidelines:

1. Respect Age.
In family collections, age and scarcity tend to go hand in hand. For example, the only known photograph of your great great aunt Rose? Or your grandparents' wedding? Those are wine cellar photographs. Meaning they are worth the investment of high quality archival boxes and folders. These are also the ones you should scan first.

2. People Pictures.
I learned this one from personal experience. When my husband and I were rescuing photos from our grandparents' magnetic albums, it became obvious that certain photos weren't worth saving. Generally speaking, what we decided to keep was pictures of our grandparents and other family members. What we skipped was vacation snapshots of mountains and buildings, and unidentified people who were strangers to us.

3. Sentimental Value.
One of the wonderful things about working with family photo collections (as opposed to working in a historical society) is that sentimental value reigns supreme. Future generations will want to have your favorites. And if you take a few moments to write down why you love a particular photograph... Well, now we're talking about a real treasure.

And remember -- even if you can't bear to throw anything away, it's in your best interest sift through your collection and select your most valuable photographs. Then it becomes easier to decide what to scan, for example. Trying to scan an entire photo collection is a recipe for frustration! It's a great idea to start flagging photographs for inclusion in your memoirs or family history book.

A simple appraisal exercise can even help you decide which photos should be placed in high quality PAT-Passed archival boxes and folders, and which ones can stay in those cheap boxes that smelled icky when you first bought them. In other words: Will your kids really want a dozen photos of the flowers at the Botanical Gardens? Probably not.

I hope this new way of thinking about your collection will help you get organized. Still have questions? Having trouble finding archival materials that have passed the Photographic Activity Test (PAT)? Send email queries to Ask the Archivist: ask@jacobsarchival.com

About the Author: Sally Jacobs has a Master's Degree in Library Science with a Specialization in Archives Management from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. She has worked on collections at the Library of Congress, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Chicago Chapter of the American Red Cross, and many family collections just like yours. She teaches non-archivists how to take care of their collections via her e-zine, workshops and one-on-one consulting.

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