Family Portrait: A Digital Archive of my Heritage

Overview

This project was created by Melissa Nelson under the supervision of John Richan, Digital Archivist for Concordia University. This project was created to fulfill the requirements for GLIS 689 Selected Topics, which was offered by McGill University in 2019. 

Purpose

My mother has a large collection of photo albums with photographs dating back to the late 1960s. These photographs tell the story of my mother's upbringings in Jamaica, her family's migration to Canada, and life in Canada. These cherished photographs and the stories that went along with them taught me about my heritage. This project was created to serve as a digital archive for a selection of these family photographs. The objective was to preserve these photographs and make them accessible to family members within and outside of Canada. 

Methodology

To begin this project, I worked with my supervisor John Richan to develop a workflow for my personal archive process. This included photograph selection, digitization, preservation, metadata, and digital platform selection. I also constructed a reading list of relevant sources on personal digital archiving to conduct a literature review. The oldest photo album in my mother's collection was selected for preservation. The photographs were carefully removed from the sticky album using a flat metal spatula and placed in sleeves. The photographs were then scanned at 300dpi and saved as JPEG files. To scan the photographs, I used a [hp scanner] that was made available to me from the Records Management and Archives Department at Concordia University. According to preservation standards, the photographs were scanned with a white background [and a border was left to demonstrate the true size of the image]. Google Drive, Dropbox, and a hard drive were used to store backups of the digital images. The Bagger application, which was created by the U.S. Library of Congress, was used as a preservation tool to conduct file checksums for the digital images that were created. To collect the metadata, I interviewed my mother and consulted with her sister Pauline to determine to context behind the photographs. For the digital platform, Scalar was selected for its pathway functionality to show the relationship between the fonds and item levels. 

Limitations & Challenges

Photograph selection for digital access copies was more difficult than I had anticipated. There are 82 photographs in the photo album used, so to narrow the photographs down to a manageable amount of access copies was a challenge. I decided to select photographs that were most in need of preservation based on their age and condition. Privacy concerns were an issue in this project. As I envisioned the project as a public and shareable archive, there was a need to balance this with privacy. As the collection contains photographs of extended family members and friends, I selected only photographs that included immediate family members who could consent to their images being used.

Afterthoughts

recommendations for best practices to create a personal digital archive

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