Photo Preservation Webinar from American Library Association

There is a great webinar available from the American Library Association that you can watch at any time. It's called "The Preservation of Family Photographs."

The presenter is Debra Hess Norris, Chair of the Art Conservation Department at the University of Delaware, and Professor of Photograph Conservation.

The agenda of the webinar is:

• basic characterization and identification of albumen, silver gelatin, and chromogenic color print materials, and film base negatives
• agents of deterioration for photographic materials
• storage and exhibition practices
• handling guidelines
• prioritization for preservation

Don't let the technical aspects of the presentation scare you.  Diagrams and photos really help show you what she is talking about!

To watch the webinar, start at the website here.  Go down the page to "How to Register."  You won't have to register because there is now only the recordings.  I downloaded the .wav file and then watched it using Windows Media Player (which opened automatically).  Two other choices to view it are through YouTube or as slides via a .pdf.

Now you won't have any excuse about preserving your own photographs!

Copyright © 2013 by Contra Costa County Genealogical Society.

FamilySearch

   We had a wonderful lecture about FamilySearch presented by Ralph Severson, the director of the

Oakland Family History Center.  He spoke about their website, familysearch.org and the nine tabs found on the main page:

• Blog
• Indexing
• FamilySearch Centers
• Books
• Catalog
• Genealogies
• Learn
• Records
• Family Tree

He spent majority of the time focused on the last two tabs, Records and Family Tree.  When he spoke of the Records tab, which is the tab that is the main page, he spoke of "above" the line which is where you fill in the name you are searching. He advised now to put in too much information at first.  Once you have results, you can then use filters to narrow down to the person your are looking for.  "Below" the line is where you can browse records. These are not indexed records but have images.

Family Tree was very interesting and he explained how to add your family, though suggested adding only a generation at a time.  It is very important to add sources.

Thank you very much, Ralph!


Copyright © 2013 by Contra Costa County Genealogical Society.