When his degree was finished he came back to his home town and guess what? He set up the archives dept in this town. He has been the city archivist since about 1976. What an archivist! He has set up a system that collects, catalogues and stores a wide variety of city material. Minutes from many local organizations are sent to the archives and kept. I taught at the same school for 28 years and had 24 or 25 school yearbooks. At this stage in my life I wanted to get rid of some of my treasures and I decided that I was finished with the yearbooks.. I didn't want to recycle my yearbooks so I asked the archivist if he could use them. Yes , he certainly would like them so off my yearbooks went to the archivist.
Now this guy is not just an archivist but an avid interest in local history. In fact, his interest is so keen that he has written books on our city's local history. The local history books sell like hotcakes. He has a weekly newspaper column on some aspect of our history.
Now in the process of scanning photos I've found my archives. Many photos remind me of events from many years ago in my life. I found photos to remind me of hiking and backpacking. There were many photos taken at school and somebody very carefully gave me any photos I happened to be in. There are many photos of those goofy dress up days. Many candid shots were taken of me in the classroom or staffroom.
I found very ancient photos of my childhood. I found things on my young adult life although those happened to be sporadic. And then the most precious photos were those of my kids when they were growing up. Today I got to the high school graduation photos.
So I've found my archive and I wish they were as well organized as if our city archivist had cared for them.
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| This is something I was really good at! |
You should write down more of your memories to go along with the photos! How is the injury doing? :)
ReplyDeleteI hear ya about adding info. I've had a setback on the injury caused by myself. I overdid things and it became extremely painful. I'm on the mend again.
DeleteI guess I am an archivist too, then. all of my photos from my lifetime through my kids growing up are in photo albums. Now in the digital age I have stopped printing most photos, so they are in albums on my hard drive, on cds, external hard drives and the cloud. That's what I have been sorting and editing, my latest digital storage.
ReplyDeleteYou are an expert at these things. I know where to get some more advice.
DeleteThe main branch of our library features an archives... and of course there are other such establishments in the city.
ReplyDeleteArchives can take up a lot of room. Our archive rents space in other areas.
DeleteThank goodness there are people like your former student - and you - who have such an interest in these things.
ReplyDeleteYou wonder how much of the paper will be digitalized.
Deletehow neat to have such a passion for retaining history. :)
ReplyDeleteThe archivist organizes well. I just like local history.
DeleteIt's always hard to know what to do with yearbooks, so I'm glad your archivist friend had a use for them. And I'm glad you found your personal archives, too!
ReplyDeleteSome teachers donated their collection to our school library.
DeleteI have put all the photo's in albums, from the seventies on, hope the kids will keep them together.
ReplyDeleteWe had very few photos to recover by the time Dad died. Dad was 95 so there was a long time for things to disappear.
DeleteYour town is very fortunate to have someone who's taking such good care of cataloging your area's history!
ReplyDeleteYes he's made our local history interesting.
DeleteBravo to your former student, who did so well. That doesn't look like you, but if you say so , it must be true. Congrats on "This is something I was really good at!" haha.....musta been one of "those" meetings.
ReplyDeleteAmazingly it is me when I was young. It's the staffroom and coffee time.
DeleteGosh, I wouldn't have recognized you with dark hair, Red. :-)
ReplyDeleteThere's not much else that is recognizable. I've been retired 18 years!
DeleteThese local archives are profoundly interesting. Hubby, whose family farms are still going, collects such. Three of his grandparents married two bothers and a sister. His grampa sold the farm, but the others are going strong!
ReplyDeleteInfo that is kept becomes extremely valuable.
DeleteI don't have all that many photographs to archive, but I do write down stories and events to remember things better.
ReplyDeleteA good written record is more valuable because of the detail supplied.
DeleteAll the photos are great. Your kids will be so happy to have them. Every time I visit my mother, I come home with a whole new batch of images that she lets me (even encourages me) to take.
ReplyDeleteYour mother knows the value of passing things on.
DeleteI have spent hours the past two days going through loose envelopes of photos and labeling them and trying to determine the year they were taken. I have pulled all my photo albums and labeled those. I know have to buy albums for loose photos and try to get organized before I did so that my kids can "recycle" them.
ReplyDeleteMy fear is that kids don't have enough info to wisely know what to keep.
DeleteIt's so nice to have the old stuff organized. I've been doing s little organizing of the archives this winter, too. My latest thing is, I threw away all the photos neither I nor my mom could identify as she is the oldest generation left now. No one older to ask. It was still hard to throw them, knowing they were once important to someone.
ReplyDeleteThat's sad when the memory is gone. I know it will happen to all of us that one day no one will remember who we were.
DeleteHi Red, Thanks for the great idea of what to do with old yearbooks. Like yourself, I have several from years of teaching. I'm going to check with our library down here and see if we have anything like your Archive in Red Deer.
ReplyDeleteMy own archive is a bit of a mess! Love the photo! :)
ReplyDelete