Pictures for Posterity

For years I have been the keeper of the family pictures, which are in several albums in three large plastic storage boxes shoved under the bed in the guest room. Younger daughter Danielle is familiar with the albums and with every picture in them, because whenever she comes home she looks at them again. It has occurred to me more than once that it would be wonderful if she had all those pictures more readily available for viewing at her own home. Because nothing lasts forever, and because there are so many available ways to save pictures on the internet, I have been haunted by the need to "get them up there" for some time. Adding to the self-imposed pressure is the fact that the ancients of my mother's family are perpetuated on celluloid in albums also in my care.

Older son Marty (our family technical guru) to the rescue! Recently he included the following in his blog: "Try www.getdropbox.com. Dropbox is an online storage / synchronizing service that is simple - it just works. They say "Dropbox is the easiest way to share and store your files online." I'm sure there is some heavy duty stuff going on behind the scenes, but the programmers have done an excellent job of making the customer interface very simple. 2GB free, 50GB for $99. I love the fact that you can access your files from any internet-connected computer."

What is especially cool about "Dropbox" is that I can scan pictures into MY dropbox and they automatically "drop" into Marty's computer as well. That's the "share" part of "share and store". He is busy editing them, at which he is a master, and knowing his talent for organization, I expect he will have them divided by year and/or person and any other way he finds useful for the viewer.

This can be really tiresome work, even though the final outcome will be so wonderful, useful and important to future generations. Just a few hours of scanning a day is about all I manage at this point. Only I know how many albums there are (many, many, many), so it is a daunting task. Stay tuned!