Preserve Your Family Heritage

Why preserve family heritage?

Because it’s a kind of fortune or treasure. Wikipedia suggests that heritage refers to something inherited from one’s ancestors – a legacy of physical artifacts and/or intangible attributes. Knowing your family legacy helps express identity, define values and add meaning to everyday life.

Bruce Meckling, President of HeritageKeep – a company based in Oklahoma that helps families document, research and collect stories, history, photographs and artifacts – suggests that

"It is easy to lose track of the family," Meckling said. "What we try to do is get families to understand that their heritage is something of value, especially to young people and future generations."

Following HeritageKeep's steps to preserve family heritage, we can prepare to showcase and share our own precious memories, family traditions, photos and heirlooms:

1. Collect Artifacts – start with a time period, individual or generation; gather photos, film, diaries, documents, articles, letters, etc.



2. Catalog and Scan – preserve family heritage by keeping track of what you have; use photo scanning to digitize images; take digital images of artifacts and antiques



3. Conduct Research – study historic events and genealogy to better understand your family’s perspective and life experiences; this research may include restoration, research and/or appraisal of family heirlooms

As the Heritage Preservation states, "All around us, the past is vanishing."

If nothing else, focus on your family photos: gather, sort, scan, save. Get in the habit of writing names, dates and places on the backs of photos. (Sharpie ultra fine markers are great!) Store photos in acid-free or archival albums or boxes. Ideally, they should be kept in a cool, dark location.

Organize by person, time period, family tradition or holiday.For precious photos that are stuck on old sticky photo book pages, use dental floss to get them out. Carefully and slowly, slide it beneath pictures and they’ll come off without any rips or tears.

But even well-cared-for photographs are beginning to deteriorate.Use photo scanning to create digital image files to further perserve family heritage. (A good general rule of thumb is to scan images at minimum of 300 dpi.) Then create back up files on discs. Once a photo is digitized, it’s easy to create prints for scrapbooking, share the image with relatives, display in a digital photo frame, produce special slide shows, create digital photo books or use them for other special projects. (Just a few other ways to - you guessed it - preserve family heritage!)

Hurricanes and floods can wreck havoc on precious keepsakes. Heritage Preservation and the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) offer helpful tips on how to work with damaged photos. "Save your treasures the right way" suggests that the first 48 hours after the damage has occurred are critical. If you’ll be unable to attend to damp items right away, you can freeze them for later attention.

Once you gather your pictures, compile everything together. And, since photos are just part of your family legacy, don't forget to record the stories behind them. Document your family traditions and special memories, too.

I personally recommend Heritage Makers as an excellent resource. From story maps to templates to tips and tricks, this online publishing company can help you preserve and celebrate your family heritage.

But whatever path you take, just be sure to remember.
Add meaning and make memories.



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