This post originally appeared on the Adventures in Family History Writing (blog) and has been edited.
At this stage in my life, I have established and purged my personal library several times over. However, this time I'm rebuilding my collection based on my research and writing goals. Many of the books I select are not new releases, found in the genres of African American history, biography and memoir, fiction and historical fiction, local histories, and published genealogies. And for that reason, I have been fortunate to find used, like-new hardcover editions at a significant discount. This is the library that I will leave to my children. Should they desire to preserve even a portion of it remains to be determined.
In addition to these books, there are the volumes of binders containing my genealogical research, plastic file boxes of loose papers I gathered, and genealogical files I inherited. Somewhere among the boxes are artifacts...my parents' musical wedding album...the letters, post cards and photos my father sent my mother when he was in the Air Force...items my cousins passed on to me which had belonged to their branches of the family...boxes of loose photos, envelopes of negatives, boxes and binders of slides my father took to inspire his painting.
All these things must be labeled, preserved, and archived. I have read about family historians who never received their legacy because the executor of an estate didn't recognize the value of unidentified photos or other cherished items that could have potentially given those left behind more clues to their family's past. And for this reason, I want to prepare them so they are available to inspire my writing when I need them, and store them, indexed, so they are easily found when the need arises. But more importantly, so that our children will have a greater understanding and appreciation for these artifacts when they become the trustees of the family legacy, because of the careful archival treatment they received during my lifetime.
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| Available on Amazon.com |
Today I ordered, How to Archive Family Keepsakes, by Denise May Levenick, also known as The Family Curator. I've been following her blog for a couple of years now, but her latest book seems to assemble all the different aspects of caring for various types of family archival collections that she has shared with us over the years. I've been following her Blog Book Tour, and you can too! My copy is scheduled to ship tomorrow (Monday), and I should have it in hand by Thursday! I can hardly wait!
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