The Family Lines

How to addto the archive

Everything below is optional. Uploading something badly named beats not uploading it.

1. What's worth sending

KindExamples
Photographs Prints, albums, slides, negatives, anything in a shoebox
Documents Certificates, ship manifests, letters, military papers, naturalisation records, deeds, obituaries, funeral cards
Recordings Anyone talking about anyone. The most valuable material here.
Scraps The writing on the back of a photo. A name in a bible. A note in a wallet. Send it.

2. Scanning

If you have a scanner, use 600 dpi and save as JPEG or TIFF. That's high enough to enlarge a face later, which is usually what you end up wanting to do.

No scanner? A phone is fine. Three things make the difference between a usable photograph and a wasted one:

  1. Daylight, near a window, no flash. Flash bounces off the print and blows out the middle.
  2. Flat, and shot from directly above. An angle distorts faces.
  3. Photograph the back as well if anything is written on it. That handwriting is often the only surviving record of who's in the picture.

Don't crop, retouch, or "improve" anything. Send the original as it is, borders, foxing, tears and all. Cropping throws away information that can't be recovered — and the damage itself sometimes dates a photograph.

3. Naming

The pattern is four parts separated by underscores:

YEAR_Line_People_What.jpg

For example:

1952_Katz_Morris-Katz+Sarah-Katz_wedding.jpg
c1938_Charlow_unknown_catskills-hotel.jpg
1944_Katz_Morris-Katz_army-discharge.pdf
undated_Schwartzman_Ida-Schwartzman_portrait.tif
PartWhat goes in itIf you don't know
Year1952 c1952 for a guess, undated for no idea
Line Charlow, Katz, Schwartzman Mixed if it spans several
People First-Last, joined with + unknown
What A word or two: wedding, portrait photo

No spaces anywhere, and keep the file extension. Putting the year first means everything sorts itself into chronological order without anyone doing anything.

A guess is better than nothing. c1938 tells a future reader roughly where in the century to look. Blank tells them nothing. Write down that you're unsure — never leave it out because you're not certain.

4. Uploading

  1. Sign in at archive.thefamilylines.com
  2. Open your family's folder in the sidebar.
  3. Drag files straight onto the page, or use the + button.
  4. If you know something about a file, click it and add a comment — who's in it, where it was, what was happening. That context is worth as much as the scan.

Not sure where something goes, or what to call it? Put it in Inbox — Unsorted Drop Here and stop worrying. That folder exists precisely so nobody stalls. Someone will sort it later.

5. You can't break anything

Every version of every file is kept. Deleted files go to a recoverable trash. The whole archive is snapshotted every night. Nothing you upload, rename or misfile can be permanently lost.

Nothing here is public or searchable, and nothing is shared outside the family.