[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Photograph Database

[My Ancestors]

I am interested in knowing how others have managed acquired or scanned photos
relating to their ancestoral research. I am finding that my database has
gotten large and the name of the file containing the photo is usually only
partially helpful.

One of my research objectives has been to visit relatives that have been
returning to Germany from Russia and Kazakhstan and to scan their photo
albums. This helps me in learning about my ancestors, their descendents and
their travels between Volhynia and the East. However, in doing so, I have
accumulated a large number of photos, sometimes duplicates in various quality
with those of others or even duplicates of those held by my relatives here in
Canada. The process has been to scan them, and to put them in directories
related to the person who was the source of the files. As luck would have it,
even revisiting the person later, new photos would come out, that were not
previous known leading to a multiple directories. I have received CDs with
multiple sources which makes it a bit more confusing.

Usually the names of the people, the location of the photo and the time of it
are data that is acquired. If possible, I try to get some additional info and
even a story related to the photo. All this has been put onto paper, but is
not in a searchable database. I am considering putting this data in the
"Properties" portion related to a file and using Google Desktop to search for
it, but that may not be a complete solution. I would like to also be able to
know if there are duplicates of the photo.

I have been sharing these photos with others which leads to more discussion,
more threads for followup research, and ultimately more photos.
Unfortunaltely, I sometimes forget which photos I have already discussed with
people, and spend additional time going back over them on a subsequent visit.
What I am finding is that the knowledgeable people are usually in the 70s or
later, and even they sometimes disagree on the people in the photos. Somehow,
this info needs to be managed to be of help in my research. I am realizing is
that there is a limited amount of time before the people pass away and any
uncollected data is lost, and relevant photos are dispersed to the next
generations.

Are there any surefire ways of handling this? Do some people have methods that
work and would be applicable to this problems. Perhaps this would be a good
discussion item on this mail list.

Dwayne