Do you have years of family photos and videos scattered in drawers and closets all over your home? Ever get frustrated looking for photos of graduations, weddings, vacations, etc.? Chances are they haven’t been looked at in ages.

After years of finding pictures in practically every drawer in my home, I decided it was time to organize nearly 100 years of pictures and videos and create a media history of our family for our children.

I must say it was quite a chore to accumulate all the material.  However, I am pleased to report that I now have an archive of all photos and videos that I selected stored in “The Cloud.” Password protected, they can be viewed on all my computers, tablets, and smartphones. Most importantly, I now can share any of the items stored in my site with family members and friends.  My favorites are pictures of my parents from as far back as over 90 years ago.

OK. How was I able to do this? Here is a summary of the steps I took in creating my family archive.

1.  First I signed up for a Dropbox account. Up to 2 GB of storage is free. For $9.99/month, you can store 1 TB. I chose the 1 TB plan since I had thousands of pictures and videos.

2.  Next, I determined whether I wanted to store my files by year or subject manner.

3. I reviewed all the media (pictures and videos) stored in my computer, tablet, and smartphone and selected the ones I was interested in including in my archive.

4. Since all photos and videos need to be in a digital format, I hired services that were able convert loose photos and ones in albums as well as videos on VHS to the proper format.

The process was quite time consuming (even though I did “outsource” the conversion to digital formats), but definitely worth it.

If you would like a free consultation on how you can create a digital “media library,” give me a call at 917 921-4518 or e-mail me at jblue@bluetutor.com.