Question: Can you recommend a good way to catalogy my old photographs after I scan them. I am not sure if I should assign name or dates.
Answer: When I scan photographs I assign a specific number and collection name. For instance if I am scanning photos that belonged to my Uncle Ronald Lambert I would catalog the images as RLAMBERT-001. Each photo would be assigned a numerical value in order of the scanning. If I scanned a variety of copies of the same photo I would call them – RLAMBERT-001A, RLAMBERT-001B, etc. Then per photo I would make an entry in a word processing file for example. RLAMBERT-001: Photograph of Uncle Ronald Lambert in the U.S. Marines while stationed in Japan, 1956. In photo is a friend identified as “John Smith” on the reverse of photo. I would then save this file and print it out. Making a reference bibliography of all my images. I am sure there are a multitude of ways to catalog your images after you scan them, but this is the personal way I have found most useful.