Let the Scanning Begin...

When I made the decision to convert all my paper scrapbooks to digital, I knew I needed to find a place that had a nice scanner I could use, and hopefully one that didn’t cost too much. Sure, I have one of those printer/copier/scanners at home for personal use, but when I tried to scan pictures, the colors didn’t ever come out right in the photos. So while that would be super convenient, the quality wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

Luckily, here in Utah where I live, a new FamilySearch family history center just opened up, and besides having a computer lab where people can do genealogy work, they also have scanners that you can rent by the hour….for free! So I signed up for some time this week.

To prepare, I went down into the basement and started collecting scrapbooks.

Our family scrapbooks are in a menagerie of big bulky 8.5 x 11 faux leather 3-ring binders, cheap 1- and 2-inch “school” binders, and even a couple of those sticky-pages-with-plastic-cling-on-the-front albums.

They take up a ton of room. They’re heavy, the rings are always popping open, or not closing correctly, and half of the time at least a few of the page protector holes aren’t even around a binder ring! You know what I’m talking about, right?  Bottom line = they are stuck in the basement in a storage room, not getting looked at.

(Okay, back the main point!)

So, I pulled out a few chronological years’ worth of binders off the shelf (it just happened to be 2000-2005), opened them all up, took out the pages and put them in my transport box. I did put a sticky note on the first page of each new “year” so as I worked through the box and scanned them, I’d have that reference point.

Well, who’d have thunk?  There ended being 287 sheet protector pages (most double-sized scrapbook pages) in just those five years! Whew! Was I biting off more that I could chew?

Well, I went to the FamilySearch Discovery Center in Lehi, Utah and got to it. The place is run by volunteers and LDS Service missionaries, and my in-laws happen to be serving a mission there a couple of days a week, and were on shift last night. 

SIDENOTE: If you have one of these FamilySearch centers near you (they are located all over the country and even the world) I highly recommend looking in to seeing if they have scanning equipment available—not every one does. But if they do, the machines are FREE to use, just need to reserve a time. And yes, FamilySearch is operated by the LDS (Mormon) church, but you don’t have to be member to use the facilities, and there is NO PRESSURE to change religions or get baptized or anything. They are there to help you with family history—either discovering yours, or preserving it!

Again, I digress.....

So after a quick introduction to how the scanning software and scanners worked, I began. At my “station” there was a large touch-screen computer monitor attached to a flatbed scanner, and a document feeder scanner. I knew I had mostly 8.5 x 11 scrapbook pages, but I also knew some of the sheet protectors just had loose photos in them as well, so this setup with both scanning options was great.

My father-in-law and I getting all set to begin.

The "feeder" scanner.

The flatbed scanner. This one was big enough to scan 2 full pages at once!

Touch screen computers were nice, too!

The first thing I discovered was that some of my sheet protectors had that matte, frosty kind of finish on them, and while “see-thru” when scanned didn’t look so great. So for those pages (which was a LOT) I actually had to remove the page from the sheet protector before I scanned them…which just means a lot of reassembly for me later on when they go back in the binders…but I’ll do that another day….in front of Netflix….with a bag of chips and BIG Coke! ;)

The actual scanning process was fairly quick. I set the scanners to a nice, high resolution, knowing that I’d eventually want to bring these scanned photos into the PL app when I converted the pages. And away I went. Scan a page, save it, place another on the scanner, scan it, save it. When I’d run across some loose photos, I’d stack them all together and place them in the feeder (which could handle about 25 at a time) and then those just whipped through the feeder machine like a dream—much faster that I’d anticipated.

Well, three hours later (it really wasn’t that bad, because I was also getting to “see” each and every page that was scrapbooked, and some of those hadn’t been viewed by human eyes for nearly 15 years), I ended up with a total of 405 scanned images, counting both the full page scrapbook layouts and the individual photos scattered throughout. And that was actually only years 2000-2003! I didn’t even get to 2004-2005—guess that means I’ll be back! J

When I was done scanning, I saved all the files (which I named according to year) onto a flash drive to take home. Once I got home, I took some time to go through each photo and rotate them if needed (I wasn’t very particular about which direction they were scanned—I was going for quantity at that point), and organize them by year.

Then I organized them into “events” folders within the main year folder. For example, in the 2000 folder I had subfolders for Christmas, Zoo Trip, etc.  I repeated that for each year’s worth of scans.

Now it was time to take all those scans and move them to Google Photos. I’ve already outlined in a previous post my process for storing and using Google Photos. But in a nutshell, I added new albums according to the event folders I had just created, and moved all the scanned files now onto Google Photos, where they will reside until I make PL app pages with them.

Overall, the process of actually scanning the pages didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Incidentally, I did get a little faster at the scanning once I started to get to large groups of scrapbook pages that were actually in truly clear sheet protectors and didn’t have to remove each one. Greatly sped up the process.

I know I’ll have some return trips to the FamilySearch center for more scanning, but I’m okay with that. But once they’re scanned and saved on Google Photos—the real fun begins—transforming the pages in the PL app!  The next few posts on this blog will probably be some more of those page transformations, but I’ll be sure to point out any issues or tricks or frustrations I run into along the way.

Thanks for reading. Hope you didn’t fall asleep halfway through my rambling. But from the few comments I’ve gotten here and on my Instagram, this seems to inspire a few people to do more with their documenting, so I’ll keep writing if you’ll keep reading! (and I love to read your comments…just sayin’) J