Join Me for the July Scanfest

This Sunday, July 29th, from 11 AM - 2 PM, Pacific Daylight Time, I will be hosting the July 2007 session of Scanfest. If you've been following T.K.'s "Tidy Your Documents Month" over at Before My Time, you're sure to have a nice little stack of documents and photos needing scanning. Let me tell you: I certainly do! I can't say that I've gotten organized overnight, but in beginning to sort and analyze the papers documenting my paternal grandparents' lives, I found lots of great clues for further research and uncovered some details I had either not known about or forgotten. In addition, I received three CDs of scanned photos and documents from scrapbooks belonging to my grandfather's sister, most of which were about her parents (my great-grandparents). I've been having a blast putting all this information together in date order and sharing it with my readers and family members.

One of the other things I've done is to remove original certificates, documents, and photos from some of these file folders, scan them, and place them in acid-free, archival safe sleeves. They are currently in a binder, waiting to be moved to my newly-leased safety deposit box at my financial institution.

I've hole-punched genealogical and historical newsletters and placed them in binders, and I've cleared out a couple of "to be filed" piles. There's still a long way to go (it's a journey, not just a destination!), but I'm chipping away at it, a little at a time.

So back to Scanfest: I've got a list of items to be scanned, especially things from my ROBBINS grandparents' and great-grandparents' file folders, as well as an album full of my wedding pictures in preparation for the memory album I'm working on over at MemoryPress. I hope you'll join me for these three hours and we can chat about what we're scanning, researching, cooking for dinner, planning to do on our next vacation, you name it!

Now, I'm really hoping you'll join me! June's Scanfest was a bit of a bust, which is why I never got around to blogging a report. The footnoteMaven was kind enough to join me for about a half an hour, but then needed to go. Nobody else showed up! :-( Then there was an issue with my computer, which needed to be dusted out with compressed air. That took my husband about half an hour to do a full service job on it while I chatted on my laptop, unable to scan anything! I know a lot of people are on vacation this time of year--and for others, Sunday afternoons are reserved for family times. BUT, if you mark it on your calendar and IF you have some free time, I'd love to visit with you! And hey, you'll be doing your descendants a big favor by getting some of your "stuff" scanned and organized!

Here are the technical details:

To join me, you'll need a Hotmail or Gmail account, and Windows Live Messenger downloaded to your computer (Mac users go here to download Microsoft Messenger for Mac). Although WLM states that it is compatible with Yahoo! e-mail accounts, we have had difficulty adding Yahoo! users to our chat conversation. Once you have gotten set up, send me an e-mail (see my profile in the right-hand menu) and I'll add you to our chat list. You'll receive an invitation message from me in the e-mail account that you've set up for Messenger, and will need to verify that I can add you as a contact. My Messenger account is identical to my Gmail account, except that it's "@hotmail.com".

Hope to see you there!