By Rickii-lee from Queensland, Australia
This sounds like it will be a large project. Depending on what your business is willing to spend to help you get these photos organized etc. Here's some ideas: if work has a mail room, how about seeing if you can get a few of their mail sorters (these are usually made of wood but might be plastic), they have many slots which can be labeled and just as mail sorters would sort mail to go in them, you can do something similar; if that's not an option, then buy some under-the-bed shoe organizers and do it that way, if space is an issue, then use the vertical ones.
Although I don't have as many as you, I am doing something similar for my family photos I inherited, it works great by scannning through the photos so one knows what type of categories you'll need for the labels. It will also allow you to separate some and ask opinions of co workers if that's an option. As I post this, I almost wish I could be there to help, I love doing this type of work. *smile*
What kind of photos are they? people photos, family photos? photos of animals? manufacturing photos? landscape photos? There are various ways to organize and arrange, depending on the content.
Oh, wait; I (and the other writer, I think) was assuming they were digital images...but in rereading your post, do you mean actual paper photos? Gosh, maybe some scrapbookers would have ideas for that! Good luck!
I second the motion on using Picasa. I suspect there are programs you can purchase that are more sophisticated; but you can't beat the price! It will automatically find and put into chronological order (by date taken) all the photos on your computer, so be aware that it will take the time to do that the first time you run it--which will slow you up a bit. But once done, it has a lot of nice features and is easy to use.
It does sound like a major undertaking, but what a treasure!
You might look at the stock photo websites on line for ideas. They organize theirs by category. Another way you could do it would be by date, if they are family or group photos. That is, IF they are dated. In most places I've seen, photos are arranged by subject (the person being photographed), category (what object or type of scene they're a picture of), or date. Picasa by Google, which is free to download, will let you "tag" or name the person in the photos and then it recognizes many of the photos after that of that person and it will ask you to verify. You can scan photos in and catalog them that way as well.
Hope this helps you. Whew! 6,000 photos? What a task!
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Cataloging Photos