Sorting Saturday - An Organizing System for Slides

[© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum] In the last Sorting Saturday post, I talked about the hundreds, if not thousands, of slides belonging to my grandparents and parents that I am now housing. Grandpa's organizational "system" was pretty loose, unlike Dad's; so I decided to come up with one myself.

As an example, in looking at the brown metal case in last week's post, I was able to discover an arrangement of the slide trays by date, so I numbered them accordingly. Those numbers transferred over to the new bin the slides were moved to.

So each little box of slides now has a number that looks something like this:

1.A.10

• The number 1 is for the number of the box the slides are in now.
• The capital letter A is for the box that the slides came from (the brown metal box). I have a list of all the slide descriptions that were in that box (see below).
• The number 10 is the new bin that the roll of slides is in. These slides were from a roll labeled "Disneyland." If the slides from that roll wouldn't have all fit in one bin, I would have numbered them 10a and 10b.

If I were to notice something particular about the roll of slides, such as an approximate time frame or subject, I would make a note of it in my notes using square brackets like this: [  ]

As I inventory and move the slides to their new, space efficient, archivally safe, and friendly home, all of my notes will go with the new boxes of slides. This should help down the road after the slides have been culled and I start digitizing them.