Back in March of 2014, I blogged about a set of medical appointment cards that my maternal grandmother kept throughout her lifetime (note – most of the images in that post are broken – I need to fix that). The cards are amazing if you ask me, because while they appear, at first, to just be simple record-keeping of going to the doctor’s office, the fact that she had a collection of more than 60 of them that span a 20-year time period, AND cover all 4 of her kids and a grandkid – that makes for opportunities to add to the family history!
While I’d had the cards safely stored in one place, I decided a couple of weeks ago to really get on the ball and digitize and organize them. I started by putting them in chronological order. I then used my cell phone to take pictures, which I chose to do on purpose rather than use my flatbed scanner. Her earliest card is almost 70 years old now as it was from when she was carrying my now deceased uncle Stanley, whom she had in 1950. After taking the picture, I placed them in 12×12 scrapbook-style pocket pages. I use these for my physical photos too. They are archival quality and I like having my photos (now these cards) organized in 12×12 albums.
I have added them to my permanent digital family archives at Forever.com. I set up an album called “Grandma Alice Clinic Cards” and it has 5 albums – albums for her and her 4 children. One of the features I love about Forever is the ability to do nested albums. This is something I was not able to do when I used Google Photos. And, since I love to be organized, having nested albums are ideal for me!
Within the “Alice” album is where I have all the cards that pertain to her care.
Clicking on an individual picture brings up a detailed view. Here is where we see the filename I have put on the picture, the description, the date taken, my tags, and the information on the album the image is in. All of the descriptive metadata is compliant with industry standards and stays with the picture when it is downloaded. The ability to add industry-standards compliant metadata to my images is of utmost importance in my digital photo management strategy.
I am quite happy that I have the cards done now and filed away for safekeeping. My immediate family members have access to my Forever account so with the apps installed on their phones, they can get into my profile and access these anytime and from any location they wish.
I had to chuckle because many of these cards have the phrase “Always bring this card with you” and it is clear that my grandmother held true to that sentiment. Now, we will always have the cards too.
Disclaimer: The link I include above to FOREVER Storage is a referral link, so if you sign up for a free account (which comes with 2GB of storage space), we both get a $10 coupon.