Projectkin Live: The View from Kathy's Corner

What an incredible gathering this morning! Thank you to Jill Swenson, Althadie Holm, Storykeepers, Jeanne Insalaco, Diane Burley, Marsha Berman, Linda Teather, Jim the Historian, Kyla Bayang, Ann Larkham, Chris | Scottish Genealogist, Hospitalstraße 22, Tamara Buzyna Adams, Jason Stephenson, Country Girl, and so many more for tuning into my live video with Kathy Stone! I can’t tell you how much it means to us here on the American Pacific coast and the Canadian Rockies to see all of you joining from Scotland, the European continent, across the American states and Canadian provinces. Your thoughts, comments, and encouragement are the glue that holds this community together. The little ❤️s you drop keep us motivated and give this series a little more visibility. Feel free to create clips from this post to share with your friends. Projectkin can offer these and all of our programs for free, thanks to the generous support of our patrons. Learn more about us and join the fun! “You Can Pick Your Tools… …and you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick…” It’s an old saying that doesn’t exactly go that way, but it does remind us that in digital preservation we can pick our tools, but we can’t pick… * What we’ll need, * When we’ll need it OR, * What failure will befall us. Kathy’s approach takes us through options for tools but more importantly looks at the top level strategy: * How to plan for a workflow that works for you. * How to make sure that your workflow includes backups, archives, and protection for work-in-progress. During our chat this morning we referenced a few programs from the archive. First was the June 2024 program when we last covered the top of choosing a software program for your digital collection: Thursday’s program will provide a useful update to that discussion. We also talked about Caroline Guntur and her Digital Photo Organizing approach, which focuses on developing a workflow and using open-source metadata so you can find what you need when you need it. Caroline was my guest in Projectkin’s early days with a tutorial that walked through the approach: At Projectkin, we take a strong stance on platform independence, which is why you won’t see affiliate or sponsor references. That leaves us free to both speak frankly about different platforms and also work through the challenges of existing investments. It’s also why we focus so much on workflows, backups and archives. Those are platform-independent concepts. Thursday’s program should be a special one, and we hope it will be of value to everyone entrusted with a family’s archival collection of photos, records, and materials. Like all Kathy’s Corner events, this will be hosted on Zoom. This week’s program will build on many of the concepts Kathy’s guest Peter Bennett talked about last month. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the recording along with a useful list of resources. 🤭 And if you remember, Kathy gave you homework: Share the software combinations YOU use to edit, search, backup and archive your collection. That will give Kathy a chance to tailor her remarks to your combination of tools. You can still send her a message here: 👇 About Kathy Stone Kathy has been the “cornerstone” of Projectkin since we were a “Rōnin” gang called “PostPonga.” Her commitment to the physical artifacts of family history now inspires our whole community. Learn more about what Kathy is doing today at her own publication: Do you have friends or family members who may benefit from this? Please share our work and invite friends and family to join us: Get full access to Projectkin at projectkin.substack.com/subscribe