Archives: Edit for posterity

ANDY RIGA, The Gazette

François David carefully removes a rectangular object from a folder, gently places it on a table, and removes its protective white paper wrapper.

A plain, brown notebook emerges, its pages yellowed.

Inside: a diary in which Caroline Rogers documented the early life of her son, Talbot Mercer Papineau, born in 1883, great-grandson of Patriote leader Louis-Joseph Papineau.

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François David, an archivist with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, opens a diary in which Caroline Rogers documented the early life of her son, Talbot Mercer Papineau, born in 1883.

ALLEN MCINNIS, THE GAZETTE

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In it, she wrote her thoughts and described events, and pasted a lock of hair, some photos and a few pressed flowers.

David, an archivist with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, is using the notebook to illustrate the benefits of keeping family documents. He's also subtly telling me about being selective.

David has just pegged me as a pack rat, having established that I have more than 20,000 digital pictures and videos on my hard drives, as well as piles of art created by my three young children. (I neglected to mention the stacks of bills, receipts and product manuals also cluttering my home office.)

I'm interviewing David about a new booklet he helped write for Quebec's archives agency. Called Safely Stored but Not Forgotten, it's a guide to preserving personal, family and financial documents. It spells out what to save and what to chuck.

When it comes to documents, David said, many people fall into one of two extremes - hoarders and discarders.

"There has to be an equilibrium between saving and throwing everything out," he said.

Often, people go from one extreme to the other.

"Sometimes grandparents save everything and then they die and family members just throw everything away because it's too much," David said.

"The house has to be sold. There are boxes everywhere. They don't want to take the time to deal with it so all the grandparents' work is lost to the next generation." Rather than 25 boxes, "save two or three well-organized ones, and review them regularly so extraneous material doesn't accumulate, David advises.

"Of everything we receive and create in our lifetime only three to seven per cent of it should be conserved permanently," David said. "So if you have 100 boxes of archives because you keep everything, only five of them should be conserved. That amount of stuff is also more manageable."

David sees the problem first hand in his job sorting through donations of documents related to people who played significant roles in Quebec history. Take politicians, for example. Some preserve every last photo from every last state visit; others, in a fit of pique after losing office, toss out all of their files, he said.

For hoarders, computers give the illusion of unlimited storage and long-term protection.

Hard drives are cheap, can hold a huge amount of data and take up little space. Every snapshot can be saved, even if they're out of focus, badly framed or duplicates. Backups seem to ensure preservation.

But technology changes and accidents happen. Anyone who saved photos on now-obsolete computer disks will have a hard time today. What's the future of CDs and DVDs? In a few years, will your computer run today's backup software? What if your computer and your backup die?

The guide suggests backing up hard-drive documents on another medium (such as CD or DVD) annually. Review your options as technology evolves.

Also, don't forget to cull your photos as you upload them to your computer. "In the case of 20,000 digital photos, that's crazy," David said. "Even if it's backed up, imagine the work for someone to go through that one day. Are they all important and necessary?"

Find the ones that are and have them printed, an option many people forgo these days, David said. He's a firm believer in old-fashioned prints, well-organized and annotated."Paper has proven its worth," he said, pulling out a handful of prints of Montreal street scenes from the early 20th century. "Will images on hard disks survive?"

Then, there's the kids' "artwork" dilemma. Keep or recycle?

Stash some but discard most of it, he suggests.

"A simple but effective way to decide whether to keep this photo or drawing or letter or souvenir is to ask yourself: 'Does this document remind me of something or bring up a strong emotion?' " So scrap the scribbles, retain the family portraits.

In Safely Stored but Not Forgotten, a 60-page booklet illustrated with dozens of archival photos and documents, provincial archivists lay out a filing system and offer tips on preserving documents, computer files and photos and videos.

The guide, which focuses on 12 themes (from genealogy to banking transactions), also explains how long to keep key financial documents like credit card statements (three months), supporting documents for tax returns (six years) and insurance claims (until they're settled).

"Some people save everything," he said."It could be the warranty and bills for a fridge that died 10 years ago. Unless you have particular affection for that fridge and it brings back fond memories, you should throw it out."

Safely Stored but Not Forgotten is for sale ($9.95) in bookstores and at www.banq.qc.ca. The notebook mentioned at the top of this story has been digitized and can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/4z8k49

ariga@thegazette.canwest.com

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