One of Sandy's Christmas presents this year was a new scanner.  Honestly, she's not had much time to use it since I've been pretty much hogging it.  (My excuse was that I needed to learn the inside and out of the scanner software.)  This scanner does just about everything including slides and film negatives.

I started with our wedding negatives, but then decided to move on to the large plastic bin full of photos and negatives.  After sorting thru hundreds of photos, a lot were from OASC (Ohio Association of Student Councils) Conferences and Retreats, but there were a bunch from high school and college.  I decided to start with the high school photos.  Unfortunately, I had less that I expected, but I scanned what I had.  Then I started to post them to my Facebook page and tagged who I knew and waited to see what would happen.

The response was surprisingly positive.  I was afraid that I'd get all these take down requests or tags undone by those in the picture.  But it turns out a lot of people were happy to see the photos and memories of yesteryear.  (Yes, I did just use yesteryear in a sentence.)  Some of the photos I uploaded are going on 20 years … 2011 will be the 20th anniversary of my 8th Grade Graduation.  (I have yet to scan and upload those photos.

This project has made me realize something big.  This is what social media should be all about.  Not only connecting and sharing what's going on right now, but there's millions, if not billions of photos sitting around in boxes just collecting dust.  They may get pulled out once in a blue moon and viewed by one or two people.  There are a lot of memories just waiting to be shared.

A good example would be the collection of photos at my high school.  Sr. Bernie taught photography at St. Peter's since well…when my mom was in school.  She taught science and photography, and took most of the official school photos along the way.  I would assume there's an archive of prints and/or negatives sitting in files either in the basement storage or in the convent.  (God, I pray she kept all that stuff.)  Can you imagine all the great memories people could once again share if those photos were digitized and organized into digital galleries?  Of course, the school would then have to partner with a printing company to "sell" prints of the photos along with mouse pads, coffee mugs and the occasional t-shirt.

We'll see what happens.  Time to load the next tray of negatives.