Last week was filled with learning new things. On Thursday night I made my favorite discovery of the week while working at my local Family History Center.
This time of year I know that if the weather is nice we usually don’t have patrons come into the center. Last Thursday was an especially nice day so I took a small stack of photos with me to scan. The only patrons that came in were either attending a class or they were using one of the scanners and didn’t need assistance. So, I spent my whole 2 hour shift scanning.
As I worked through the stack I had brought, I found a small bundle of negatives inside of a letter written to my grandmother by her older sister Beth. I was excited to see what the photos were and held a bunch up to the light. There were some sweet little gems in there. As I was checking them out, a fellow consultant walked into the room and said, “You know our scanner can scan negatives don’t you?”
Well blow me down!
I DID NOT know that.
I got a quick lesson and proceeded to scan the stack of negatives. Among them was this very sweet photo of my grandmother that I don’t recall having seen before. A new treasure that I am delighted to have!
I have so many photo negatives at home. SO. MANY.
Now that I know I can scan them at the center, I can save a bunch of pennies I was planning to spend having them professionally digitized.
But now I wonder how it would do with more modern photos? Like the thousands of negatives I have saved from my whole life…
The lesson?
Know what resources are freely available to you.
I have been working at my local Family History Center for nearly 5 years. I use the scanner all of the time and had no idea it could do this! Such a happy discovery.
Happy Monday, I hope you make a fantastic genealogy discovery today!