One of our consultants has been working on a genealogical project this past week.  It prompts some thoughts on the difference between science and scholarship as well as the longevity of documents.

Our photographer has spent most of five days working on genealogy.  We don’t include genealogy among our listed skills here at Five Colors, because we don’t consider ourselves professionals in that field.  There is, no doubt, much knowledge of birth and death records, census details and so forth that we just don’t have.  However, this was mostly a matter of organizing and cataloging a mass of diverse documents already in hand, so we agreed to take it on.

The project called for scholarly skills rather than scientific.  It is true that both scholars and scientists are engaged in working out the truth from (often inadequate) clues, but their processes are different.  A scholar is called upon to excercise judgement, to interpret documents and other evidence, to decide between sources that are incompatible or downright contradictory.  Context is important and sometimes vital, so a wide-ranging historical knowledge is very useful.  As is, our photographer says, having a certain kind of memory, one that will keep miscellaneous details at hand for the medium term.  “Baird,” he said to himself, “I saw that name in a handwritten marginal note yesterday. . .”

The documents, letters and such had been produced during the nineteenth century and shortly afterward, so were all at least 110 years old.  That allowed our photographer to comment on how various things stood the test of time.  Newspaper clippings were in the worst shape, brittle and liable to fall apart.  Well, that’s to be expected; newspapers are only designed to last a day.  Pencil on cheap paper is prone to fading as well as disintegration, but often has the only diagram of just how Aunt Minnie and Great-uncle Henry were related (explained over coffee in a kitchen a century ago).  Ink can fade, but some kinds are still bold after all this time.

Photographs came out very well.  A black-and-white photograph (as all were, during this period) is in principle as archival as anything that exists: if properly produced and stored, it will last several lifetimes.  (If carelessly produced, though, it can fade or darken to uselessness in a few years.  If carelessly stored it can be attacked by mold or pollutants in the air.  It’s not hard to do it right, however.)  The major problem with the stock of pictures was identifying them.  Some were labeled; most were not.  Some could be compared with others to provide an identification of this man or that woman; most could not, or would lead to arguments.  He was left with a large stack of unknown portraits.  We may well never know who these people were, since anyone who knew them as been gone for eighty years.

However, we speculate that face-recognition software may reach the point that we can say something about these people.  Indeed, a document erased centuries ago has recently been read, so we may eventually recover information that now seems hopelessly out of reach.

But a century from now genealogists may find this kind of work much harder.  We do not write paper letters any more.  Emails may be available–or may not; and even if so, who would have to patience to go through all of them?  Pictures may be available–if file formats remain compatible and hard drives are not corrupted.

In the meantime, our photographer recommends you print out at least a few important pictures.  And label them.