Advice For Chapter Historians
 

Guys and gals..... PLEASE put "printing" as a line item in your budgets. Digital photography has been a boon to Greeks in that now EVERYONE can help document events and email them to the historian and/or PR person.

BUT, archiving your prints on a disk or flash drive is NOT enough. You MUST make scrapbooks, preferably a yearly one.

Technology evolves too rapidly to leave the recovery work to the next generation. I would hate to have the Greek years of the '00s and '10s become lost because nobody thought to print out their photographs and put them in an album.

The GREAT thing about digital photography, unlike film, is that you can pick and choose which photos you want prints of. if you took 60 pics (the magic facebook number) and only ten are album-worthy, then you only pay to print 10.

(And for those of you with high quality color printers, great! But I still recommend sending them off to be printed professionally.)

That's my morning rant, I hope it wasn't previously discussed.

Great idea for personal photos too.

We don't specifically set up our budget like that...but the historian does have a budget (around $100, I think) which she can use for that.

I agree that digital is awesome. You can get them printed at Meijer for like..10 cents. It's really cheap and they look great.

Do not mind the rant at all!:)

I finally sat down and wrote a History of the local I started as needless to say I know the most about!:D

I then sent it out and got a ton of emails back from the Brothers thanking me for this as they knew bits and peices but not all. While I was amazed by this, it hit me, they did not really know.

So, this is something that needs to be addressed before History is so clouded and lost.

When should one start, well, now would be a great time.

We also have a Brother of the Chapter who is taking his time to scan all of the pictures we have and after 43 years, it is a bunch and a huge job.


Time waits for no one.;)

Emails. If the historian is getting "history" via emails, be sure to print them out. And if your chapter has a "general" email account, send a copy of the email to the chapter email so there is a record of it there as well.

Slightly off topic, but if officers received information (say an email from a wealthy alum) via their personal email account, they should forward a copy to the chapter's email account. Years later (after officer turnover etc.), the current officers/members will have access to the information. Same may be applied to form letters, requests etc. Save copies electronically.

When you're having a hard copy made, please consider having it printed onto archival paper. If you're not having it bound, then also use top-loading archival liners, and that way, it will last much longer.

Discs, drives, tapes are all finite, and in fifty years will probably be obsolete, and not able to be retrieved. Having a DATED archival hard copy will last as long as it's not lost or burnt (read: get a fireproof lockbox/safe).

This is a great suggestion--and for the right reasons! I do know that in my former district in my Fraternity, scrapbooks were a means by which such awards as the Chapter of the Year award were evaluated, and there was a Best Scrapbook award also. For two years I helped judge scapbooks for several regional awards for Alpha Kapp Alpha. (The chair of the committee was the wife of a chapter brother and she wanted those from other BGLOs who didn't have a stake in the outcome to serve in that capacity. A great idea!)

send postcards (announcements about whatever) to other chapters, your district/national officers. then keep a sample postcard in that scrapbook.

include date, location, people's (real) names in photos

FANTASTIC idea!

Just think of how we all howl when we look at old yearbooks - can you just imagine having pictures that are special for your GLO with the names on them? Although, I think I'd prefer Real (nickname) Name - just in case there's mention of (nickname) somewhere else.