Digitizing Photos to Enable Efficient Search and Retrieval

[boydcarter]

BACKGROUND
I am planning to digitize several thousand old photographs. Before I start the process I want to be certain that I can find and retrieve whatever I would like as easily as possible. Balanced against "ease of search" is the amount of work I must go through during the digitizing process. Most of the digitizing process will entail scanning negatives and/or slides using a "yet to be purchased" scanner.

Can anybody share their experience in solving this conundrum?

[GusPanella]

I did this same exercise about 3 years ago. I ran a few thousand slides through a photo scanner, four at a time over a two week period.

I scanned them into folder names that matched the labels on the carousels or the original boxes.
I would strongly recommend the use of the dust removal options that comes with the scanner software (Epson calls this ICE). Trying to remove the dust using other tools was never successful for me. When turning on dust removal feature of the scanner software, the scanning time went up by 2x, but it is well worth it.

After scanning the box, I updated the IPTC in bulk for that specific folder. Then, I moved on to the next set.

[boydcarter]

Thanks Gus, good to know, especially the dust removal tip and bulk updating the IPTC