You may already have a wonderful tool for sharing memories in your own home. If you have an “all-in-one” printer you can scan documents, photos, etc. to your computer or USB drive. These documents or photos can then be opened up on your computer, named, then attached as a memory to your FamilySearch account. After your scan, you will choose whether to save the scan as a PDF or a JPEG. I save documents as PDFs and photos as JPEGs, and have easily loaded them to FamilySearch.

This might be a great option for you since you can do these scans from your own home anytime day or night. Most photos will need to be scanned one at a time, and will have to be placed on the printer glass of your printer manually. If you have numerous photos to scan, it may be worth signing up for the photo scanner at the Granite Family History Center, since there is a automatic feed on the photo scanner there. Either way is a great way to digitize photos for sharing.

Like many of you, I inherited many photos and documents from my parents and other family members. I love being able to make scans of these items, to better see and organize what I have. Don’t forget if you decide to do this, it is important to save these scans to an external hard drive, or permanent cloud storage so they aren’t lost, especially if you decide to get rid of the paper copy.

If you don’t have an all-in-one printer or scanner at your home, remember this technology is available to you at the Granite Family History Center, including help to use these wonderful tools.

–Elaine Hardman – Communications – Granite Family History Center