Scan the box of photographs
Boxes of prints are one house fire or one house clearance from being gone. Scanning them takes an afternoon.
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Why it lands
Family photographs from before the digital era exist as single physical copies in one house, usually the house of the oldest person. When that house is cleared under time pressure after a death, they are routinely lost. Digitising them is entirely mechanical work that preserves something irreplaceable, and it doubles as the best possible excuse for several afternoons of being told stories.
How
A phone camera and a decent app does a good enough job — perfect is the enemy of done here. Ask who is in each picture as you go and type the answer into the filename, which is the part that will be unrecoverable later. Send copies to the whole family.
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