How do you keep it all straight?

[arrakchrome]

I have only been working on my families history for almost 2 years now, but especially in the last 8 months I have collected a huge stash of photos, audio, documents, and even just a touch of video.  I have over 17,000 files which takes up just over 50 gigs.  My final destination for all of this of course is not where it is currently, but a Wiki that I have made and use for my family.  If anyone is interested I can make a post about said wiki because it really is an amazing, especially to help share with family.

My question here is what is the best way to keep it all straight?  There is a lot of information that I know simply off the top of my head, but there is probably more that I just don't know who/when/where.  I can slowly find out which isn't the problem, but when you have well over 5000 photos where do you store that information of who is in each, when it was taken, where it was taken, and why?

When I only had a few hundred photos I just used a spread sheet, that worked well, but now the problem is that with so many photos is there a better way?  I know Windows Live Photo Gallery has a tagging tool, which does all of that very well (especially the tagging of people, so in a large group you know who is actually who), but does that information carry over to other systems well?  Like if I sent it to a Mac, will they be able to see those tags?

How do you keep it all straight?

[Berlin-Bob]

Hi Arrakchrome,

you will find all sorts of ideas here in these topics:
Topic: RootsChat Topics: Organising and Presenting your Family History
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,158638.0.html

They are not specifically about photos, but it might give you some ideas, how to sort and integrate the photos as part of a genealogical project.

Take some time to read them, as in the end you will need a system that appeals to you, and which you can live with.

Good luck,
Bob

[arrakchrome]

Thanks for the link (and moving it too) but Everything is organized (in my own fashion).  The trouble comes about from trying to preserve the information that makes the photos important.  Everything is digital on my end (I do have hard copies of some) so how do you best retain the information of who/what/when/where while maintaining transferability?  Like I said I can tag photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery (Great for stitching together scans of documents that were to big for my scanner), however will that information still be readable in Windows 8, Mac, Linux or whatever will be out in the next 10 years?