~Elizabeth Dow, Hardwick Historical Society
A few years ago, the new owners of the Hardwick Gazette, our local newspaper, offered the Hardwick Historical Society the collection of 40 years of photographs, negatives, and contact sheets left in the office by the previous two owners. We immediately said yes, and it was a couple years before we did the math. Probably just as well. For 40 years, the paper had published 51 issues. Each issue contained at least 20 pictures–some many more. We could reasonably estimate that we had more than 41,000 images to process. Fortunately, the newspaper staff had filed each month’s pictures in a manilla envelop with the negatives and contact sheets.
Step 1: Identify the pictures and write the metadata on the back including: Hardwick Gazette, publication date, page, people, place, and/or event as described in the caption or story that accompanied the photo in the newspaper. For each pack of pictures we pulled the published newspaper, and turned pages, matching pictures, and writing the metadata on the back. We quickly made some decisions. For instance: no baby pictures from the “I’m One” column that ran for years; no glossy publicity shots for theatrical acts. Neither contains a lot of local historical information.
We identified pictures related to other towns, and then we put them in a container that we eventually sent to that town’s historical society. While we put the names of graduates or team members on the back of Hardwick pictures, we did not do that for the classes or teams from other towns. It simply took too much time.
This part of the project included as many as a half dozen volunteers working around a large table together, and it created a trip down memory lane that just never ended. A good time was had by all, until our hands began to cramp.
Step 2: File the pictures. Each picture went into a folder with others like it, and the folder went into a lateral file drawer. We developed a facetted index to organize the files. We could categorize a picture of a couple kids on a playground 1) by the kids’ names, 2) by the game they were playing, 3) by the playground 4) by the season of the year, etc. So we chose to file pictures by reason the photographer took the picture. If the photographer wanted to highlight the new playground equipment at the school, we filed the picture under “Schools–Hardwick Elementary–Playground, 1990-1999.” If the photographer meant to feature kids enjoying themselves during a summer activity, we filed the picture under that activity, e.g. “Recreation—Hardwick Summer Recreation Programs” or “Schools—Hazen Union—Sports—Basketball—Summer Program.”
We had some hitches. At first each newly engaged or married couple got its own folder. Then we saw how much drawer space that would take, and redid the folders by years and listed the couples in the index with the date of their engagement or wedding. And it took a while to sort out the difference between a sport and a recreation. Answer: “Sport” usually involves organized competition — e.g. basketball; “Recreation” usually does not — e.g. bicycling.
The project took a total of about six years to complete, but it has provided us an invaluable resource. Take a look: https://hardwickvthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pictures20250919.pdf
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