Who are The Family Archivists?
We are Rachel and Morgan Hagar, and we live Portland, OR with our twins and our two cats. We met at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara in 2001, fell in love during a documentary photography expedition to Mexico and have been together ever since.
Rachel, in addition to her degree in photography, worked in education and non-profit management for 15 years before returning to school to earn a Master's in Library and Information Science where her studies concentrated on archival practices and digital asset management. While in school, Rachel interned at the Museum of Ventura County working on a project to move their photographic archive online. She helped with digitizing photographs and adding the accompanying metadata to their historical photographic collection. In doing this work, Rachel realized the same principles could easily be applied to family collections.
Morgan is a professional photographer and retoucher with over 20 years of experience. Having been working since before the days of digital photography, Morgan has gained the expertise needed to digitize and preserve almost any kind of analog format created.
Over the years we found that like our children, our own family collection had grown rather unruly. We could never find the images that we wanted when we needed them. During the pandemic we decided to take the time to get our own collection under control. Using our combined talents of Rachel’s Master’s Degree in Library Sciences and Morgan’s years of hands-on experience we began to turn our random and disorganized collection into our archive. Once we started we found that we really enjoyed the process (even if the work is sometimes tedious) of creating something organized and useful out of a mountain of chaos.
Since we started organizing our collection we’ve found that our family loves having our images and videos at our fingertips. It gives us the feeling that we are in control of our photographic lives rather than being overwhelmed and daunted by the clutter!
Once we told some friends that we were organizing our photo collection into a digital archive we realized that this was a service that was needed broadly and that we were perfectly poised to provide it! So here we are. Our goal is to make sure that your family memories are organized and preserved so that they can continue to be shared and enjoyed for years to come.
I can't recommend The Family Archivists enough!
I have been carting around tubs of photos, birthday cards, newspaper clippings, and artwork that my daughter has created. These are all very special things to me, but I had no way of viewing them unless I wanted to dig through the chaotic jumble inside my tubs - and I did not.
I also didn't like the physical weight of the tubs and how much space they were taking in my home. Each time I saw them I would sigh thinking to myself..."you've got to do something with all of that stuff..." But the idea of trying to make it organized and easily accessible overwhelmed me, and The Family Archivists took all that overwhelm away for me.
The Family Archivists photographed each piece so beautifully and carefully. I cannot wait to make an album of these photos so that I can look through them easily and be reminded of all those special moments in my and my family's lives. Thank-you Family Archivists for preserving such special memories for my family and me. It is really special what you're able to do.
Jen W., Salem, Oregon