You can inherit thousands of photographs and none of the names needed to understand them.

Thousands of images arrive and the knowledge that made them meaningful does not. Who that is, where it was, why anyone kept it. Without names the collection becomes beautiful and unreadable, a record whose key died with the person who held it.

Sit down with the older people in your life and go through pictures while they can still tell you. Write the names on the back or in the file. It takes a few evenings, it is usually a good few evenings, and it is the entire difference between an archive and a pile.