As Projectkin, we’re hooked on family history stories. So often, these stories start with the artifacts, documents, and photographs left for us by our ancestors. In Kathy’s Corner, , Projectkin member and long-time contributor, helps us sort through and make sense of these materials with insights learned in decades of experience as a professional photo organizer. Explore recordings of past episodes here, and our calendar for coming events here.
Our discussion today built on a challenge Kathy introduced in January 2025 related to the mystery photos in everyone’s collections. In parts 1-3, Kathy stepped through different ways to explore our photos using:
Knowledge about photography technologies, and photographers (part 1);
Information about physical elements of photos (part 2); and
Elements captured in the photograph (part 3).
⮕ Here are links to those first three parts:
Today, we turned to timelines as an external tool to use to explore our photo collection. As you’ll see in the discussion and resources below, this led to an inspiring conversation about new ways to tell stories.
Resources for Timelines in Family Photo Organizing
Templates & Tools
Cyndi’s List
Family Tree Magazine
Ancestories: Stories of My Ancestors Miriam Robbins
How to Create a Timeline in Excel by John Wittwer
Grid Timeline or Research Logs
Goldenrod Genealogy
Interactive Timeline
Northwestern University Knight Lab
From the Knight Lab program for journalists at Northwestern: Knightlab.northwestern.edu, specifically the TimelineJS tool, timeline.knightlab.com
This TimelineJS tool was the basis for the Lafayette Timeline Project Recipe from April 2025 and includes templates for using TimelineJS.
Project Recipe » Lafayette’s Tour in a Timeline
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If you participated in our live program, I hope you enjoyed it and the conversation with other members and participants. It’s an example of the kinds of programs we host here at Projectkin. We publish these “Recipe” projects to help you get your stories told — without the heavy lift of figuring out how to do it first. You can explore the full series of
Projectkin is all about our members, family historians hooked on stories. We’re on a mission to help families tell their stories in any way that works for them. Preserve your family archive and share the stories that make it so important. Tap below to join us for our May program at Kathy’s Corner.
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