Best practices for organizing a sudden batch of photos?

Question

So, I just got ahold of hundreds (1000+) of slides from my early childhood, years 0-10. Pictures I had never seen before. (Plus 8mm and 16mm movies, reel to reel audio, and some prints.)
I'm going to get a slide scanner and scan some, but not all, of the photos in (I don't care about the vista shots). Have any of you done such an all-at-once type of project? What approach did you use to describe the photos?
How do you ID the people? Make keywords for people, or put names in the comments?
How do you deal with group photos? It would be nice if the names could attached to the faces, so a mouseover revealed the name.
Did you make a note somehwere (e.g., comments) of what box the images came from, when they were developed (since the photo date may not be known), which image no. in the series it was? (So you can find the original again if necessary.)
Do you have any tips to keep this under control?
I'm both excited by this and overwhelmed. I'd rather do it once and do it right. This is part of a bigger project to piece together this period of my life, so the more info I can track, the better.

Answer 1

switchbacker:
You might consider one of the new flatbed scanners that have the capability of scanning multiple sides at one time. My reasoning for this is that after you're finished with the project you'll end up with a useable piece of equipment instead of a nice doorstop if you get a dedicated slide scanner. That's what I have, a nice doorstop.
I recently got a Canon 8600F scanner that will do 4 slides at a time and put each in their own file after the scan is completed. I'm sure other scanner manufacturers have similar software that will separate multiple images in one scan into their own file. My standalone slide scanner was over 5 times as slow as the Canon scanner on a time per slide basis.
A bonus with the particular Canon scanner that I got was that Photoshop Elements 4 was bundled with it.
As far as organizing the resulting image files I use keywords to identify the elements within a photo, i.e people, places and things. I name the files, before importing into iPhoto, with the date of the photo using the international date format YYYY-MM-DD-001.jpg, -002, jpg, etc. This gives me excellent chronological sorting and searching capability. There are 3rd party applications like R-Name that will batch rename sequentially a folder of photos. Doing this before importing will assure that the original file will be names as you want it instead of something link Scan -01.jpg.
I did the same thing you did, scan about 5000 slides and 5000 photos to document the family history. I created iDVD slideshows for each year breaking the slideshows down by month. My brother had our parents 8 mm movies digitized and I digitized 100 hours of family VHS videos to add to the DVDs also. After burning the iDVD project to disk I would also burn the source files via the Finder to DVD disks and distributed a copy to each of our kids. That gave me multiple backups and gave them a way to preview the family history. My project spans 100+ years from 1906 to 2006 (yes, I'm a couple of years behind because with digital cameras in each of the kid's hands I have so many more photos per year to work with ). The recent years are taking 2-3 DVDs to cover each year. With iDVD it makes it so easy to create a really professional looking DVD. Here are screenshots of an early DVD of VHS videos and a later DVD of slideshows.
You will have fun!
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 08 libraries and Leopard. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.
Don't despair, it's doable.