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organization of photos



Daniel,
You received such good answers and Tara's seemed especially good for your situation that I was not going to respond but since you said you are still confused. . .
 
Let me say the reason you have so many different answers is because there is not a one size fits all. Every institution, every archive, is like a living organism. A system that works well in one place will not necessarily be the best one for your archives. Each archive is different, or unique, in its own way, and if you pay attention to it, it will more or less tell you what you need to know.
 
Can you maintain provenance? Yes.
Public relations depts. I have worked with had "job jackets" and everything was tied to specific events. All of the press releases and other related documents and photographs (which would give you names, dates and events to create an index) had either a job name or number or both.
 
As others have said, cataloging a million photos is different than several hundred.
 
Who uses the archives?
Probably not researchers as much as internal staff. More than likely, the people that will be asking for those photos will be other public relations staff and how will they ask for the photos?  "Do you have anything about the new chief of staff in 1969 at such and such? Do you have a photo of x hospital at the time it was built? Before the new addition? After the new addition? So and so is retiring do have a picture when he was on staff at x?"
 
Respect pour les fonds and who and how the archives is used tells you that you need to know the provenance (hospital, dept, event) for every image. How you index will depend on how the archives is used (or more specifically who and how they ask for the photographs) will tell you how detailed an index you need.
 
The other factors that you need to consider, are you a one man operation, are there other professionals or volunteers or interns?
 
I can not emphasize enough the KISS method. The best system in the world is useless if no one has the time. And if you get just a little sloppy because you don't have the time, or it goes on the processing shelf and stays there forever, or the volunteers don't understand it after a month, well, it is essentially useless.
 
For me personally, I have always worked with a minimal staff (three or less -- usually less) and since I don't have a laptop on my hip (and even if I did, I could never figure out how to merge databases from several laptops into one database without screwing up the key ID numbers) and  I have found the paper system to be the most efficient and the quickest way if you don't have the staff available for data entry.
 
And what if some of the hospitals are sold? The terms of sale may or may not include related items in the archives.
 
I don't know if my $.02 helped. I know how much work it takes to set up a good system.
 
Jackie S.