3 boxes of photos? You're so lucky. My mom does genealogy. She has 5-6 large boxes of just big photo albums. Another 8-9 boxes of loose photos and small albums. That's not counting the 3 boxes of albums, photos, and slides that she's got in her house from my dad's side of the family. I think 3 boxes of books and papers. These are not shoe boxes either. They're at least the "small" moving boxes, some are larger.
Oh, and none of this "can" be discarded. Even if you scan it first. I have no idea who else in the family(ies) may want this stuff. And mom will basically murder anyone who gets rid of genealogy. Suggestions? Cause I'm at a loss.
If your mother values this excess load of crap, have her provide infoemation, in pencil, on the back of each photo. She needs to note the complete name of each person n the photo and a date it was taken, even if that date is approximate. Write “circa” if she is unsure of the date.
And remember that you can toss the crap when she is dead. I agree with her that some of it is absolute family treasure, but not without identifying information on the back. If she truly values it she should make it useful. A photos with a bunch of ancient relatives, unknown names, is fairly useless to family genealogy.
I went through this with my own mother with a collection of photos of much smaller scale. She always had a plan to sit with me while we “put them in albums.” No. Albums are to me less useful as a storage mechanism than is a box. And sure, scannin them is very useful, but the identifying information for each photos must somehow be attached.
With my family collection I scanned only 10% of the photos that were really old and that showed the Ancient Ones. The rest of the photos I divided between me and my brother. I pitched many. Both of us have no children and these collections will die with us, so be it. The scanned data went to children of my cousins, so it was passed down a generation. They will do with it as they will.