Recently, my nephew got married to a really great girl. We are thrilled to have her in our family. Their story of how they met, how they romanced each other and how the proposal went was sooo cute and it was all illustrated in a scrapbook next to the sign-in book at the reception. Everyone got a kick out of looking through it. What a priceless piece of family history that was JUST created! I would be heart sick to know that because of moving or because of some other casual forgetfulness that this scrapbook of memories was to be lost… So, here are some tips to protect, preserve and save these treasured memories:
What do you have to do to make this photo archival?
1. Make a photocopy on a laser copier. If you do this on acid-free paper, it’ll be archival. Printing on your home computer is not archival!
2. and keep the copy in a separate location than where the first copy is kept.
3. Once copied, put the copied pages into plastic page protectors and place in a favorite binder.
Actually, I add, if you are making one copy why not two? Send one to Illinois besides the original and a copy in California. Earthquakes, house fires, hurricanes, floods can happen and do. My Mom threw out boxes of wet irreplaceable photos and letters because they got wet when a water heater broke. What a disaster! I could have saved them… I even wrote a book about it!
For a copy of “How To Save Your Stuff From A Disaster” click now, on http://www.saveyourstuffblog.com/productssupplies/
You have a point, I never thought of that. You really are an expert when it come to this topic. This link was given by a friend because last year I lost a lot of family photos. He told me to check this site since, according to him, this site has great useful info worth visiting for.
I’m signing up for the free tips so I’be back for sure to see more from you.
Dear Scott:
I LOVE YOUR E-MAIL SUGGESTIONS. I attached your photo saving suggestion to an e-mail I sent to my club members (Oakmont Algonquin Roundtable a group of 54 published authors and screen writers). I DO, I DO, I DO WANT YOUR E-MAILS!
Thanks Scott for the very helpful, current, suggestions.
Very best regards,
Priscilla Edwards
@Priscilla – yeah great suggestion about telling your club. But I think its much better for us to route them directly here. Its the same thing as I have done with my group I belong to. I posted some information about this site and I placed a link to this site just to let them sign up here for free tips.
Love your tips, Scott!
Kenneth Sanders
Scott, I just want to know how you were able to get this wonderful idea for this website! Your doing such a great job educating people including me. Just like what the others said, I wanna say thanks as well for giving free tips to us. Keep sending and I will keep telling people how great you.
Michelle
Women’s issues concerned with emergency preparedness at Twitter account readyin10net tweeted “@SaveYourStuff Thanks so much. Great site!”
Thank you for the photo archival information that you sent to me as Preservation Tips that I signed up for. It’s been very useful. I put the info in your book to use recently. I found a ton of photos of my parents from the 1940s on. A lot of photos of my dad’s from WW2. I quickly put them in photo albums to protect them per your recommendation. I found a scrap book of my Mother’s from the 40s that’s falling apart. She wrote names on the paper pages so I need to retain those, but they are disintegrating. The photos are attached with those corner triangular shaped things that the photos slide into. Any ideas?
Louise Elam
Park and Rec Dept. (Care of Public Art Work)
City of Dallas, TX
Louise,
Congratulations of taking action! There are two things you can/should do:
1. Scan or take high-resolution photos of the original pages and have them printed onto acid free paper with a laser printer. This will make an archival copy. You can have the pages bound or you can put them into page protectors into a notebook of your choice. See other blog posts that talk about these ideas. But of course, this does nothing to protect the originals.
2. The mounting paper onto which the photos are connected can be deacidified with a product called “Bookkeeper” which can be sprayed. Usually, a photo conservator will tell you NOT to spray the original photos because the chemicals interact with the materials in the black and white photos. But I like to give the reverse side a light spray anyway (don’t soak the paper).
Let me know how it goes!