Weddings By Lauren

Preserve Your Family Treasures

Ok, so you’ve received your event album and/or CD. You love your photos and all the memories brought back each time you look at them! That’s wonderful, but if you are not careful, those memories can fade!

If you have been to a museum recently, you may have noticed textiles and documents placed under glass and dimmed lighting to protect them. Your own photos, documents and textiles are part of YOUR family’s museum. This means your wedding pictures, wedding dress, wedding invitation, your children’s portraits, your child’s (or your own) christening dress, your parent’s anniversary party, your own school portraits, the first card you made for your mother and the quilt made by your great grandmother.

While you are very unlikely to go out and purchase museum quality equipment for viewing and storage, there are simple steps that the average person can take to preserve their own family archives. Start by reading below and who knows…you may end up as your family’s archivist by teaching what you’ve learned!

The following are tips from my personal research and experience. I do not have any formal museum storage training. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me and I can try and direct you to a more qualified source.

Photos and documents

HANDLING

-Avoid over handling photos or documents. Your fingers are full of oils, dirt and acid. Preferably, you should wear, clean, white, cotton gloves – but at the least, handle photos gently by their corners.

-Do not use water, Windex or any commercial cleaners to clean your photos. You may dust them very gently with a soft brush. For extensive cleaning, contact a professional.

COOL, DRY & DARK

-A “room temperature” location – basically, no extreme hot or cold temperatures

-Low humidity

-Do not store in basements, attics, laundry or utility rooms, garages

-Store in a quality photo album or acid free archival plastic pages or sleeves – all photos, especially color prints will fade in light.

ALBUMS

-Store photos, negatives and documents in only acid free, archival materials (most craft and office supply stores today have such materials)

-For scrapbooks use only acid free photo safe glue or tape or photo corners. I personally, don’t trust the glues and tapes to use on originals and therefore only scrapbook with copies or use photo corners.

IDENTIFYING PHOTOS

-I struggle with this one. –Ideally, you should not mark the photo at all. However, my fear, especially with older photos is that they will get away from their photo album page and someday you or future generations will not be able to identify the photo at all.

-Today’s photo papers are not usually compliant with using pencil to mark them, which would be ideal – second to not marking them at all.

-Avoid using ballpoint pens which will cause dents in the print and like felt tip pens, the ink can eat away at the photo causing permanent marks. There are acid free photo safe pens, but like the photo safe glue, I don’t fully trust them. If you decide to use them, mark a corner of the photo instead of the center. Same goes for acid free labels (don’t fully trust them – but if you use them, use a small label in the corner of the photo).

You could go crazy here and make a copy to mark and store beside the original – but like I said, you could go crazy. Just use common sense.

FRAMING AND HANGING

-When framing be sure to use only acid free archival quality materials and UV blocking glass and use a matte to avoid contact with the glass– today most product packaging will indicate if it is such or ask your framer to be sure and use such products – or frame only copies and store the original.

-When hanging photos, hang away from window light sources (this applies to paintings too) or hang only copies and store the original.

WATER, FIRE and NATURAL DISASTER

-It can be devastating to lose all of your family archives to the above.

-The best step for prevention of loss is SAFETY IN NUMBERS Make copies of your photos and store them with a family member of in a safe deposit box. Keep negatives in a separate location from prints. Store in a fire resistant box.

-If you are faced with damaged photos or documents DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY. Seek professional restoration help before assuming they are ruined. Professionals can rescue many photos thought to be destroyed. Search the Internet or call your local museum for advice.

Digital and other media

-All I know about this is to generally apply the same rules as you would with photos and documents avoiding scratches and writing on the discs.

-Additionally, re-copy any media at least every few years to the newest format (film to video, video to DVD, etc…) and as with photos store several copies at different locations.

Textiles

-Again, in general, the same rules apply as with photos and documents

-For clothing, try and stuff loosely to form with white acid free tissue paper in an acid free archival storage box (both can be found several places online) – for blankets or other flat objects or if you lack the space for the stuffing method, place tissue between folds. –If you do not have a box or lack the space to store one, you may store in a trunk or drawer, just line with the same acid free tissue.

- Remove the item(s) from storage at least twice a year to inspect for any damage and to refold. Always re-fold along different lines so as not to form permanent fold lines, which may damage the fabric over time.

-Avoid washing textiles unless absolutely necessary and then only wash by hand with gentle soaps or contact a professional for advice to be sure you do not cause damage.