Lisa Louise Cooke and I had an interesting chat about how to preserve newspaper clippings. You get to listen in our conversation because we recorded it for Lisa’s Genealogy Gems podcast. Yay!

Episode 83 is ready and waiting for you. Below are my notes from that talk.

Before we begin our examination of old clippings, I want to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Miriam Midkiff of AnceStories.

Miriam asked me about newspaper clippings so long ago that I’m pretty sure we can now measure that time in years. Egad! A toast to Miriam and her infinite patience!

In case you don’t know already, Miriam is the creator of the wonderful ScanFest — a monthly online meetup/chat for folks who are scanning family treasures. ScanFest is one of the best ways I’ve ever seen to keep a your scanning project on track (big or small).

Bottom line: If you have scanning on your “To Do” list, be sure to check out ScanFest!

What is newsprint?

And why does it turn yellow and brittle?

I’ll put this as plainly and simply as I can: The paper used in newspapers is bad paper. It is highly acidic and turns brittle in a short amount of time. This process happens even faster when the paper is exposed to UV light.

Even worse than its short life span is the fact that newsprint will damage other materials it comes in contact with. (I know! Isn’t that awful?) The acids will leach out and “burn” photographs, letters, books. Not good.

Can the damage be reversed?

Chemical treatments (usually sprays or baths) can slow down additional deterioration, but sadly there is no way to undo the damage that has already occurred. Keep in mind also that some of these treatments will actually make the paper darker. There is only one way to turn back time and have a creamy white document –  start over by reformatting to a fresh piece of acid free paper.

That’s right. The simplest method is to photocopy onto archival bond paper. But sometimes, you don’t want to lose that authentic original object. How to figure out the right option for you? First you have to answer an important question.

Why are you keeping this newspaper?

When your job is to preserve inherently bad paper, you need to ask yourself some tough questions: Why are you keeping this, exactly? What long term value does it have?

Is it the facts and information that are most important? In the case of the photo above, that would be the genealogical information you can glean from the names of parents listed in the obituary.

Or is the clipping itself an artifact you want to preserve long term? Perhaps the clippings were created and saved by your favorite maternal aunt. Every time you see glue in a brown glass bottle, you think of her.

Which kind of value you assign often has a lot to do with how much newsprint you have to deal with.

KEEPING FOR INFORMATIONAL VALUE: In a large repository it’s not uncommon to have a collection arrive with several cubic feet of clippings. The information is often pulled together from multiple sources, so it can be a real time saver for a researcher. The information is worth keeping, but the bad paper’s gotta go.

What to do? Archives routinely photocopy onto archival bond, include multiple clippings per sheet whenever possible. Toss the bad paper. Relatively inexpensive and simple process. You can buy archival bond in reams just like regular office paper. I recommend acid and lignin free with a 25% cotton rag content. If you don’t have access to a photocopier, I recommend a DIY station at any of the chain copy places. You might need to bring your own paper, and you’ll get a surprisingly small discount for doing that. But on the upside, there is no need to pay for color copies, since black and white is enough. Copy stores usually offer discounts when the total number of copies is high, so this can come out to bargain if you pool clippings with friends.

KEEPING FOR ARTEFACTUAL VALUE: You have an important newspaper clipping you want to keep as-is.

What to do? Lucky you! You have a few choices at your disposal:

• Clippings, Option #1: Put the clipping in an archival plastic folder or sleeve with a sheet of buffered archival paper behind it. If you haven’t de-acidified the newsprint, do not fully encapsulate it, since this will allow the paper to stew in its own juices. Put the polyester folders in file folders and boxes made from archival stock. Store in an area that is cooled in summer and heated in winter and is not overly humid.
• Clippings, Option #2: De-acidifying via sprays and dips.
• Entire newspapers: To protect newspapers from light, dust and critters, store them as flat as you can in archival boxes. The best boxes have a full depth lid to keep out dust, and a drop front to make it easy to remove the bottom paper. Try to find a box as close in size as possible to the newspapers you want to protect. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can create inserts from archival board to customize the interior size of the box. Important! Make a list of the contents of each box so you don’t have to paw through them to find out what’s in there.

More information on newspaper preservation:

• Preserving Newspapers (Library of Congress)
• How can I preserve my newspaper clippings? (Library of Congress FAQ)
• Hints for Preserving Family Collections (NEDCC)

And remember, if you’d like to hear a discussion about this topic, be sure to check out Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems Podcast, Episode 83

Photo Credit: “Life in Clippings” by Greencolander, via Flickr/ CC BY 2.0

The older the photograph, the harder you should try to find another home for it if you don’t want to keep it yourself. Part of the reason why you should respect age is because age goes hand in hand with scarcity.

What makes a photo scarce?

In addition to age, there are other factors that create scarcity.

Here’s a list off the top of my head, please add more via the comments section:

• Entire collections destroyed due to disaster (loss of home, fire, flood, etc.)
• Family photographers are notoriously under-documented in family photo albums.
• How many photos do you have of yourself at work? I’ve noticed that very few people have photos of themselves at work, and even fewer take photographs of their work places.
• Family separations or bad feelings can cause restricted access to photos, or in the worst case scenario photos of certain individuals can be destroyed in anger.
• People who die young.*

*OK. I had to segregate this next part from my breezy list. February 1st is the anniversary of the death of my nephew William Evan Manley. Originally I was going to write about Evan, and  my husband’s Uncle Joe… but I found I just couldn’t do it. Let’s acknowledge the reality of this kind of loss (I’m far far far from alone, I know) and cherish the photos we have. They are precious beyond measure.

And if you are struggling with grief, I highly recommend a book called How To Go On Living When Someone Else Dies, by Therese Rando. Buy from Amazon (aff), or your favorite local bookstore. Or check it out from the library.

I realize that my advice about tossing photos (“lose the dreck!”) can make some folks nervous.

If you are one of those people, I want to reassure you that I do not suggest anyone toss out ancestor photos willy-nilly. No way.

Respect Age (when you toss photo clutter)

“Respect Age” – means just that. The older a photo is, the less likely that the person (or place, or time period) has been documented somewhere else. Photography was never a cheap hobby, and the earlier the date the more so that was true. In other words, it’s unlikely you have sooo many pre-1950s photos in your collection that you need to start tossing.

But then again, maybe you do.

In that case, I recommend that you find brothers or sisters or cousins to share them with. If you don’t have any of those, find a genealogy cousin. The older the photo, the more of those cousins are out there. (Am I right?)

The second half of “Lose the dreck” is
“Treat the keepers right”

“Treating the keepers right” means tucked away into archival photo boxes and envelopes

Treating them right also means stored away from:

• direct light
• fluctuating heat
• high heat
• high humidity
• fluctuating humidity

If you want to display these photographic treasures — and I strongly encourage you to do so — a simple digital scan will allow you to easily display a newly printed copy of the original.

But there’s a dark side to this — and it doesn’t have anything to do with preservation…

I consulted with a client once who was sort of beating herself up about scrapbooking. She had made a vow to herself to deal with her photographs before the end of the year, and the kids were back in school already.

Here’s what she said to me:

“I feel like I’ll be judged a bad mom if I don’t transform all these photos into beautiful scrapbooks.”

How on earth did this happen?

Please understand: I’ve got nothing against scrapbooking. For many people, it’s a beloved hobby. For me, it’s a nightmare. If there’s such a thing as a”crafty gene” I can assure you that mine is damaged or missing entirely. And while I can recognize and appreciate good design, I can’t seem to create it, much to my dismay. Add to that the fact that I can’t seem to trim a photo correctly or set one down on a page without it coming out crooked, and you can see why I don’t go on weekend-long scrapbooking retreats.

We owe scrapbookers a huge dept of gratitude for making so many presentation options available. Especially photo-safe options. The scrapbooking industry has literally held manufacturer’s feet to the fire and demanded acid free materials. But no one should feel guilty if they prefer to use slip-in pages and plain 3-ring binders rather than a 12 color layout with embossed letters and a lovely translucent overlay. Presentation matters, yes. But don’t let other people’s elaborate designs prevent you from organizing, archiving and sharing your photos. At the end of the day it’s the photos and the stories behind them that matter.

Organizing Photos for NON-Scrapbookers:

• Remind yourself before you start that the presentation is the icing, not the cake itself.
• Choose the photos you love the most. The ones that stop you in your tracks. That make you grin, or cry. Whatever. The ones that really MEAN something to you.
• Write down the stories behind your photos – the stories that will disappear after you are no longer here to tell them. I use Denis LeDoux’s Photo Scribe method, which is designed specifically for people who are intimidated by writing. It’s one of the 5 books I recommend to every family historian, see Practical Archivist Recommends for more details.
• Regardless of your personal style, be sure to use only PAT-passed materials. See this article of mine to learn why so-called “archival photo boxes” might not be as safe as you imagine.
• Start with one album that chronicles you and your partner’s lives together. If you have kids, start with an album about your lives together before kids.
• Next, you can create one for each of your kids. Skip the baby pictures if you already have an elaborate baby book with pictures.
• After that’s done, make the “extra” scrapbooks for individual vacations, etc.

Two final thoughts:

PRESENTATION IS THE ICING, NOT THE CAKE.

Perfection Is the Enemy of the Good

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We place a high value on the photographs we treasure most, and that is perfectly reasonable. Just thinking about them disappearing is horrible to contemplate — so horrible that we might actually go back inside a burning building to rescue one.

So, how on earth can I talk about photographs as clutter?

It’s simple, actually.  All photographs are not created equal. They do not have the same value.

What I think happens is that we generalize our intense love of specific photos to a love of all photographs. As if the value lies in the medium, rather than the content.  This is misguided.

But before we can decide if photographs can be clutter, we should probably get a handle on what clutter is.

What is clutter?

I’ve been reading up on organizing and clutter busting lately, so I’ll let the experts tackle this question for us.

“Clutter is anything in your life that no longer serves you.”

Brooks Palmer, Clutter Busting: Letting Go of What’s Holding You Back, p. 12.

Brooks is my favorite of all the “get organized” authors. I just love his style. He is very calm and extremely supportive. He points out the outward signs that reveal whether a specific object is clutter or not: If thinking about it makes you tired, it’s clutter. If it brings you joy and energy, it’s not. Easy peasy.

If a photograph no longer serves you, get rid of it.

Blurry ones are obvious. As are the end of the roll shots we used to take so we could take the film in to be developed. (Something kids these days will never have to do!) Those snapshots of childhood acquaintances whose name you can no longer remember? Let them go. Photos of childhood friends you still love and adore? Keep. But remember you don’t have to keep every single snapshot.

“Clutter is postponed decisions.”

Barbara Hemphill, Love It or Lose It: Living Clutter-Free Forever p. 41

This one’s a kicker, let me tell ya. I would like to remind you that no one knows your story as well as you do. If you insist on keeping every single photo you are setting up a disaster down the road. Your kids will not be able to discern which images are significant, and which are meaningless. The inevitable result is that they will toss them.

Much better for you to invest some time now and purge the low value photos. Then you can focus on taking proper care of your high value photos. Write down the who, what, where, when and why. Share the stories behind the images. Make it as easy as possible for your kids to say “Yes, I’ll keep it!” by leaving them only the best photos.

Note: Book title links take you to Amazon.com. If you decide to purchase from that link, a small fraction of your purchase price will go to yours truly. Like a tip jar!

Well, that and joy.

Stay tuned…

Since when do “local” eggs come from a different state?

Last summer* my family and I enjoyed a fantastic vacation on a clear, cold Northern Wisconsin lake. Piney woods. Sandy beach. Quirky museums. We all had a great time. Our hotel room had a small kitchenette, so at one point we went shopping at the local grocery store for some breakfast food.

*Surprisingly, this is not the only family vacation story where I get angry about photo storage. The other one is about me finding one of those horrible sticky magnetic albums on sale in a shop. It was sold as “Photo Safe.” Said so right on the packaging. I had to be dragged out of the nice little stationery shop. Sigh.

Except we were on vacation in an unfamiliar city and the only local grocery store we managed to find was on the highway. It was a Super Wal-Mart. Not my first choice, but perfectly fine in a pinch. We just needed to pick up a few things and get back to the piney woods. Piney woods, yay!

Fast forward to me looking bewildered in the ginormous (meaning h-u-h-uh-UGE) egg section. How to narrow my choices without having to think too much? I’m not a big fan of plastic, as my readers already know, plus I’m lucky enough to live in a city where they pick up cardboard egg cartons for free as part of our municipal recycling program. Eeasy peasy, then. Cardboard was the answer. That one decision narrowed my choices dramatically. All I had to do was pick the cheapest cardboard container. Woo hoo!

Can you spot what’s not quite right with the winner?

The first thing to set off my alarm was the word quality. Quality? What kind of quality, exactly? They don’t bother to say. And what’s with Farmer’s Market Fresh? I bought those eggs in a Super Wal-Mart fer cryin’ out loud. Click here to see what one of these stores looks like. To steal a line from Douglas Adams, that’s almost – but not quite – entirely unlike a farmer’s market. Or at least every farmer’s market *I’ve* ever been to.

I see what you’re doing here, Anonymous Marketing Dude.

You are describing your eggs with words that evoke or make me think about qualities I like:  A small family run farm with happy chickens. Eggs that are (literally) farm fresh — meaning they traveled only a short distance to get from farm to my breakfast skillet. In other words, not the kind of farm with chickens stacked floor to ceiling in huge warehouse style barns. Not the kind where hens live their entire lives in crowded cages. Do these eggs actually have any of those qualities? Hard to say. They were, in fact, brown. So that part was true. I haven’t managed to get a look at the barns where the eggs were laid to see whether it’s a factory farm or not. If you have, please let me know.

In any case, it says right there on the carton that these eggs sure as heck didn’t come from Wisconsin:

Once I figured out that these eggs came from out of state, I no longer believed any of Marketing Dude’s claims. Not the explicit ones and definitely not the implicit ones. Now that I think about it? I’m starting to get angry about Marketing Dude for lying to me. Angry enough that I might actually hold onto the empty carton for over a year just to complain about it publicly.

What does any of this craziness have to do with preserving photographs?

Archival.

Photosafe.

Permanent.

I’m sure you’ve seen these claims on photo albums. I am here to tell you that those words are basically meaningless. The terms are unregulated, which means companies are free use them to describe ANY product they want to sell.

(Kinda like calling out of state eggs local or farmer’s market fresh, no?)

Calling an album “photo safe” tells you only one thing: The manufacturer has decided that calling it that will sell more albums. No doubt to the people who who love their photos the most and want them to last as long as possible.  Marketing Dude wants to evoke or create the feeling of permanence, of safe gentle storage. He is selling you the good feeling of satisfaction you will get by taking the best care possible of your photo treasures. You know… archiving. There’s a funny story about that, actually. Because buying supplies marked “archival” doesn’t get you the highest quality materials. Not by a long shot.

In fact, the term “archival” has been applied so loosely and so inappropriately that it is no longer used in International Standards for photographic materials.

Thank goodness for the Photographic Activity Test (PAT).

The PAT It’s an International Standard (ISO 14523) developed by the Image Permanence Institute. It’s a neat-o coolio accelerated aging test that incubatates materials in temperature- and humidity-controlled chambers to see if there are any harmful interactions between photographs and storage materials. If it passes the test, it’s the best reassurance you can have that the enclosures will not cause damage to the photographs. It’s the closest thing we have to “archival.”

Important: The PAT is an independent third party test.

It is my personal opinion that self-testing by companies is not as reliable.

Q. How can I find PAT passed boxes and envelopes?

A. Archival supply companies

The bad news in all this, I guess, is that it’s difficult to find PAT passed boxes in stores. You need to purchase them from archival suppliers like Gaylord.com or LightImpressionsDirect.com or MetalEdgeInc.com. The good news is that all these companies have online ordering and will also be happy to send you a paper catalog in the mail. Yay!

Check out this email conversation from the Archives & Archivists ListServ…

Subject: [archives] Leaving post-its on back of photos – how bad is this?

How bad is it to have post-its on the back of photos? The photos are inside archival clear sleeves, along with a post-it on the back. Thanks for any input….Linda

Subject: RE: [archives] Leaving post-its on back of photos — how bad is this?

Linda,

Leaving Post-it notes or any adhesive materials directly on photographs can be destructive. If using post-its is your method of identification then the notes should be placed on the outside of the sleeves, not directly on the photographs.

Rebekah Tabah, MA
Photo Preservationist
Arizona Historical Foundation

The University of North Carolina (UNC) has a fantastic preservation program with a strong emphasis on public education. They state unequivacably that sticky notes are destructive to books.

Twitter version of this post: sticky notes=bad.

If you are looking for reliable security guards who can act as doorkeepers for your company with devotion and effectiveness, then without further delay, come in touch with [our security company]. Just approach servel security online and find the right security guard.

::rolly eyes::

Although archival institutions do, indeed, require security protection — it’s a stretch but I’ll let them have that — who in their right mind hires *security protection* from blog comment spam? It boggles the mind.

I have Askimet on the new WP blog, which is supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening. This goofy security comment popped up in on my older Blogger blog.

P.S. I removed the spammer’s URL and replaced it with something funnier — so it’s safe to go ahead and click on that link.