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PRESERconVersATION
The Family Photo Album: How's Yours?
Traditionally, the album has been the most popular way of organising
and sorting personal collections of photographs and other memorabilia. Very
often older family album collections which are passed down through several
generations end up the worse for wear. They will have been subjected to
inappropriate and excessive handling, accidental water stains, mould, insect
damage, general dirt and dust. Even the type of album may be endangering the
life of the photos in it.
If you have a collection of photos that you are planning to assemble
in an album as part of your family history, here are some tips for good
assembly and storage ensuring the album will be around for many years.
- Try to handle prints and negatives along the edges, with clean
hands.
- Do not use paper clips, rubber bands, sticky tape, glues or rubber
cement on your photographs.
- Try not to write on photographs; rather, put information on the
enclosure or album page. Felt-tip pens and ball point pens should not be used
because they may 'bleed' through and stain. If you have to write on a photo,
use a soft (2B) pencil or a 'writes on anything' pencil (e.g. Chinagraph or
All-Stabilo pencil) and pressing lightly, write on the back along the edge.
- Don't use albums with 'magnetic' pages (i.e. pages coated with a
sticky adhesive with a removable plastic cover sheet). Over time the adhesive
goes yellow and hardens, so the photo can't be taken out. The plastic cover
sheet is also damaging, because it is made of a poor quality plastic (PVC or
vinyl). As the plastic gets old it can stick to the front of the photo and also
affect the colour of the photo.
- Good quality plastic enclosures are one of the best ways to keep
photos in an album. The bound albums with pages of several slip-in sleeves are
very good. Try to find out the type of plastic the sleeves are made of - it
should only be polyethylene, polyester or polypropylene - again avoid PVC.
- Another acceptable method is to use good quality plastic sleeves in
a ring-binder. There are commercially available A4-size sleeves, made of
polypropylene or polyethylene, divided into 2 or 4 sections to accommodate most
photo sizes (Bantex Photopockets are a good example). Try to use a binder not
covered in vinyl.
- Bound albums with archival or good quality paper or card pages are
also suitable. Photos are best held on the page with clear plastic or paper
corners. If you must glue the photos in, use an opaque, white glue stick (e.g.
UHU brand) to apply spots of adhesive on the back corners.
