What happens
when a Family History historian hears about a problem with archiving pictures
and doesn’t act upon that information until sometime afterwards?
I know I am
talking to the choir, so I will just say one word…disaster.
Recently I
have begun working with a long term genealogist and local historian in my
community to begin archiving his years of work and accumulation of both
pictures and records. The first thing he
brought out to identify, digitalize, and catalog, was his wife’s old pictures
that had been carefully put in the old Sticky Album Pages. He knew that the
sticky paper could cause problems with the pictures, but had procrastinated
removing them to a safer medium.
What we
found was the pictures had actually melded with the sticky backing and could
not be easily removed without a risk of the picture tearing. The color pictures
had faded although the black and white ones were not affected in appearance. Polaroid pictures did not stick.
The first
task was to work on breaking the glue bond. He kept saying I cannot believe the
pages have welded together. The work was tedious, to follow the instructions
per the recommended video by the Smithsonian Institute for saving your pictures from sticky paper.
We cut the
hard board sheets the pictures were glued to and then proceeded to ease the
pictures off with a thin blade or floss, which ever was working.
I then
scanned the pictures and sorted them according to date, and family. We are now
in the process of putting the originals in new acid free albums and storing
according to Surname and Place if applicable.
The moral of
my short story is don’t put off what you know you NEED to do because in the
long run it will cost you more time.
