Wednesday, July 16, 2008

D.O. McKellips, railroader since 1884

From: "JAMES GOODRICH" poppagoodrich@verizon.net

D.O. McKellips

D.O. McKellips

D.O. McKellips

Daylight

letter

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Subject: Old Pic's

The most practical way of preserving the scrapbook is to keep it intact just as it is. You can enclose it in an enameled metal or plastic box, or an archival book box (not ordinary cardboard) to keep it safe and to keep away insects and rodents, but not in an airtight container that would promote mold/mildew. Store it in a cool, dry place such as inside your home, or in a safety deposit box, not in a garage, basement, or attic where extremes of temperature and humidity would occur. Store the album closed and not exposed to bright light, especially not in direct sunlight.

You can also preserve the images by scanning them into your computer preferably as color TIFF images at 600 dpi. This, however, requires that you have a suitable backup plan for your digital archive, with multiple copies on disks, CD's, and/or DVD's that are checked and recopied periodically before they become no longer readable due to failure of the digital storage over time, or due to obsolescence of the format in which they are recorded. Storing copies of the digital scans in more than one location can also allow the images to survive a fire, flood, or other disaster.

DON'T try to rip the pictures off the pages, as you will likely destroy them! It is perhaps possible to detach the pictures by putting each page in water, but only with certain glues. There is a major risk of damaging the pictures if this is done, and this should be attempted only by an experienced photo conservator with print drying equipment. It would likely be far better to leave the album intact. If you do remove the pictures, you then have to keep them organized and not lose track of the annotations which basically means laboriously recreating the same album you already have.

There is the possibility that acidity of the album pages might degrade the images over a long period of time (decades), but you could limit this by putting buffered paper between each of the album pages to counteract the acidity. "Apollo Paper" sold by Light Impressions is the sort of buffered paper suitable for interleaving in an album of the 20th century type of photographs, i.e., gelatin prints. (Their unbuffered "Renaissance Paper" should be used instead with 19th century albumen prints, but that is not what you have.)

There is a great deal of additional information readily available about photographic conservation.

7/16/2008 3:55 PM  

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