What are the best ways to archive old family photos and letters?

Question

Digital scans saved as JPEG files?

Photocopies (black and white)?

Box up originals in plastic boxes, with it page in a seperate plastic protection sheet?

What else would you suggest?

Answer 1

Hey Ty,

Digital Scans is an absolute must. Because, that can be backed up and distributed to other family members as an ofsite backup copy. That protects your heritage photos from ever being completely lost. Eventually, the actual film and photos will degrade. Hundreds of years from now, the digital scans will be just as fresh as the day you scanned them.

You should make a Data Base of the Pics, to categorize them by date, who is in them, what the subjects are, etc. This will help you identify them in the future. But, this takes a lot of time, because you also have to track the photo names, and storage locations. Electronic photo albums are a great way to do this, you will have to do the data entry.

You can actually help to restore some old memories. My wife's father's baby picture was ripped. We scanned it in, and brushed over the rip - and we enhanced the lighting in the edit program.

I would not bother with photocopies. Scan the B&W too.

Answer 2

Be careful in bagging photos in plastic. Most people think of plastic as inert. But as any conservator or archivist can tell you, plastic contains volatile plasticizers, a by-product of their production that keeps plastic flexible, that can pass acid to things kept in them. --Particularly papers, and so on.

The best you can do to preserve the originals, without a huge outlay of money, is probably to interleaf them with buffered acid-free tissue, and store the whole in acid free cardboard boxes. (Look online for archival containers.)

This is above and beyond transferring them to digital.