Genealogy Chat

When my mother passed away I inherited a large number of old photos that obviously relates to my family tree and many photos of social interest as well. Initially I stored thm in albums easily obtained just so I can make some sense of what I now am in possession of. I now know these are probably the worst type to place old pictures in so I need to replace these ablums.
does anyone have any idea as to what type of storage /ablum works best for these precious old pictures as we do want to view them.
Thanks for any ideas

Have you thought about scanning them and putting on to a cd/dvd

Roy

YOu MUST store them in acid-free sleeves or binders. The suppliers that Island gave you are not the only ones, google for others, but they all charge similar prices. If you intend keeping them for a long time, go for high quality stuff, not the polypockets you can get at WH Smith for a few quid. The normal photo albums are not acid free, and that with the combination of letting air in is a disaster. You probably need to store them in a dark place too, at the right sort of temperature.

You also need to use the right sort of mountings for them, again the suppliers will have some.

I got some nice acid free albums from my-history.co.uk or genealogy supplies.

My parents albums practically fell to bits when handled and many of the photographs were unidentifiable to me. If only my parents had written names on the back. I made sure that I wrote the names of the people I recognised to assist me at a later date, when I get around to storing them properly.
I wrote very lightly in pencil, I might add.

JenE

You can get acid-free pens as well. Not expensive.

Hi,

I got mine from My History and Memory Boxes - both very good suppliers, not much difference in prices, but each offered slightly different products.

The clear storage pockets are available in a variety of sizes and with different numbers of pockets, e.g. 12 to an A4 page, so if you have tiny photos you can store several in one page.

They are also available for certificates, which are long.

I also invested in a pair of cotton gloves for document handling, they're very cheap, and stop you getting fingerprints over everything (which in time will mark photos). It was amazing how grubby they got after handling the old photos.

I found another excellent source of these supplies when I went to a genealogy fair. It was useful to meet the stallholders and discuss what I needed - and this turned out to be cheaper per item than mail order (and no postage to pay!).

Liz

I'd also consider securing them on dvd as already mentioned and perhaps securely online.

Liz
I have never heard of the 2 websites that you mentioned so i took a look,
What a fab load of stuff they have,,and really usefull. Even acid free pens for using on your family tree chart,
Acid free material is always best for photos as well as scanning onto the pc and disc,

Thanks for the tip about acid free pens Madmeg.

Thank you all very much for your valuable advice. I had infact started to put them into self adhesive ablums just before xmas but on reading this advice I will be ordering the right storage and will transfer all of the pictures. Some are named but many were not, however, I think I can name a significant number from the ones that are named. I will then write and label the OUTSIDE of the pockets as soon as I have done that. I will get hubs onto scanning as he is recovering from an op and is BORED!

I do appreciate each reply and apologise for not answering sooner but hubs had various Dr appointments and so I havent logged on. Best wishes for 2010 to you all

All this stuff is also good for storing newspaper cuttings, army records etc. You don't want all your precious hard work disappearing in a few years. You can get special tissue paper for storing bulky items such as medal ribbons and the medals themselves. In fact storage for almost everything.

Margaret

Hi all and thanks again for the advice. The acid free folders and pockets have arrived and I have spent the day removing the pictures from my self-adhesive albums and transferred them into the acid free pockets etc for hubs to start scanning.

Please could you advise me about what I should do with the photos that were glued (many years ago) into albums. Should I make an attempt at teasing them off the pages or should I leave the photos in situ and store the seperate pages in pockets too, or do I cut the pages as and where possible but that will be problematical too as a significant number of photos were glued on boths sides of a page.
Thank you for any help you may be able to give me.

Julia - if you DO decide to remove them, please make sure you have scanned them first - my mum gave me a load of old photos she had taken from albums, and most of them were either cracked or torn! It is easy to scan a whole page and then crop them to individual frames on your computer.

Thank you I hadn't thought of doing that first, I will leave them in situ for a while until I have the others sorted (wwell they've been there 70-80 yrs so another few weeks wont make too much difference - I hope ...

will get hubs onto that as soon as he can.