Scrapbooking May Not Be A Very Good Idea After All

Deberah Wender

Is scrapbooking a really good idea to preserve your photos? Not quite, says Deberah Wender, director of book conservation at the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Mass.

Wender says the materials that hold your scrapbook together – cellophane tape, rubber cement, stickers, etc. – don’t hold up over time. They eventually lose their stickiness and some may eventually bleed through and the stain the photos they were supposed to preserve.

But if you’re passionate about scrapbooking, go ahead anyway. She suggests preserving old scrapbooks in special boxes then storing them in rooms with controlled humidity and temperature.

She also describes how to care for the scrapbooks in ways that are not very different from preserving and handling the Dead Sea Scrolls. Or the original Declaration of Independence.

[Via: DeseretNews.com]
Photo: Deseret News

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.