"How To" Guides > Storing Images
Storing Original Paper Photos and Documents
Proper storage of paper based images is important to prolonging their useful life. This article provides broad suggestions about proper storage, offers tips for immediate actions, and discusses environmental factors that are important to preservation.
Regardless of whether you have digitized some or all of your collection, you will want to properly store your paper originals. Paper materials deteriorate over time, and this deterioration is often accelerated by largely controllable external factors.
Environmental Factors in Photo & Document Preservation
Natural chemical reactions are the primary focus in efforts to extend the useful life of paper photo and document originals. The objective is to slow chemical reactions as much as possible, and to avoid introducing any environmental factors or chemicals that might react themselves or accelerate natural reactions.
Ideally, storage for paper photo and document collections should have the following characteristics:
►A stable and moderate temperature and humidity level.
►Reasonable ventilation to eliminate fumes from natural chemical reactions.
►Easy accessibility for periodic inspection to detect problems.
►Controlled exposure to light and pollutants such as acidic materials, dust, pollen, smoke, and chemical fumes.
Intuitively, everyone knows that boxes of family documents and photos stored in the attic, basement, or garage are at risk. Extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity can cause visible damage in relatively short periods of time. Therefore, a good first step is to store important documents and photos in a stable environment, such as normally found in the main living spaces of a home. Temperature and humidity in a range that is comfortable to humans is commonly used as a rule of thumb as to what is reasonable for photo and document storage.
Tips / Hints:
Below are some quick fix tips to prolong the useful life of you photo
and document originals.
● Eliminate foreign objects from your collections
- Tape, glue, paper clips, and rubber bands all introduce unnatural
chemical reactions that can rapidly discolor and chemically damage
images. You should seriously consider the pros and cons of
disassembling collections that are taped or glued (scrapbooks), since
these are two of the worst offenders. Instead of rubber bands or
paper clips, consider storing groupings in acid free envelops or other
archival storage materials.
● Store like items together as much as possible
- Rather than storing transparencies with prints and newspapers, you
should store them in categories. The simple explanation is that
they each possess different levels of acidity and are subject to
different chemical reactions. Therefore, they may influence each
other in negative ways.
● Learn about and use archival storage materials
- Learning to identify and use
archival materials will help you to
prolong the life of your originals and help you to keep your collections
better organized.
