{"id":2314,"date":"2011-11-10T09:23:20","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T22:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=2314"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:24:58","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:24:58","slug":"of-recalcitrant-staples-paper-clips-and-mould-mould-mould","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2011\/11\/10\/of-recalcitrant-staples-paper-clips-and-mould-mould-mould\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Recalcitrant Staples, Paper Clips and Mould Mould Mould!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Instructions<\/a>
The 'modern, easy and quick' self adhesive photo albums from the 1970s and 1980s are a bad place to store your memorabilia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the goals of a historian and those working on family history at times are quite different there is a considerable overlap.\u00a0 I have found family historians very helpful while I have been researching the history of teaching reading.\u00a0 Over the last few days I was reminded again about how complementary the two pursuits are.<\/p>\n

I’m sorting through the archives of a local community organisation.\u00a0 The work has been similar to the kind of work done by anyone who is securing the material that documents their family history.\u00a0 An important task became evident while I was sorting through photos, letters and other memorabilia dating from the 1970s to just a couple of years ago.\u00a0 I had to arrest the deterioration of the items in the collections and rehouse some of the material.\u00a0 I am not an archivist but on the way I have picked up some basic do’s and don’ts of storing material for posterity.\u00a0 It was the world of genealogy which first alerted me to the need to take great care about storage conditions of historical archives.<\/p>\n

I have spent some time removing corroded paper clips, perished rubber bands, rusty staples and rusty folder bindings.\u00a0 \"A<\/a>To the left is a photo of a sample of the offending objects I have removed from the collection.\u00a0 Metal rusts when exposed to humidity over time.\u00a0 The rust is then transferred onto any document that touches the rusty item causing permanent damage to it.\u00a0 If you intend to store documents for any period of time, you should remove all metal items prior to putting the material in storage.\u00a0 If you need to keep pieces of paper together, use a plastic paper clip rather than a staple.\u00a0 An alternative form of binding is cotton thread.\u00a0 In a useful post, Erika Mordek\u00a0 explains how to bind zines with needle and thread<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was the ‘self-adhesive’ or magnetic photo album from the early 1980s which was the main problem.\u00a0 These are renowned for the damage that they cause photos.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>The album I was dealing with described itself as “self-adhesive”.\u00a0 The problem is that over time the items inside became very difficult to remove.\u00a0 I had to use a blade from a stanley knife to remove the items from this album.\u00a0 To the right is a photo of one page after I removed the item on it.\u00a0 It took me over two hours to remove this item and as you can see it was so tightly adhered to the page that some of the page came away with the item.\u00a0 I was rewarded for my efforts though as some of the items had writing on the back of them which can now be read for the first time.<\/p>\n

It was difficult to get the blade between the page of the photo album and the item, but mould had no difficulty insinuating its way between the two.\u00a0 \"Mould<\/a>Nearly every page had mould.\u00a0 This then seeped through the item.\u00a0 \"Mould<\/a>If this is allowed to continue unchecked the item can be rendered unreadable as well as being a health hazard.<\/p>\n

Mould is always going to pose a potential problem for collections in Sydney due to the warm humid conditions we experience during summer.\u00a0 Queensland is particularly prone to this problem which is exacerbated by floods and cyclones.\u00a0 The State Library of Queensland has provided a useful information sheet about dealing with mould in your collections<\/a> that is well worth reading.<\/p>\n

The album contained many newspaper articles which also harboured mould.\u00a0 The paper used to print newspapers on is of a particularly poor quality and liable to deterioration.\u00a0 Rather than attempting to restore the articles I plan to photocopy them and throw the originals out.\u00a0 If we want to refer to the originals we can go to the state library and see them there.\u00a0 It is better that I keep clean photocopies rather than deteriorating originals that might damage items stored next to them.\u00a0 The State Library of Victoria has a good overview of the issues of storing newspapers<\/a> if you are interested in finding out more.<\/p>\n

The original magnetic album will have to be thrown out.\u00a0 However, I want to keep the collection together and display it in the same order as that chosen by the person who originally compiled it. While I took the items out of the original album I wrote on each page of the old album the details of the item(s) that had been placed on that page.\u00a0 This will enable me to maintain the order when I transfer the items to a new photo album.<\/p>\n

There is a hobby called scrapbooking which is about creating photo albums that are beautifully presented with good captions, associated memorabilia and designed for longevity.\u00a0 I will purchase one of the albums that are designed for scrapbooking use as the paper and plastic that are used to make these albums are designed to minimise the deterioration of the collection.<\/p>\n

An issue that many people face when reviewing old collections of photos is that the person who originally took the photo did not record what the photo was about or the names of the people in the photo.\u00a0 This is a problem that I face.\u00a0 Fortunately the photos in my album were taken within living memory so I plan to find someone who would conceivably have a connection with these photos and ask them to tell me the names of the people photographed and hopefully something about the event.\u00a0 I will then add captions to the album.\u00a0 This exercise is well worth doing as it hopefully will spark the memories of the person(s) I interview thus enabling me to capture some more of the story.<\/p>\n

I hope that the tale of this mouldy photo album will encourage you to review your collections of photos and assess the state they are in.\u00a0 The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies has a quick checklist<\/a> which can guide you in maintaining your personal memorabilia.\u00a0 Even if you don’t have a problem with mould, please, please remove photos from those 1970s and 1980s magnetic or self-adhesive albums, put them in a new photo album and write captions for every photo.\u00a0 People in the future will appreciate your effort!<\/p>\n

What is your experience with maintaining your history memorabilia?\u00a0 What steps have you taken to store your collection in cool, dry conditions that will minimise the risk of mould?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I have been working on the archives of a local community organisation. The world of genealogy has introduced me to some basic principles used for preserving historical material which I have applied over the last few days. Some of the collection was deteriorating badly because of poor storage conditions. Mould, self-adhesive photo albums, paper clips and staples were causing damage to the collection. In this post I show the damage that these cause and some simple steps that can help your personal historical collection last longer. I am keen to hear about your experience in caring for your collections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[40,100,106],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Yvonne Perkins","author_link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/author\/yvonne\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2314"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7499,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314\/revisions\/7499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}