Best Scrapbooking Moves

Any scrapbook is a good scrapbook, but some are clearly better than others. The value of your family archives can be improved by following one simple principle: keep in the back of your mind that a good scrapbook, like a Millennium Time Capsule, demands that the authors and creators assume that they will all be dead when it is finally opened and read.

Every photo should be dated, identified, and captioned to be of value. You and the kids may know who is who in that family photo—but what about the ghosts of the future? I have a dozen boxes of photos, ranging from tintypes to glass plate negatives that have been passed down through the years. They are nearly useless curiosities because there is nothing written on their backs. Most of the images are nameless faces from nameless places out of time.

If you decide to add newspaper clippings to your project, write the date and name of the newspaper on the clipping. Better yet, photocopy and also mount a copy of the newspaper in the scrapbook. Newsprint is high in acid and deteriorates almost before our eyes (ever notice what happens to a newspaper left in the back window of your car on a sunny day?—after just a few hours it looks like its a hundred years old) so be sure the newsprint doesn't touch any of your photos.

The Digital Dilemma

Today's digital photo craze is going to represent a real challenge to future family historians. Like most families, my wife and I are taking more digital photos than ever before. Unfortunately, like most of us, we are preserving fewer than any other generation in the history of photography. And this isn't an isolated problem. Once upon a time, nearly every photo taken resulted in a printed image; now one photo in a hundred (if that many) makes it into print. Vast collections of digital images live and die every day on computer hard drives, CDs, and a few antique floppy disks. Each of these storage systems is prone to catastrophic failure. Most of us have had home computers for about ten years now, but how many of us still have files left from the first family PC?

Every few months it is a good idea to review the digital photos you've taken and select the best of the best for inclusion in the family archives. Print photos at a local digital processing center or print them out at home with a good ink-jet printer on high quality archival paper.