The holiday season is a great time to look through old scrapbooks and share their stories and memories with family and friends. This year, why not also spend some time thinking about and planning how to preserve these homemade historical treasures for future generations? This blog will introduce you to scrapbooks, some of the problems … Continue reading Scrapbooks: Challenging Historical Treasures
Category: Preservation
Assembling an Emergency Response Kit for Your Records Room
Alabama faces natural threats year-round. From flooding to hurricanes to snow and ice, these events can pose a danger to your record storage room. In addition to natural disasters, records storage rooms are subject to more common hazards such as pipes bursting, sewers backing up, or faulty electrical wiring causing smoke or fire damage.
10 Steps to Wrangling Your Records Storage Room
Have you been put in charge of your office or agency’s records and, by extension, the records storage room? This can be an overwhelming experience. You may inherit a space with unmarked boxes, loose materials, ephemera, and decades of records crammed into a tiny space and packed to the ceiling. You’ll need to gain control … Continue reading 10 Steps to Wrangling Your Records Storage Room
Preparing for and Cleaning Mold on Paper Records
If you have ever stepped into your records room and caught the unmistakable scent of mildew or opened a drawer to find a fuzzy film growing there, you know the stress this can cause. You might feel that all hope is lost, but thankfully, you can often salvage moldy documents. A quick, informed response will … Continue reading Preparing for and Cleaning Mold on Paper Records
Newspaper Preservation
Guest Contributor: Mary Clare Johnson, Collections Archivist, Alabama Department of Archives and History Many of us collect and keep newspapers and clippings as souvenirs of historical and personal importance; however, these ephemeral objects are not meant to last forever and have an expected lifespan of 50 years or less. They require special care and proper … Continue reading Newspaper Preservation
For the Record 