Reviews
Part of Document Preservation Comparison: Household Storage Risks
Document preservation buying: what to get first for family papers in 2027
What to buy first for family papers: folders, boxes and interleaving in buying order, plus the honest answer on old scrapbooks, box them, copy them.
What to take away
- Buy folders before boxes and boxes before anything else. Everything later depends on the sizes those set.
- Interleaving sheets are the cheapest item here and prevent the commonest slow damage.
- For an old scrapbook, the correct purchase is usually a box, not a repair kit.
- No brands are named. Nothing was tested for this page, and a supply list is not a product review.
The buying order
- Folders, sized to the documents rather than to a box you already own.
- Boxes, sized to the folders and filled enough that nothing slumps.
- Interleaving paper, acid-free, for separating anything acidic from anything you care about.
- Polyester sleeves, a small number, for the fragile and the frequently handled.
- A wide flat board, for oversized items that must not be folded.
That is the whole first order. Anything else can wait until the collection is counted.
Buying order for family papers
- Folders sized to the documents
- Boxes sized to the folders
- Acid-free interleaving paper
- Polyester sleeves for fragile items
- Wide flat board for oversized items
The scrapbook problem
Scrapbooks and albums are where households spend money badly, usually on the wrong intervention. The New York State Archives guidance on scrapbooks and albums sets out what actually helps.
For display and storage: shelve small and medium scrapbooks upright, but store large ones flat, along with any that bulge open or contain loose items. If a cover is loose, tie the book closed with linen or cotton tape. If items are loose or the book is damaged, put it in an acid-free box or wrap it in acid-free paper.
For the contents: news clippings and other yellowed papers are highly acidic and may harm items on nearby pages. If they can be safely removed, photocopy them onto acid-free paper, put the copies back in the book, and keep the originals separately where they carry handwriting.
Where clippings cannot be removed, separate them from other items with sheets of acid-free paper or polyester film. Loose items should be reattached only with stable plastic or acid-free paper corners, and all other repairs left to a professional.
That last instruction is the one that saves money. Interleaving sheets cost very little and do most of the work.
When copying beats conserving
Yale University Library's guidance on caring for your albums and scrapbooks is realistic about the limits. It calls albums and scrapbooks complex multipart, multilayered objects. Damage can happen to the binding, to the paper leaves, or to the individual items stuck to them. The adhesives used become brittle and inflexible, and some, such as rubber cement, leave dark stains.
Its conclusion is the useful part: there may be little you can do for original albums and scrapbooks beyond putting them in protective boxes to reduce wear and prevent loose attachments from being lost.
It offers the alternative route as well. If an album can be safely scanned or photographed, the content can be captured and laid out as a new printed version, which lets the original be put away for safekeeping and lets copies be shared with family.
What not to buy yet
Skip deacidification sprays. Skip repair tapes of every description, including those sold as archival. Skip a flat file cabinet until you know how many oversized items there are. Skip anything described only as archival, since the word carries no tested meaning.
Our comparison of storage options covers where the boxes should live, and the notes on reading the labels cover what acid-free and buffered actually claim.
