 I'm Brittany Crawford and I'm the National Archives Supervisory Management Analyst and the Director of the Virtual Genealogy Fair. You just heard from the United States Archivist David Ferriero and I also would like to welcome you to our 2017 Virtual Genealogy Fair. Before we begin with the first session, I also have several tips. Because we're broadcasting live, you can join the conversation with our family historians and ask the presenters questions. There's a question and answer time at each of the sessions. You can submit questions for a speaker two ways. Use the chat on your YouTube page or join us on Twitter using hashtag genfair2017. For live captioning, open a separate browser window and go to the link found on the YouTube web page. The same link is also available on the fairs web page. From the fairs web page, you will also find the schedule and handouts. Finally, please know that the video presentations and handouts will remain available on the Virtual Genealogy page after they event. From our web page, you can also find previous Genealogy Fair handouts and presentations. And now we will proceed to the next session. This is session one, and the lecture is taking care of your family heirlooms. Our speaker is Katie Smith. During Ms. Smith's presentation, you will learn how to properly store and handle family heirlooms. She will discuss books, paper, photographs, and a little bit about textiles and other family heirlooms. In particular, she will discuss appropriate storage containers where to put them in your home and how to handle them properly and important tips about digitizing what you have. Ms. Smith is the education and communication coordinator at the National Archives at College Park. We now welcome to the stage Katie Smith. Thank you, Brittany. And I particularly want to thank all of those who are tuning in specifically because they have family heirlooms that they want to take care of. The work that you do in taking care of your family heirlooms is so instrumental to the work that we all do. You're not just taking care of your family's things. You're taking care of the history of the whole world. And it deserves a big thanks from us in particular. Because I really wanted to think about this group that have items right now, I wanted to do a step-by-step guide for you. The reason being is that this can be a very overwhelming task. You just have one box that you need to organize or several boxes. You can get very overwhelmed very quickly. So it's important to sort of task yourself. I have to run through quite a bit of information in a very short amount of time. But that doesn't mean that you have to run through all of this information with your own stuff all at the same time. Please pace yourself, pace your budget, you know, pace your emotions. Do all of those things that you need to do so that you don't end sort of mid-project. But slowly take care of these things for the next generations. And the first step of that process is really assessing what you have. You know, it's probably pretty rare that you're going to get an archivist to tell you to throw away stuff. But if it is, you know, like old reruns of happy days or something like that, it might not really be worth your time or money to house it and take care of it. So ask yourself these questions while you're going through each and every object that you have. The first is, is it really worth taking care of in the long term? You want to focus on things that have familial value and will continue to have familial value. The next thing that you want to ask yourself when you're going through your items is what medium or type of object do you have? This is particularly important when you're going to talk about sort of newer media that requires unique machines to read the records. That's going to be more important as I speak later on. The third thing you want to ask yourself is if you really own these items or not. If it's owned legally by another family member, you might want to include them in how you take care of this item and in what way you want to take care of this item. And the last thing that you want to ask yourself is what is damaged and what isn't? You know, just because something is damaged doesn't mean it's worthless, but you are going to have to expend more energy on it. And depending on sort of what you need from a conservator or a professional vendor, that cost is going to vary and you're going to have to make that part of your plan. Now once you've assessed everything, you've gotten rid of the things that you don't see as having long term familial value, then you need to go about labeling and organizing the things that you have. Claiming is very important. So you might know who the people are in a certain photograph, but once you're gone, they might not know that it's your great-uncle or that maybe your grandmother knitted the shawl. Make sure that you take the time to keep that familial value intact. The best way of doing that is using pencil. Pencil does not damage things in the long term like pen or other markers or things like post-it notes will. So keep with pencil when you possibly can. For items that you can't write on, try finding a way of attaching a label of some sort. Now you don't want that label to damage your items if you have very sensitive textiles. Use a soft paper label of some sort, but label. That's sort of the very key thing. And as you're labeling, you really want to come up with a naming system for everything, particularly the who, what, why, when, how. This is often called metadata and you want to make sure that that metadata stays with its object. And whatever organization that you choose, you need to stick with it. So if you want to separate things by their type, make sure that all the photographs go in one place and a spare photograph doesn't end up in your book area. Or if you want to keep it with families, make sure that you separate all of the Smith stuff out from the Jones stuff. Things like that are going to be very important in the long term. And in particular, create a key document. This key document is going to explain the names, titles, and organizations that you choose for your things for the next generation. Keep this key document with your boxes, with your things. You can even go so far as to have, you know, take photos of the box. So not only will people know what's inside, but will know how to put everything back in the box once they've finished using it. All right, so once you've assessed everything, you've labeled and organized it, now you need to find the ideal environment to sort of keep it stable. There are several factors that you need to think about. And the first is sort of temperature and humidity. For most things, the cooler and drier, the better. Now that's not all things, but that's most things. However, you also have to live in this area as well. So the key function is to make sure that your temperature and humidity doesn't rapidly fluctuate. Here you see a picture of my own temperature gauge in my own home. You don't want things going above 75 degrees Fahrenheit, so I keep mine around 73. Now there are different parts of your home that are going to fluctuate differently. You want to avoid areas in your home that fluctuate. So avoid basements, avoid attics, avoid garages and barns. All of these areas can eventually do damage, damage such like this. Mold is a huge issue, and you want to make sure that you try and keep your environment below 65% humidity, which is the amount of water moisture in the air. Now if you do get a little worried and feel like you might have mold in your collection, be careful with it. See if it's fuzzy, if it's splotchy, if it smells of mildew. If that is the case, contact a professional conservator and I will explain how you do that later on in this presentation. Another thing that you have to worry about are pests. Now pests will permanently damage your items, but so will pesticides. So you don't want to spray your area where you're going to have these things. What you really want to do is just maintain a very clean, dust-free, swept area. Now the best thing to do is monitor pests. So put out sticky traps, check them regularly. If you do see a problem, contact a professional conservator. Now at this point in the presentation, I also like to mention that not all pests are unwelcome. Your pets can also do a significant amount of damage. So if you have furniture, if your dog really likes to chew on photograph frames, try and mitigate that as best as you can. Because I'm sure you don't want to lose either your pet or the family heirloom that you're trying to keep in your home. Another thing that is permanent damage is light. You're going to see this most often on your bookshelf. A good example is this right in front of you here. As you can see along the spine where the title of this book is, the white is sort of going yellow and darkening while the colored floral pattern is lightening. This is called fade and there's no way that you can reverse this. And this actually accumulates over time. This damage happens as it stays out in direct light all the time. So if you are going to set up a shelf with open books or open heirloom items, you want to make sure that it's not facing a window. You want to avoid any direct sunlight. Another big issue is your fluorescent light bulbs. While all light waves can be damaging, UV light waves are particularly insidious. So remove your fluorescent bulbs, go energy efficient and you're not going to have as much problems as you would with fluorescent bulbs. We mentioned dust with pests and how they will attract pests of all sorts. Dust is also acidic and will collect moisture and can permanently damage things as you see here with this cracked glass dust sort of filtered through onto the photograph. And while we were able to clean up this photograph, that sort of dark stain across it is permanent and we cannot remove it. You need to make sure that you keep things out of dust as much as possible. So if that sort of location that you've chosen for your storage is sort of near event, you want to maybe close that vent and mitigate it as much as possible. You never want to use any commercial cleaner on your items. So any metal, any books, any furniture. Stay away from waxes or oils, anything for tarnished reasons. All of these things can do damage. You want to make sure that you're just using a lint-free cloth. For things like furniture, you're welcome to dampen that with water. But anything more can cause a bit of damage. And so the key thing for your sort of small to medium size things is to store it in containers. As sort of a review, you want to sort of keep everything on sort of the main level of your house. Hopefully in an internal wall rather than an exterior wall, so find a closet. But then even in the closet, you want to use boxes, folders. Things like this are called housing in the archival world. You want to house your things well and properly just as you want to house yourself well and properly. Now when it comes to boxes, there are a lot of different types on the market. If you do not currently know the type of boxes that are storing your family heirlooms, you might want to be suspicious. A lot of boxes contain things called acids or oxidants. For the most part, these things will damage items. So the key thing is to go to a vendor. If you go to any search engine, you can type in archival products or archival supplies. And a lot of things will sort of pop up places that you can go to. When you search these websites, there are two things that you should pay particular attention to. The first is the phrase alkaline buffer. Now acid free is a generic term and it's really an advertising term. So you want to look for something that says that there's sort of an alkalinity in it, a buffer of some sorts. This isn't going to save your very acidic paper, but it's just going to keep it from really getting over everything else in the box. Another thing that you want to look for is to see if these storage items are PAT tested and certified. Now what that means is this, the Image Permanent Institute has done studies on what type of storage is best for photographs and photographs are particularly sensitive. So anything that's safe for photographs is for the most part safe for the rest of your items in your collection. What they have developed is a photograph activity test and they will test different supplies from different vendors. Look for that certified PAT test on your vendor site. If you don't see it, contact the vendor, ask them if their housing has gone through a PAT test and if it's certified. That's going to ensure that you use things that are not going to further damage your items. And on top of that, you really want to make sure that you measure your item first and buy a box that's going to fit. You don't want to cut, fold, crease, or do anything to your family heirloom. You want it to fit snugly in the box that you buy. So make sure that you measure the item first and then buy later. That's absolutely key. For things like oversized items, a lot of vendors have many options. You can get archival tools, tubes where you can roll things onto it. There are larger boxes for your items. Talk to your vendor, really spend time talking to customer service on the phone to get what's just right for your collection. And this can potentially be expensive. So once again, as I said, sort of budget carefully plan and do this slowly. You don't want to buy a box and then overfill it because you were only able to buy just a few. That's OK if you're able to buy just a few. But overfilling or overstuffing can cause more damage. So I always do what I like to call the folder test. If I try and pull up a folder from a box and other things come up out of the box with it, chances are it's overfilled. So if it's swelling, if you can't close the lid, all of these things signify that you have overstuffed your box. Buy slowly and move your items into boxes slowly over time as you budget. So that's sort of an example of that overstuffing. Now, books don't necessarily have to go into boxes. They are in and of themselves in many ways their own support. But there are some key things to remember. First, with scrapbooks or albums of any kind, you want to lay flat because over time some things might sort of fall out of the bottom. Another thing that you probably should lay flat is large volumes, particularly if the paper or the text block, as it's called, is really heavy inside. That sort of block of paper inside. If you see it sagging in any way, that will eventually tear away from the cover and cause damage. So you want to lay those large volumes like atlases and dictionaries flat. For medium and small items, you want to make sure that when you put them on the shelf that you put them according to size. You don't want two very small books supporting a larger volume in between because that sort of medium to larger volume is going to distort all the time over time. So make sure that you try and get everything sort of equally supportive of each other. As I mentioned before with photographs and films, it is really important to make sure that when you're purchasing items for storage that you look for the PAT certified. This will likely also come in some polyester, sleeving polyester is inert. So for the most part if it passes that test, it's okay. You can also have sort of plastic reels for your films of any kind that are also available. The biggest thing that you're going to have to worry about is what other people have done in the past. There are a lot of previous albums that were used frequently that now do a significant amount of damage. One of these classic examples is the magnetic album that you see up here on your left. Now they're not magnetic. What they are is they're strips of adhesive like sort of attached to a very thick paper board. And photographs are sort of put on and then covered with a very crinkly clear plastic. Both the adhesive and that plastic is quite detrimental to your photographs. So if you have this, make sure that you contact a professional conservator to help you remove these items. You don't want any adhesive on the back of your photographs. So try to keep sort of photo tabbed corners, especially stay away from rubber cement. You know it's something that was used in the past but we know now from experience that they can do a significant amount of damage. Metal items are in particular a little tricky and you want to make sure that different types of metal items are not touching each other. When they touch each other, it's very possible that one of those metal items can corrode. For most of you, the biggest problem is going to be silver. Silver just tarnishes, period. So it's important that you mitigate that as much as possible but that you shouldn't polish it, especially with commercial cleaners. When you polish silver, you are actually removing metal from the object. So if something is highly decorative, you could in fact remove that decoration over time. You also want to keep silver away from silk or leather, anything that is organic and material like wool. These things contain sulfur and will add to the tarnishing problem. Another thing that I'm sure a lot of you have in your family heirloom boxes is textiles, particularly clothing. You really need to remove that from your grandmother's cedar chest. It was fine then, but what keeps moths away now actually also does damage to your clothing. So remove items from your cedar chests, particularly remove those wedding dresses out of that sort of crinkly plastic that's hanging up in your closet that will significantly yellow those beautiful wedding dresses. If the textile is strong and can support itself, you can hang it up. Make sure that you use a padded hanger and a cloth bag rather than a plastic bag. Many of you will have textiles that are very fragile though and really shouldn't be hung up. In those cases, definitely store it in a box. However, it's important to note that a fold now will become a crease, will become a tear later on. So you want to support your folds. And the best thing to do is sort of take acid free or alkaline buffered paper, crinkle it up and stuff it sort of in the sleeves or along the fold lines. You can also even take cotton batting, cover it with undyed cotton and also support your textiles that way. Now, electronic and magnetic devices are very sensitive. And so you want to make sure that you use hard-click cases and you can readily find these on the internet. However, a lot of these hard cases don't necessarily pass that PAT test that I was talking to you about. So when you store any sort of tape or magnetic electronic devices, make sure that you store in a separate box away from your other items because you don't want those cases to do damage. Another issue with this type of media is it really is tricky to know if you should store them upright or horizontal. You can go on to archives.gov and I will show you in this presentation how to do that later. But we have a list that actually says what type of media something is and whether it should be stored, either vertical or horizontal. And it will definitely help you in terms of the best storage for your items. And lastly, it really should get off the floor. Now, in the archive world, we use sort of metal powder coated shelving. If you don't have that option, you can buy liners from these conservation and archival vendors that I have been talking about this whole time. But it's really important to key that you brace your shelving against a wall for safety for yourself and those items that is housing it. And you want to make sure that those shelves can fully support that heavy, heavy box. There are numerous times I've walked into homes and seen sagging shelves. You don't want those shelves to come crashing down on you or your heirlooms. A lot of people give the good advice of just putting your boxes at the very top of a closet. That is a great suggestion. Be aware that in any area where you have earthquakes or any other disasters of that nature, those things can come toppling down off of high shelves. So you not only want to brace the shelf, but you also want to brace the box so that you are not damaged during a disaster. So you have stored, you've taken care of your environment, you have everything organized. Now how do you go about handling your items for the long term? Now the key thing here is to wash your hands. You don't want to have any lotions, sanitizers, or anything that's advertised to help you handle paper. Most of those waxy substances that people use to flip through paper really quickly can leave stains and other things on the paper. And I want to say you don't want to flip through these things very quickly. You want to handle them with care slowly. So clean hands are the best and also avoid food and drink and tobacco while you're around these items. Now when I talk about hand washing, a lot of people bring up the glove question. Shouldn't I be using gloves when I touch my items? Well, yes and no. For paper items, when you wear gloves, you actually can't feel if you're doing damage. So the most recent conservation science says that clean hands are the best when handling books and other paper items. However, for metals or photographs, that's when you need to put on your gloves. Now the question is, should you put cotton gloves on or you should put other types of gloves? Well, cotton actually holds moisture. So the more those gloves stay on the hand, the more moisture is built up in that glove. And then when you touch something, that moisture and all of that content goes into your object. So I always suggest to people that they should buy a box of nitrile gloves. Nitrile are the type of gloves that you see in dentists and doctor's offices now. They've replaced latex because of allergies. There's very few people in this world who are allergic to nitrile. So that's your best option. You know, go on to the internet, buy a box of nitrile gloves and keep it on your shelving right next to your photographs, your textiles, your metal objects. That's going to be the best thing for you. If you don't do this, if you decide to touch metal or photographs with your fingers, fingerprints will show up over time and they're permanent. With photographs with metals, your fingerprint will permanently show up if you're not careful. So use gloves. Another thing to take particular note of is with older things, sometimes they resist you opening them. Let the object win that tug of war. If you're trying to open something, if you're trying to open a rolled photograph, if you're trying to open a book and there's resistance, let it be. Don't open it. You're going to do some massive damage. As you can see on the right, this one book was perfectly fine and then somebody opened it up so wide that pages started breaking off. This is incredibly difficult to repair. With photographs, if you unroll them, you could break the emulsion or the film part of the surface, it's very difficult to repair. But things will fall apart and you have to realize and understand that. The best thing to do is to avoid any tapes, pressure-sensitive tapes like scotch tape, post-it notes, or adhesives. The best thing to do is to put your different pieces in a folder and contact a conservator. You can store it for the time being but tape will ultimately and permanently mar your document. You're also going to handle probably a substantial amount of metal fasteners, paper clips, grommets, all sorts of items. This rust can be very difficult and very damaging. So if you're trying to remove a paper clip and you start damaging the paper, stop and contact a conservator. They will be able to mitigate some of that sort of future damage that you might do as you continue to try and handle these items with rusted things attached. When you're moving your things from sort of place to place, I do this all the time with my own stuff. You're sort of pulling things out of your box. You're getting very excited. You pull something particularly fragile and you look around and you have no place to put it. It's very key before you pick up anything that you have a clean and clear landing surface for it. And if you're moving something particularly fragile, put it on a stiff board first. Now we're going to get to a more sensitive topic and that is display and use. Display and using your family heirlooms really keeps the people that you have loved in your family close to you. So I don't want to say, you know, don't use them. Don't display them because I really believe in that strong familial bond. You just have to be aware that when you use these things, you speed up the damage to these things. As you see here, these are two items of the three that I actually own from my grandmother. And as you can see, I wore her necklace until it broke and I had to make sure that I repaired it. I put a photograph of her when she was four years old of her pet lamb in my wallet. And as you can see, it's sort of torn and really started to damage this photograph. When you can use facsimiles, use photocopies and stick those pictures in wallets or exhibit those in your home. Also be aware that when you use real items, you know, particularly things that you can't do facsimiles with like textiles of any sort, that you don't display them permanently. When you constantly leave them up in your home, you are going to cause damage. So only pull them out on special occasions. You want to make sure that you contact a professional conservator and or framer and that you have conversations about making sure that the glazing doesn't touch your object, particularly if it's a photograph, and that they are going to use appropriate ways of attaching your material to the mount in question. So talk to them about adhesives or not using adhesives in particular and make sure that you know exactly the best sort of thing that you can do when displaying your item. Once again, as I mentioned, lighting is really bad in this situation. If you are going to display an item even for a short period of time, try to put it in a location where there's a dimmer switch so you can sort of dim the lights in that room and not cause any light damage. Now, I talked a lot at the beginning of this presentation about familial value. And while you should never get rid of your original object, it is probably important that you digitize and make copies. Stanford University has created this lovely website called LOX, and it stands for Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe. They give you great tips and tricks on how to best digitize and sort of get copies. The key thing is that people tend to forget that they only have to digitize their stuff once, and that's it. But really, you should convert to new media about every 10 years. Your object's degrade, so does new media. Make sure that you convert about every 10 years, and make sure that you file name with your organizational file and use that metadata that I talked about at the beginning. With papers and photographs, you really can do this yourself. If you have a good camera, if you have a good setup, you are able to make digital copies for yourself. The best way of doing this is sort of digitizing face up. There are multiple types of scanners out on the market. Be careful, because some of those can, in fact, do damage. The best thing to do is not sort of flip over your object and sort of push it down onto a scanner, but actually, you know, take copies of it facing up in sort of a planetary position in which your camera is above the object and taking picture of it below. Now, with new media like electronic, film, media of any sort, you really shouldn't do this on your own. It's not about getting the unique equipment to play it. It's making sure that you adapt that equipment so that you get the best possible recording. So there are things that you should ask your vendor that you have contacted to see if they're the right fit for you. The first is you need to ask them if they'll do a pilot test. This is in particular, if you don't know what is on your media. They should give you a pilot test so you have an idea that it really is sort of a filming of a birthday party rather than a TV show rerun. The second is something that some people are okay with and some people are not. I always ask if they digitize in-house. I feel like the more removed you are of the process of digitizing, the more you are removed from making sure that it is recorded well for you. So I always make sure that I'm talking to the person who's going to be doing the job for me rather than having a vendor take it from me and then send it to an outside vendor. And three, you wanna make sure that you talk about file type. You don't wanna just talk about getting your items back in CD or USB or other sort of disk formats. You wanna talk about file. So for example, with Wave, the recording that they're getting, they're getting everything. It's not just what you can hear with the human ear. So it's really great for archiving and make sure that you have everything from your media, but it's maybe not the best for storage or for making copies for other people to share. MP3s on the other hand, compress their files, they're really great for sharing. And sharing is important. You don't wanna make multiple copies and then keep them all on one desk, especially in the case of a disaster. Share these, make sure they're in different locations. I always tell people to gift them to their other family members. That way you get to give a gift to somebody and they're also ensuring that the familial value attached with the original object is kept intact if and when one digital copy is destroyed. And then the fourth thing that I do is I always make sure that the vendor in question really knows it's equipment. So if you're getting vinyl records recorded, you wanna ask them about needle size. If you're getting tape cassettes recorded, you really wanna talk about adjusting the azimuth. You might not know what an azimuth is, but they should definitely know what an azimuth is. And if they don't, you need to go to another vendor. All right. So we're getting slowly towards the end and some of you might have some wonderful questions for me and I'm very excited to receive them. But if you're anything like me, the real questions are gonna come up when you're facing those boxes and not knowing what to do. So where do you go for help when I am no longer in front of you giving you the advice that you need? Well, the first place you can always go to is our own website. It's www.archives.gov. Now, when you get to the screen, scroll all the way down and what you will see is a list of words and you will find preservation among that list. You can go ahead and click it and you will find a slew of wonderful information that will help you with your specific needs. Like I said before, we have different media types and you can know how to store them. We have things on emergency preparedness. We have a vast selection of information for you at your fingertips. If you're not finding your question, you can also email us. We have an email at preservationatnara.org and we will respond to those. Another place that you can go to and particularly if you are looking for a conservator to help you. I've talked a lot about finding a conservator to help you with your projects. Now, AIC is the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and you can find them at www.conservation-us.org. On the left-hand side, you will find a button that is Find a Conservator. When you click on that button, it will ask you a number of questions like where you're located and also what type of media that you have and it will pop up a list for you that you can contact. Now, if you're not in the US, there are different conservation organizations all throughout the world. You can go on your search engines, you can find them, most of them have these sorts of resources for you so you can find a conservator close to you. Another thing that I want to sort of particularly mention on this front page is this area right here. It's the National Heritage Responders. This is a group of volunteers who go to organizations during a disaster and help them salvage the items that they have. Now, I want to particularly talk about this because disasters happen and right now we are particularly going through some major disasters and our hearts definitely go out to everyone who is experiencing that right now in their lives. There are ways to help. You can plan. We have resources on archives.gov that can help you and so definitely make a plan before a disaster happens. The second thing that you need to do when a disaster hits is that you take care of yourself first. People are always first. Stuff is always secondary. You want to make sure that you are always safe and that you don't go back into your home until it is safe for you to do so. Typically, when people go back into their homes, they want to close their doors and turn on the heat. That's the opposite of what you want to do. Open your windows, get some good airflow in there, and turn down your heat. This is going to prevent mold from really causing you some grief. And then the fourth is contact the national heritage responders or contact a conservator. The national heritage responders do not help sort of private individuals in terms of actually going to their home and helping them take care of their things, but they will offer really good advice. You can also go to a vendor. There are several available online. Just make sure that you get a quote from them in writing, specifically saying what they will do and roughly at what cost before they start helping you. Once again, don't get overwhelmed. I just gave you a lot of information. That's okay. Sort of work plan slowly, and you will see the results of your efforts in time. So thank you so very much. And this is the time for questions. Thank you so much, Katie. You're welcome. This is the disembodied voice of Andrea Matney. Welcome to the genealogy fair. We have been collecting your questions and we have quite a few of them. So we'll go as far as we can until we've run out of time. Okay. So I have at least eight right away. I think you covered this, but which picture albums are the best to use? You know, the best picture albums are ones that have that polyester sleeving that's been PAT approved. A lot of people sort of react to plastic because a lot of plastic can be damaging. Make sure that it's PAT approved and you can slip your sleeves inside it. Another reason why I always suggest that is you can write on the back the data that you need. So you can write on the back who is in the picture, where, when. And with those sleeves, you can see the back and actually have that information readily available. Oh, that's a great tip. Hadn't thought about writing on the back. Yeah, it's a great question. It is. Will scanning damage photos? So it depends on the scanner and that is an excellent, excellent question. You really need to make sure that you scan in a way that fully supports your item. So a lot of scanners come with sort of scanning beds. You wanna make sure that your items don't overlap those beds if you can help it. A lot of scanners also have sticky parts where you sort of stick your item to be scanned. Once again, that's an adhesive and so that can sort of leave residue and damage your item over time. A lot of people will use sort of the automatic feed in regular copiers. That's also probably not a good idea. I can't tell you how many times those things can jam on you and destroy your document. Make sure that when you go, you're looking for something that can support, doesn't have any sticky parts. You can use them for sure. You also don't want anything that will rub against your item if you can help it. There are a lot of sort of wands out there where it sort of wands over. The friction from that can cause some damage if you have some friable media or some media that's popping off your papers or photographs. So that's why I always suggest sort of a planetary system where your camera is above. But there are scanners out there that are safe. Fantastic. I love your detailed answers. Thank you. Thank you. So this is a really cool. We have one person. She's so lucky. She has a question about how to store tin type photos and how to duplicate those tin type photos. Wow, I love tin types. So tin types are actually made out of iron, not tin. So you really need to treat them like a metal. The best way of storing them is, keep them separate from other metal items. A lot of tin types have their own sort of boxes or containers. Those are perfectly safe. And if she has those sort of boxes or containers, she can leave them in there and then store them in sort of separate boxes. If she doesn't, by all means she can wrap them in acid-free tissue and store them that way. So your biggest problem is gonna be with iron, of course, sort of rust issues. So as long as you mitigate your humidity, don't keep the water moisture in your air too high, it's gonna be okay. You're gonna be fine. That's an exciting sort of collection to have. I agree. Thank you so much. Our next question. I have my grandfather's World War II photo album. Leather album cover is falling apart. Pages and photo corners are intact. I was going to transfer them to a new album or am I better to remove pages and save originals? That is such a good question. And in so many ways, that is gonna be sort of left up to you. Yes, the leather in this time period is not great. It was processed not well. There's a lot of acid in that leather, which over time sort of destroys it. So I can only imagine what the leather cover looks like. Now, if that leather cover is dusting, that is acidic. So if it gets on the photographs, then you might have a problem. You're introducing acid onto the photographs. If that leather isn't dusting, then by all means you can keep it in there for a while, but you should definitely watch it. And over time, you might wanna start slipping those photographs into sort of plastic polyester sleeving. Now that doesn't mean that you necessarily have to get rid of the album. You can keep both. If that album is significant to you, if it reminds you of World War II in that time period, by all means treat it like any other object that you have and keep it. But just be aware of that sort of dusting of the leather that really can cause some problems with your photographs later on. I think another similar question, but she's concerned about provenance. So she asks, I inherited a collection of mid-20th century photos in assorted frames. Should I remove the photos from the frames or keep them in place for the purpose of provenance? That is such a great question. I am gonna make the assumption that these photo frames have the glass actually touching the photograph. You really don't want that photograph touching the glazing of those frames. The reason why I say this is over time that emulsion can stick to the glass. And in some cases it's impossible to remove it from its glass. So if you can remove it, I would suggest do so or at least sort of put a barrier inside the frame in between the photograph and the frame itself so that that glazing is no longer touching the photograph. Now for provenance's sake, of course she can talk to somebody to see if those frames have value. If those frames certainly have dates on them, I would advise that you write that date on the back of the photograph. But those are sort of all questions that you're gonna have to sort of tackle on your own unfortunately, so yeah. Yeah. I'm going to move along to the questions that deal with paper and then we have some other ones that are different types of media. Awesome. So one person writes, I have an 1800s marriage certificate that is fading and falling apart. It is oversized. Should I store it in a tube or flat? That is a great question. I always suggest that flatter is best. You know, really, really large items and if you don't have space to store them, by all means roll it onto a tube. But it sounds like this is already falling apart and so you don't wanna, you know, mess with curving it in any way. It seems like at this point in time. So your best option is flat. You know, marriage licenses can be very beautiful. That fading is permanent, unfortunately. So make sure that you keep it out of light. Keep it from fading any more than it already is. Thank you so much. You're welcome. We have the next question. I think it might be the answer is depends how much you wanna spend on it. So the question is I have an 1898 family Bible that is quite large and the binding is slowly coming apart. Is it best to get it repaired or should I store it as is? That is such a great question. And I think that that is a question for many, many, many people. You know, those family Bibles are notorious for falling apart and they're also notorious in putting them back together. It really depends on your budget. If you want to see, you know, this thing back in its pristine form, by all means contact a conservator. Make sure that you get a budgetary quote before that conservator starts to tackle that big of an object. I always tell people that with something like that, it is, it's going to be just fine to store it. Now if that doesn't mean you shouldn't contact a conservator, conservators can make storage and boxings that fit the item perfectly so that that Bible isn't jiggling around and causing more damage later on. Contact a conservator, have them make a special box. It will be somewhat cheaper than the actual conservation of a very large volume that's really falling apart. Another key thing that you want to sort of pay attention to in these family Bibles are those pages that talk about birth, marriages, and death. You know, those things are probably the most valuable and contain the most familial value. So before doing anything, you might want to consider copying those and sharing those copies with family before you go into the sort of lengthy process of fixing it and sort of rebinding those things. If it's damaged and you can easily remove them at this point in time, take photo copies and then consider doing conservation afterwards. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Now on to some questions that are not textual. All right, I'll see if I can do my best. This is so sweet. We have somebody, she says, how to duplicate an old 78 recording of my mom singing to MP3? Oh, that is so lovely. So by all means, contact a vendor. With something like that that means so much to you, I would consider maybe at least getting one copy that's wave, which is sort of that full recording format. That's the one that's not compressed at all. Now that will have a lot of space, but if you just make one for yourself, that's gonna be ideal. And then make some MP3 copies for your family as well so they have that. That would be my best, my best thing to do. Thank you. Okay, different type of media. This is a great family heirloom. What is the best way to store an 1881 quilt? Quilts are so wonderful and they're particularly fragile with all of their sort of stitching and sort of many, many, many things. And people really want to display them, I should add. With a quilt, you can sort of roll them on rolled storage. Make sure that you roll outside the tubing. I didn't mention that and I should. You shouldn't roll it and then stick it inside the tube. It should roll outside the tube and then you should cover it with some sort of acid free paper and sort of tie it. That's gonna be your best option. Now the key is is you can't necessarily sort of put that upright and hang it in your closet because over time that the gravity is gonna pull that quilt down. If you can sort of leave that roll flat somewhere under a clean bed, that's gonna be your best option. But really don't consider displaying that for a long period of time. Quilts can be very fragile. Thank you. I'm gonna go on to a question that's again about textiles. I inherited a hand embroidered tablecloth circa 1920 that has been cut into sections with each section individually in a wood frame. Should I keep them framed or take them out to store as textiles? That is such a great question. And that's more common. I get a lot of questions like that in which family has sort of cut up something so that each person in the family can keep the item. That's really a discussion that you should have with your family. Once again, if they're framed, you wanna make sure that that textile isn't touching the glazing and so you might wanna remove those from the frame. But the real question is what's gonna be best for your family? Does your family still want those individual pieces so each family member can keep these items? Or if they're now all yours, do you wanna hire a conservator to sort of stitch them back together if possible? It's hard for me to judge because I can't see the textile in front of me so I don't even know if that's possible. I would have her definitely consult a textile conservator. They'll be able to give her a lot better advice in terms of even if she can stitch them back together or not. Thank you so much. You're welcome. So on to a different type of precious family heirloom. I love it. Yeah, someone asked, how do you best preserve athletic medals and trophies? You know, that is a real thing. Any sort of medal, whether it's athletic or even sort of war medals from soldiers in the past, you know, all of these things are composite materials meaning they could be made of wood, plastic and metal all rolled up into one. The best thing to do is to make sure that you sort of wrap them individually so they're not touching other medals. You know, if you have them all in one box sort of jingling around together, once again, that's gonna cause some corrosion problems with your medals. So you wanna wrap them in paper items. I should also mention with trophies or teapots or anything of that nature, you don't wanna pick these things up by it's the most fragile part, which is often the handle, right? You know, it's the part that you really wanna pick up. When you're picking up trophies or anything else, you wanna sort of pick it up at its most stable base. So make sure that when you're handling these things, pick them up at the base, wrap them in sort of acid-free paper and then stick them in a box. That's gonna be your best option. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Great. So we have someone who's come back. She's got another question. Yay. She says, thank you for answering my question. And she swears, last question. I have a dried rose in my great-grandmother's funeral, from my great-grandmother's funeral. Is that just a sentimental item to save or worth archiving? You know, that is really a personal question and particularly organic things that are gonna fall apart over time. That's definitely going to be an option for you. If you plan to keep it, you should be aware that petals will start falling off. So wrap it in case it makes sure that things aren't really hitting it a lot. But it depends on what's sentimental or not. The picture of the necklace that I showed you, my grandmother gave it to me because she thought it was ugly and I fell in love with it. And so she had no sentimental value toward it whatsoever but I now have a huge sentimental value for it because it was a gift that she gave to me as a joke and how much do I love her for that? So I can't gauge your sentimental feelings but I think that those things definitely have value. Like your feelings towards something do have value. So really take that into consideration and don't let anyone call you silly for having sentimental feelings about anything that you're keeping. Nice, thank you. Let's see, I'm going to go on to something that I think more people are running into these days, more modern archivals type of question. If you are starting fresh preserving digital photos and files, what is the recommended media storage to do now for the future? Portable hard drives in addition to cloud storage or something else? Well, that is such a great question, especially now that we're dealing with a lot of born digital items as well. Even if something is born digital, do you print it off a paper copy or do you just leave it on the cloud, what do you do? So my advice is put it in multiple storage types and multiple places. If you put it on the cloud, don't just put it on the cloud. Make sure that you have a CD or a portable hard drive as well as a different type of copy. There are a lot of companies on the internet right now who are sort of storing photographs for you. You never know when those companies might not make it and there are sort of stories out there of people completely losing all of their photographs because these companies went under. So make sure that whatever you decide definitely choose different types. There is a lot of advertisements about the best storage that will last 1,000 years or storage that will last 100 years, whether it be CDs or other different drives. The fact of the matter is we just don't know. We don't know if those things will last 100 years and we don't know if we'll even have the equipment to play it in 100 years. So the key is to just make sure that you continue to convert to new media every 10 years. That seems like such a short amount of time but I mean if you look back and think of floppy disks, zip drives, all of those things, where advertising is lasting for a really long time and just simply aren't around anymore and you can't really even play them on anything. So that's gonna be your best go-to when you're starting out fresh. Thank you very much. You're welcome. We still have questions coming in. However, we need to take an intermission break so we can connect with our next presenter. Thank you so much. You have a lot, many, many kudos, including you Rock Katie. Thank you for an excellent presentation. Thank you so much. It goes on and on. Well, thank you so much for listening and please feel free to continue asking your questions. They're so beneficial for everyone. So yes, thank you. And you mentioned already one way to ask questions is to go onto our webpage and we also have a generic email address if you can't find the other one. It's for all researcher questions. It's inquire at nara.gov.