Help Me Save This c. 1900 Photo Album

There are just a few - multicard foldout brochures of pictures of famous places. I think I might just do those as their own pages, mostly because they are so thick.

 

That sounds like a good idea.

 

What a wonderful bit of serendipity.

 

Isn't it?!

You know what is really serendipitous, it that I had only found out that her brother moved here from NYC shortly after 1900 after moving here myself (I'm an East Coaster born and bred) while doing family tree work on Ancestry. He and his family lived about 2 miles from me. Stayed here until his death, as did 3 of his 4 children (all born in NYC.) Guess I was truly meant to be here and to own this album.

 

Hi,
I use the large sheets since many different sizes can be used together.
greg

 

Ah, there's a bit of similarity in my family. My maternal grandmother moved to Northern California from either CT or NYC around 1915. But she moved back to NYC a few years later, probably around 1920.

Also, my paternal grandfather moved to LA from NYC, I think probably around 1915-1920, and stayed there the rest of his long life.

 

how to preserve the contents, and second, how I might save at least the cover of my grandmother's post card album so I could keep it all together as one piece of family history.

You could take this to a book conservator and/or use the cover in a restoration. You might look for some sort of 'guts' to a non-acid book. Look at the conservation/acid free sites for scrap books or albums with the same or smaller dimensions. When you get that book cut the guts out and fit it into the old cover with new acid-free endpapers. This might be a fairly cheap job for a paper conservator, compared to making a whole new book.
If you are handy with paper crafts you could try building the endpapers and fitting the book into the covers. Building the pages on the inside is the hardest part. But setting the book into the cover is easier. Look for bookbinding tutorials on line and books out there to show you how to fit the book inside of a cover, the process is about the same as making a hard cover book.


The black pages inside are crumbling every time I open it and the little corner slits in which to seat the cards are starting to break.

Yes the black pages are made of pulp paper, like pulp novels and newspapers and as long as any photos or cards remain in the book, they are being damaged. The first thing, of course, is to remove all the materials you want to preserve.

The cut that Pat shows is how the binding (cover) is held to the book. You will notice how this part is also part of the endpaper.

The idea of making pockets , or buying acid free pockets to hang in the book pages is better than leaving the cards in the book unchecked, but these pockets are still surrounded by acid paper which will acidify the air that gets into the pockets, and advance the aging of the material. Besides, the pages will continue to crumble and be even worse in 20 years time.

I would be tempted to just type up the info written on the original pages and paste it into the book or hand write it in like the original with a note at the beginning of the book on what I did, (transposed the text). You could also keep all the old pages, w/out the cards, in order in an envelope/folder, if you felt the original handwriting was important.

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Thank you for your tips and thoughts, lilfont!

 

Lilfont's excellent response reminded me that I neglected to mention that in order to ameliorate the negative effects of the acidity on the contents I sprayed those black-paper pages with deacidification spray (Bookkeeper) after I removed the photos and before I reattached them in the Mylar pockets. Because of the writing on the pages, under the photos, I was anxious to preserve them as long as possible.

 

When ever possible, it is always best to use a non-acid* mount, mat, page or binding for the preservation of artifacts. In case of old scrapbook pages, personally, I would dump the pages. I might, if I felt that the original page was important, keep it separate from the cards. For the most part in a case like this, wouldn't you be more interested in the actual text and not the artifact of the crumbling page. If it were a love letter, that might be different for me, but a caption, name, place or date scribbled under a card or photograph hardly seems, to me, to be a significant detail in that persons life -that is, the actually artifact, where the data is what is really important. There is the idea of the esthetic of the original, how pleasing it is to see writing from 100 years ago and that is where individual choice would come into play. Does the risk of damaging the cards and photos outweigh the esthetic of seeing grandmas handwriting?


I would like to make a few notes about Bookkeeper and deacidification sprays in general.

First, Bookkeeper is quite expensive! However it might be helpful as a home remedy to preserve paper. The problem is that it is basically an alkaline spry, which buffers (neutralizes) acid. Like adding baking soda to vinegar. However, one of the problems with this kind of deacidification is that it isn't necessarily permanent, the treated paper may gradually degrade back to an acid state (10-20 years?), in which case it may need to be treated again. However, deacidification can help to delay and forestall a pulp paper from disintegrating.

The other problem with deacidification sprays, in general, is that they may contain harmful chemicals in the accelerant or surfactants which can cause stains or foxing over time. Personally, I would never use an aerosol spray, and Bookkepper does come in a pump and can be brushed on.


The American Institute for Conservation, found that Bookkeeper

"penetrate[d] the paper unevenly, [deposited/left] a precipitate*, and did not protect the paper from color changes during artificial aging." (*a solid deposit on the paper.) They also caution that the "...use of the smaller-scale* deacidificants in some cases is impractical or dangerous..." (*ie Bookkeeper or Wei T'o.)

The AIC found that it is difficult, if not impossible, to apply Bookkeeper evenly with a hand-held sprayer. While a high concentration of magnesium compounds may insure that there is a high alkaline reserve, possible negative effects cannot be ruled out. Some papers treated with a magnesium-based deacidificant have an increased uptake of air pollutants.

The AIC also suggest that too much of a magnesium deposit can have the opposite effect on lignin or wood-pulp papers, causing an " alkaline-catalyzed chain scission", that actually increases the rate of oxidation.

They also found that when sprayed on only one side, the deacidificant did not penetrate through the paper to the other side, but that "there is a difficulty in determining if a two-sided application would be beneficial". The tests also showed that magnesium-based treatments have a tendency to yellow upon humid accelerated aging, (under high humidity).

A chalky white precipitate of magnesium oxide was clearly visible on the surface of the artifacts treated with Bookkeeper. They were able to reduce this deposit by applying Bookkeeper with an airbrush. This deposit could be dry-brushed away, but they do not comment on the effect of doing that.

It makes me wonder if I would be better off, when I use Bookkeeper, to only spray the back side of an artifact?

The AIC conclusion was:

"Papers treated with Bookkeeper® showed observable color changes after aging, and some changes in the paper character. An excess of magnesium oxide is easily deposited with hand-held sprayers, and an even deposition is difficult to achieve. The magnesium-containing particles leave a noticeable whitish haze on the paper that can be visually distracting. In one-sided spray application, the pH of the paper can be expected to be higher [more alkali] on the treated side than on the untreated side. Color shifts during artificial aging indicate that at least some types of paper treated with Bookkeeper® experience a whiteness reduction greater than that occurring in untreated papers."

I would also like to acknowledge that "The American Institute for Conservation" is, for the lack of a better word, a guild for conservators, and their mission is to maintain high standards among their members and promote conservation. As such, the use of a product like Bookkeeper might come under more rigid scrutiny, because a client can easily use it at home and thus deny a conservator a job.

Two other carbonated magnesium products mentioned were,
Wei T'o (carbonated magnesium methoxide) and Archival Aids (carbonated magnesium methoxide ethoxide), primarily in use in Europe and Canada.


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