With all the new, and affordable, technology out there, it is easier than ever to preserve your important documents.  Photos don't last forever (about 100 years depending on the paper, ink, etc.) and documents deteriorate rapidly if not properly cared for.  In order to preserve these items for your family's history, I highly recommend scanning them in and saving them digitally as soon as possible.  The other key part to this process is to then save them somewhere safe, other than your computer, to make sure you don't accidentally lose this data.

Let's start with paper documents.  Paper, newspaper, basically printed documents of any kind, will start to yellow and fall apart quickly.  If you want to try to preserve the original document, you can get something called deacidification spray.  You spray this onto your paper documents and it helps them resist aging, yellowing, turning brittle.  One in particular that I use is called Archival Mist.  I bought it at a craft store, but there are now several places including Target and Ritz Camera that carry this product as well.  The 1.5 oz. bottle will protect approximately 5 square feet of paper when used as directed.  Although this will slow down the aging process significantly, the spray is expensive.  My recommendation is to scan these documents, even if they are sprayed, so that you can make sure they are preserved.

Now for preserving photos.  If you are preserving your photos by placing them in scrapbooks, it is important to make sure that everything used in the scrapbook and the book itself are archival quality. Here is a link to the National Archives site that may answer many of your questions about preserving photos: Family Archives.  I am fortunate to have many historical photos from my family that are in good condition.  At the last family reunion, I asked my family members to mail me their original photos so that I could scan them and make sure they are preserved, then I mailed the originals back.  If they do not want to risk mailing originals, ask them to scan the photos or have them scanned and sent to you so that you can make sure all the photos and documents about your family are in one safe location.

Digital storage is the next important component of preserving your records.  Although it is fine to save them to your computer hard drive or an external drive, this is not a fail-safe method of keeping records.  If something happens to your computer, you would lose all those records and have to start over.  I recommend uploading photos and scanned documents to a digital photo website, such as Snapfish or Shutterfly, there are many different services.  This is one more way to store information so you don't have to rely on your computer integrity.  The other service I use to give myself one more level of security, is an online backup service for my whole computer.  The service I use is called Mozy.  You can backup unlimited amounts of data to this service for only $4.95 per month.  I believe this is well worth the price to have the piece of mind that your data is backed up somewhere offsite and you can easily restore it if something happens to your home and/or computer.

Although it may be time consuming to digitally preserve all the documents you already have, I believe it is well worth the time invested.  As you continue to digitize your photos and documents, it will get easier if you develop a plan and stick to it.

Please let me know if you have any questions on any of this, or if you have found a product or service to be helpful I would love to hear about it.  Just click on Add Comment to send me your questions or suggestions.