Save it Before it Fades: An Archivist's Guide to Saving Your Family Photos, Albums & Scrapbooks

Because a faded photo doesn't announce itself until it's too late.

The laminated wedding photo, the magnetic album from 1988, the scrapbook your family spent a whole afternoon building: each one is stored in materials that can slowly damage what's inside. Lamination film breaks down and releases acid into the photo underneath. Magnetic album pages keep reacting with prints for decades. By the time you notice, the faces may already be fading.

This workbook shows you how to protect what you have and build something better with what you save, the way a working archivist would.

What you'll learn

• Part One, Lamination: Why it fails, how to tell if something is laminated, how urgent it is, and what to do about it, including what's realistic to try yourself
• Part Two, Scrapbooks: Why the scrapbook itself is the artifact, when to preserve it as it is, and how to build new pages that hold up
• Part Three, Digitization: What to scan first, the equipment and settings that matter, file naming, backups, and the mistakes that cost people the most time
• Part Four, Photobooks: What makes a photobook last, questions to ask a printer before you order, and how to build one with sequencing, captions, and a provenance page
• Making an Album: Which bindings and pages to buy, and which to avoid

Reference and lookup

• A material ID guide to tell what your photos are printed on and housed in
• An adhesive decision tree for mounting photos, captions, and memorabilia
• A de-housing guide for getting photos out of magnetic albums safely
• Storage and housing options at three budget levels
• Safe temperature and humidity ranges, and how to reach them without renovating
• How to label photos without damaging them, with real examples of what not to do
• An emergency reference for water damage, mold, and photos stuck together
• A supply checklist and a glossary of every term you'll see on packaging
• An FAQ answering the questions people send me most

What you get

• The 28-page workbook as a PDF, available to download right after checkout

Grounded in the research

The guidance draws on conservation research and published standards, including studies of cellulose acetate lamination in U.S. collections, environmental guidance from the Library of Congress, NEDCC, and the Smithsonian Institution, and the Photographic Activity Test (ISO 18916) for photo-safe materials. A full list of sources is included.

Who it's for

This workbook is for anyone with family photos in albums, scrapbooks, shoeboxes, or plastic sleeves who wants them to last. It covers paper and photographic prints. You don't need any experience. Every term is defined, and every section tells you what to check and what to do next.

About me

I'm Mary Snyder, a consulting archivist and public historian with an MLIS and more than a decade of experience at institutions including Monticello, The Henry Ford, and Historic Charleston Foundation. I run Snyder Archives & Research, and I share preservation advice as @travelingarchivist.

Please note: This is a digital download. No physical supplies are included. Film negatives, glass plate negatives, and born-digital files are outside this workbook's scope.

Have newspapers and clippings too? Get this workbook with Save Your Newspapers in The Paper Preservation Bundle and save $15.