Feel free to delete this if it’s not tangential enough to gramps itself but I figured people here would have a better clue.
I am going to digitize all the photos I have (from recent, from all the way back to 1900 or maybe earlier, etc.) and that part is all well and good. I have a big Canon flatbed and an Epson FF-680 that should take care of that and I know how I plan to store the digital copies (and their backups, of course.)
My question is- how do I store the photos themselves after I am done? Has anyone done this on a big scale? I really don’t prefer to keep the photo albums themselves and would want to just put them all together by category and then store them compactly. I read about acid-free archival paper but it is quite pricey (unsure if someone knows where to get that in bulk.)
Just looking for a good and economic way to store these for the foreseeable future. Obviously nothing lasts forever but I want to do my best to preserve them.
I think it’s a complicated question. The best way in fact is to use box in acid-free paper and then you should put them in a room with a relativ constant temparature, a low humidity rate and a low risk of fire. Even with that, nothing is 100% sure. Look at the official archives: they can lose documents for different reasons such as mould or even fires.
I went with a photo box (that has separate acid free containers inside) and acid free paper to separate each photo inside that. If they disintegrate after all that, well…it wasn’t meant to be.