Is the whole collection stored in a shoe box or corrugated cardboard box?
Loose photographs in these kinds of containers can bend or rip. Also, the poor quality cardboard used in the box construction can damage the photographs. Using a higher quality box, like an archival museum box, and stacking photographs in an organized way will reduce the risk of physical damage and allow you to locate a specific image more quickly. Are the photographs stored with newspaper clippings? Are they wrapped in rubber bands to hold them together? Newspapers and rubber bands are extremely harmful to photographs. If you would like to store a clipping with the photographs it may be related to, substituting with a photocopy of the clipping would be much safer. The original newspaper clippings can be stored in another container nearby. Using photo-safe paper envelopes or mat board to separate stacks of images is also a big improvement on the rubber-band-wrapped stack approach. Were your images thrown haphazardly into whatever container was handy at the time? Organizing photos by ev
