Sunday, May 1, 2016
Workshop teaches how to protect heirlooms
YOUNGSTOWN
Families can learn how to properly protect their important papers and heirlooms for future generations at a free workshop offered by a librarian with expertise in book, photo and document conservation.
The workshops will take place at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Canfield Public Library, 43 W. Main St., and at 6:30 p.m. May 10 at the Boardman Public Library, 7680 Glenwood Ave.
The workshops will be presented by Tim Seman, genealogy and local-history librarian with the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.
“There’s a great demand for ‘how to’ programs, particularly in Tim’s area of genealogy. We find that those are very well attended,” said Janet S. Loew, library communications, public-relations and marketing director.
“We want them [participants] to take what they learn in these classes, and we want that to lead them to the bookshelves to find more books on the subject they’re interested in,” Loew added.
“Whether it’s photographs or papers, whether it be digital media, there are a lot of different ways that families can preserve and protect their family heirlooms,” Seman said.
“The whole point is to make sure that your descendents have access to the information that you’ve accumulated over the generations. It’s an important part of family history,” Seman added.
Seman’s experience in document preservation includes his previous employment as a library technician at the Library of Congress and as an archives assistant at the Ohio Historical Society.
He also received on-the-job training in preservation and archive management at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor, known as the “Steel Museum.”
“Not every library’s lucky enough to have an expert like Tim, who knows how to archive materials and preserve them for the future. We feel that we’re very lucky. Our collection benefits as well as the public,” Loew said.
“A lot of what I do in the library is transferable to the home family collections – the same storage techniques, the same issues about what are the obvious threats to collections,” Seman said.
Sometimes, the family Bible becomes stuffed with photos, baptismal certificates and newspaper clippings, but Seman said those items need to be separated from the holy book.
That’s because they’ll “eventually tear apart the spine [of the Bible], and the materials thrown in it will leach acids and chemicals onto the actual text,” of the book, Seman explained.
“A family tree is built on documentary evidence, and there has to be a way to preserve that information and the material that it’s on,” such as birth and marriage certificates, obituaries and photographs, he said.
Proper storage is achieved by not keeping important items in the attic or basement, which are subject to temperature and humidity extremes, and by keeping such items away from heat, water and sunlight sources, Seman said.
“It’s the swings in temperature and relative humidity that cause the chemicals to start to react and degrade” stored items, he said.
Prints of old, original photos can be preserved by keeping them in transparent mylar polyester envelopes behind a sheet of specially-designed interleaving paper, with a photocopy of the photo displayed at the front of the envelope as a “use copy.”
“Photographs are very sensitive” to changes in heat and humidity, he added.
Old books that are in poor condition can be stored in protective cardboard “phase boxes” that fold over them.
Documents can be stored in an upright file box, with a card at the beginning listing the contents of folders in the box.
Archival storage folders and boxes, transparent photo-protection envelopes and photo albums can be ordered online from vendors, such as Gaylord Archival of Syracuse, N.Y., which sells them to the library, Seman said.
Documents and letters should be kept unfolded, with paper clips and rubber bands removed, Seman advised.
Photo corners should be used to mount photos in photo albums, he advised.
Besides keeping the original paper documents, Seman advises scanning them and storing electronic copies of them in a computer, preferably in the JPEG or TIFF format, which he said are “anticipated to be readable for the long term.”
Computer technology allows for electronic image enhancement of damaged documents, he noted.
Should water damage occur, Seman said books and documents can often be salvaged and dried out simply by opening up their pages and using a dehumidifier and a cooling fan at its slow-speed setting.
Seman recommends naming in a codicil to one’s will a younger family member who has agreed to be responsible for preserving important documents, letters and artifacts.
Besides the document and artifact-preservation workshops, Seman will offer two free workshops concerning ways to find information about one’s ancestors’ military service using armed forces personnel files and unit histories.
Those workshops are set for 10 a.m. May 24 at the Boardman library and 6:30 p.m. May 26 at the Canfield library.
Registration for all of the workshops is required by calling 330-744-8636 or by using the library’s online events calender at libraryvisit.org.