Scanning Old Photos – a Labor of Love

For the past three mornings I have been working steadily on the scanning and preservation of the old Mehl photos. I'm not sure how many photos there are – about 150, I think – and although that didn't seem like much, scanning them is taking quite awhile. I've finished about 75 of them and have at least that many more to go.

Through my training as an archivist, I know that the best way to scan old photos is into high-resolution, uncompressed TIF images. (Note to archivists out there - I define "best" as not just ideal from a preservational perspective but also "practical" for a home user who can't spend tons of money on professional conservation.) TIF is a relatively standard format. I also know that you can't use TIF images for anything – they are 10s of megabytes in size, so I'll have to make copies in JPG in order to share the photos online. The third thing I know is that putting photos onto the computer will not preserve them. Think about it – some of these paper and metal photos I'm scanning were taken as early as the 1860s. Not many, but some. That's 150 years ago. Do you think any of my carefully prepared TIF files will be readable in 150 years? Not likely, unless some future computer geek keeps reformatting them and moving them to new disks (or whatever they are using then – microscopic carbon nanotube storage maybe?)

So in order to preserve the photos – the paper ones, my friends – I'm filing them in archival storage boxes, flat, separated by archival acid-free paper so their backings don't continue to contaminate each other. This filing method will keep them safe for another 40 to 50 years, and then some descendant of mine (or yours) will need to re-do the filing with new boxes and new paper separators. And so on, every 50 years or so, to maintain these prints for 500 years (or so), which is the maximum archival life of paper.

Assuming proper storage, of course. Which is unlikely.

One other thing the TIF files are good for – making new prints, on new, acid free photo paper, and keeping them even longer!