Correspondent photos / Thomas Welsh Olivia Beebe, an AmeriCorps representative and collections assistant at the Trumbull County Historical Society, discusses the best practices for preserving documents and photographs during a lecture Sunday at Boscov’s Community Auditorium. The event was sponsored by Warren’s Sutliff Museum.

NILES — The first step in preserving photographs, documents and other pieces of family history is to assemble some kind of inventory, Olivia Beebe, a collections assistant at the Trumbull County Historical Society, said.

“You need to know what you have before you set out to organize the material by year or subject,” Beebe said. “As your collection grows, you may even find it necessary to develop a new system.”

In that case, she stressed, it is important to take time to reorganize earlier material in a way that is consistent with the newer system. Otherwise, your collection will prove difficult for others to navigate.

Beebe described some of the most effective methods for preserving and documenting artifacts during the Sutliff Museum’s “Collections and Coffee” lecture series Sunday at Boscov’s Community Auditorium at the Eastwood Mall.

Beebe, who studied conservation at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, began by outlining some of the best practices found in museums.

She noted that most museums attempt to store artifacts at temperatures ranging from 65 to 70 degrees and at humidity levels anywhere from 45 to 50 percent. They avoid exposing these artifacts to direct light, while placing them on shelves to avoid contact with the floor.

She acknowledged that even some museums have a difficult time meeting all of these requirements, especially those involving heat and humidity levels. Nevertheless, these general practices should guide the approach individuals take as they seek to preserve family artifacts for the next generation, she said.

Beebe advised attendees to invest in acid-free upright document boxes and file folders. She warned them that some retailers market similar products as “archival,” when, in fact, they are not acid-free.

The safest approach is to seek out reliable providers of archival products, such as Gaylord, Conservation Sources International LLC, Hollinger Metal Edge and University Products, she said.

Appropriate materials are no less important when documenting artifacts.

“If you find it’s necessary to write information on the back of a photograph, for instance, you should avoid using ink, which can bleed and create permanent damage,” she said.

Pencils are preferable, and she strongly recommended a Stabilo graphite pencil, which can be used on — and erased from — a wide variety of surfaces.

Apart from ink pens, other materials to avoid are paper clips, staples, rubber bands and tape, all of which can deteriorate in ways that damage documents and photographs.

Plastic bags, which are often used to temporarily store family artifacts, can also be counterproductive, as they emit harmful gases as they deteriorate. A viable alternative is to place such items in polypropylene plastic slipcovers, which will safely preserve them, Beebe said.

While digitization can be a useful tool, especially when dealing with more delicate documents, Beebe emphasized that it should never take the place of any attempt to physically preserve these items.

The next Collections and Coffee talk will be 2 p.m. Nov. 13 at Boscov’s Community Auditorium when Joanne Fenn, collections manager at the Kent State University Museum will discuss “Proper Storage and Preservation for Your Textiles and Historic Garments.”

Melissa Karman, director of the Sutliff Museum, described the Collections and Coffee series as an opportunity to educate people about projects that are dear to their hearts.

“People have photographs and documents that they would love to see preserved,” she said. “These programs are a chance to teach them methods to preserve and document those items, in a way that ensures that future generations will understand why they were preserved in the first place.”

Beverly Nelson, curator of the Sutliff Museum, placed these grassroots preservation efforts in the context of the public’s growing fascination with genealogy: “With the availability of services like Ancestry.com, which enables people to track down documents and photographs, there’s a heightened interest in anything related to family history. Now, you have more people looking into their roots and hoping to find information that says something about their identity.”

Beebe said the recent increase in family-oriented preservation efforts owes at least something to the coronavirus pandemic. “We did see an uptick in donations during the pandemic … as people were cleaning things out of their homes,” she said. “And that hasn’t really slowed down, now that we’ve more or less … come out on the other side of the pandemic.”

The Sutliff Museum is open 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays on the second floor of the Warren-Trumbull County Library, 444 Mahoning Ave. NW, Warren.

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