Removing Photos from Scrapbooks - Best Practices/Tips?
 

I know this has probably been covered ad nauseum, but can anyone offer a quick rundown of best-practice methods for removing materials from old scrapbooks (or point to previous posts covering the subject would be fine)?

I have a scrapbook that I picked up that looks to have been assembled somewhere from the early 1900's to the 1930's that contains many period newspaper clippings along with postcards and some photos going back as early as 1902. The "scrapbook" itself appears to be a large wallpaper sample book that the scrapbooker then pasted the various mementos into. The scrapbook itself is large (15"x15"), heavy, bulging from the added material, and has grown very brittle with the cover and several pages being completely detached. I don't know what was used for glue, but peeking under the few items that have pulled free in some areas, the dried glue appears white. And unfortunately, the glue appears to have been applied over the entire back surface of each item rather than just dots at the corners.

I would also caution that I am a complete novice at this. In the past, when dealing with scrapbooks I have either popped the glued corners loose, leaving a portion of the scrapbook paper on the back of the photo (typically that black construction paper type), or just trimmed around the photo, leaving the entire back covered with the scrapbook paper. In this case though, the pages have items pasted on both sides, and everything is glued in VERY securely.

I've never tried "soaking" anything free from a scrapbook, and frankly, the idea of doing so with 100-year-old photos scares the hell out of me. Any and all tips and experiences will be appreciated. I'm going to photograph the entire book for posterity, but there are a number of pieces that I feel should be rescued from this rapidly-decaying book. The newspaper articles are interesting, but there is no hope of saving those short of just trimming around them. The main things I am wanting to rescue are the photos, and maybe some of the postcards.

This is one of the worst pages in the book, and an example of what I am trying to keep the other photos from looking like. I don't know if the fading images are a result of the photos being pasted into this scrapbook, but I sure would have liked to have seen what the "Old League Park" photo depicted.

Two things

1. Those old sample books have VERY thick pages and they are almost impossible to soak without doing some major surgery and ruining the surrounding items.

2. Old postcards very often have water soluble ink and if you soak them it will destroy the item.

Rhys

Lance-
I agree with Rhys. It looks like some that I have taken apart and the best you can do with this type is choose the best pieces and cut around them, destroying whatever is surrounding it and on the back. I hope there are some salvageable items in there!

Alan

Yeah, after some experimentation with one of the undesirable photos that I cut around and them tried soaking a small area of the glue with both water and PEC-12 applied with aqtip, it's not looking like the glue is going to dissolve before the desired item is destroyed. So I'm back to the physical approach, doing a rough cut around the desired photo and then picking at the back with a razor and tweezers to remove as much of the affixed paper as possible. The kicker is that most of the pieces I want to save appear to be RPPC's, and at least some have writing that I would very much like to reveal, hopefully to help with player ID's. So I've got a lot of tedious picking to reveal the backs of these. Hope it's worth it!

The newsprint on the opposing page is probably the culprit, maybe some dampness too. The book itself looks like a wallpaer sample book.

I like seeing these things kept together, it sort of gives a peek at the person who put it together. Plus there's usually no way of cutting it without destroying something that's on the other side of the page.

The simplest solution is to buy a pack of acid free tissue paper and use it as interleaving between pages.

Steve B

The hand drawn postcard at the bottom right is also really cool, and if the one next to it is also hand drawn it's one of the nicest ones I've seen.

Steve B

I believe there's a difference between paste and glue. Paste can be soaked, glue can't. It sounds like the person who put this together used glue.

After some further experimentation and picking at the backs, here is where I'm at. I've got about 18-20 of the photo postcards removed from their pages (only affected I think 4 of the scrapbook pages) which involved cutting around the photos. Only 1 baseball-related article was on the backs of any of these, which I scanned for posterity, and would be glad to send to anyone wanting to read about a 1902 match-up between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Rochester Bronchos of the Eastern League. After some further experimenting, I discovered that the glue holding everything together is indeed water soluble (so I guess I should say paste, not glue), but as Rhys surmised, the wallpaper samples everything is adhered to is too thick for me to be comfortable in saturating them enough for the water to get through the wallpaper to loosen the paste underneath. I may try working with one small area at a time, working in from the edges to at least remove enough for the stamp box, postmarks and any writing to be revealed, but it's going to be a long, slow process from what I can tell.

Below are examples of two of the more promising backs, in terms of potential information to be revealed. Thankfully, most if not all of the writing appears to be either in pencil or in that does not run/smear with water, though I will still be using caution as I proceed.

Steve, I do tend to agree with the sentiment of "keep it intact" in most circumstances, but in this particular case, the "book" is rapidly deteriorating. I did however photograph the entire thing prior to doing any work with it, and have made a pdf of that so as to have a "virtual scrapbook".

Yeah, it's always a tough call. My wife and I have a few old scrapbooks with tradecards that are deteriorating but not doing any damage to the cards. Eventually we'll have to disassemble them. I'm looking at saving the ornate covers and redoing the whole thing with sleeves attached to acid free paper. Probably too much work, but we'll see.

If the wall paper is coming apart and damaging stuff it's probably time to do what you're doing. Record the overall book, then save the better items.

Looks like there might be some nice content, which will make the whole project worthwhile.

Steve B

Lance - what ever came of this? Did you soak them, any luck?

I did not soak them. At this point, the project is still on the back burner, which is to say laying flat in a large box waiting for my retirement when I have time for such projects.

I'm going to have to live a very long time to get everything in... :D