Rethinking Scrapbooks (Much Ado About Scrapbooks)

Please enjoy the following transcript from a past episode of Exhibitsmith the Podcast. Much Ado About Scrapbooks debuted on June 1, 2024. Find Exhibitsmith on your favorite podcast platform and at Podbean.

Much ado about scrapbooks. Am I right? Anyone who has an old or aging scrapbook in their life knows what I'm talking about. The tape is brittle, the glue has stained everything. The pages are yellowed, made from acidic paper. If you try to peel off a photo, you’re left with a torn page, and the back of the photos is a mess. Things like newsprint - are a lost cause. They have become one with the album. There is no easy way out. Could it get any worse?!

Or, perhaps we’re just thinking about scrapbooks all wrong. Maybe we need to stop looking at the negative and start seeking out the positive. Despite the fact that they may be crumbling before our eyes, maybe we should be thankful for these old scrapbooks and albums. I’m always excited to see these stacks of old, deteriorating papers. And I’m here to tell you why.

Hi, my name is Lindsey Smith with Exhibitsmith. I’m rethinking the way we save our stuff. I help people interpret, preserve, and better understand the objects that make up our world. If you have a lot of stuff, it might feel overwhelming. But believe it or not, I truly believe that artifact and heirloom preservation can be both easy and fun. In fact, I’ve developed a series of introductory-level workshops on this topic and others just to prove my point. Learn more about them at exhibitsmith.com.

Back to the scrapbooks. If you're an archivist, curator, records manager, personal collector, avid scrapbooker, or simply someone who has had old scrapbooks thrust upon them by a friend or family member, these bulky, awkward volumes might seem like an absolute preservation nightmare.

Also, they’re usually too big to stand up on a shelf and are often too wobbly to stand up on their own anyhow.

From a preservation and conservation standpoint, there are ways to deal with the physical issues that many of these scrapbooks have. It might not completely get rid of the issues, but you can usually slow down any damage that’s occurring. For example, the entire album might need some added structural support or perhaps the book’s acidic paper is affecting the ephemera and photos that are mounted in it, in which case an easy way to alleviate or at least slow that damage might be to interleave the scrapbook pages with acid-free tissue. Or, if there are items in the book that really should be removed, you many be able to – or need to – send the scrapbook to a paper conservator for a comprehensive treatment. That can be pretty costly since it is a very detail- and time-consuming process that may or not include the need to remove every single image and item from every single page, and then remove any adhesives or residue from each of those items. Oof!

In some cases, that invasive process is a no-brainer but for many people, you may not think that that level of treatment is necessary for your needs.

However, all of this talk about preservation and conservation is actually not the point I want to make here in this episode. Sorry – I really fell off the track!

Okay. Today, despite everything I just said, I'm not focusing on the how and why we should properly preserve or conserve our scrapbooks.

I want to take a step back. I want to think of the how and why the scrapbook was made in the first place.

And despite any preservation issues you may see, I want you to look for the silver lining in these acidic monstrosities.

Too much? Did I go too far?

What I really want is for us to be grateful for what scrapbooks are at their essence. Their raison d’etre.

Even if a scrapbook is deteriorating before my eyes, I figure that if the scrapbook didn't exist, their carefully curated contents would not exist either. And, even if they did, even if the photos and brochures or advertisements, and newspaper articles were thrown into a shoebox, they wouldn't have that cohesive feel, like a tiny curated exhibition, neatly wrapped between two covers, that a scrapbook provides. Scrapbooks were often much loved by the person who made them. It was not only a labor of love, but a craft project. Sometimes they were completed at once, and other times they would worked on for years. I like to think about scrapbooks as many exhibits they center around a particular subject or event or person or timeframe, and are often a wealth of information on said subject.

They often take on the creator, or shall I say, curators unique perspective and showcase what materials were available to them at the time and what was important to them. For example, an old scrapbook may be filled with newspaper clippings while a scrapbook from today may have printouts from social media. So they're often a great way to keep a collection of unruly newspaper clippings in one spot. So even though the tape glue, acidic paper fragility of the newsprint itself make their pre preservation a gigantic nightmare, scrapbooks are actually a great collection of uniquely compiled content.

So how to preserve them, as I said, is a whole different animal, horse of a different color.

Did I just drop a Wizard of Oz reference? Really? Don’t mine me – I’m just over here dropping pop culture references from 1939. oof. Look it up, kids. And most people.

Anyway.

Scrapbooks are often treasured by families and are easier to keep intact over the decades than boxes and boxes of loose records. And if I had to choose between a poorly-preserved scrapbook or having no records at all, I'd happily take the scrapbook any day of the week. So celebrate your scrapbooks, enjoy their contents, and be thankful that they've survived in one piece long enough for you to read ogle and share them. And as far as their preservation and historic scrapbook is different and has its own unique needs, but their content has survived. And for me right now, that's the most important thing. Preservation mistakes may have been made in the past, but honestly, that's part of their story too.

Personally, I loved scrapbooking and I made a bunch as a teen. This was shortly before the giant scrapbooking boom of the 2000s when scrapbooking craft shops were reproducing across the country. Instead, my scrapbooks had a lot of acid-free paper, protective photo corners …and rubber cement. Oops.  

The 90s were a wild time for me. Instead of doing cool teenager things, I stayed home and made scrapbooks. Hmm.

And that is why I am here, recording a podcast about scrapbooks. <sigh> Yup.

Actually, revisiting the books I curated as a kid gives me a personal, inside look into how scrapbooks not only collect a bunch of stuff, but reflect the interests and motives of its creator – in this case, me. And that’s pretty cool!

Because of this, when I work with – or even just see – a scrapbook, I don’t simply think about the contents. I look past the contents and think about how the scrapbook came to be. Who made it, how long did they work on it, what motivated them, was it fun for them or more of a chore, what resources did they have available, etc. Old scrapbooks might herald newspaper clippings, since getting your name in the paper was a big deal, but have fewer photographs, since they weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today.

So. What do you think about all this? Do you have unruly scrapbooks in your life? I hope today’s episode has inspired you to think of scrapbooks with a new perspective. And if not, maybe this will encourage you to take an old scrapbook off the shelf and give it a browse. Or, maybe this has inspired you to start a new one! With today’s scanning and print-on-demand options, you can easily publish scrapbooks without the scissors, tape, and rubber cement of yore.

But that’s a whole different episode.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. I invite you to subscribe to my podcast and once again, you can see everything Exhibitsmith is up to Exhibitsmith.com, including grabbing yourself some free, downloadable resources. Thanks for listening - I’m already looking forward to the next episode.