Every family is made up of stories worth keeping. Maybe you are fascinated by hearing about your grandfather’s birth during a Dust Bowl sandstorm, or maybe you love hearing your grandmother talk about the life lessons she learned from her own mother before electricity became an available amenity. Whatever keeps you interested, those stories are worth saving because they are the backbone of your family. But preserving family history can be a complicated endeavor. Photographs, letters, and journals are excellent sources of first-hand information about generations past, but they are also some of the most delicate. If you want a way to preserve your family history for generations to come, it is time for a new solution.
Protecting First-Hand Sources
Any first-hand information you have about your family history is immensely valuable. Those photos, letters, journals, and even newspaper clippings can offer a glimpse into what life was like a hundred years ago or more. Those items are a helpful way to see what was important to your ancestors and which events may have shaped decisions that changed the family. If you want to know how your family came to be the way it is, look to the past.
The problem, of course, is that most of those things genealogists look at like a gold mine are incredibly perishable. Not only do you have to take precautions against mold, dust, and moisture damage, but even handling those items too much can cause irrevocable damage. One of the hardest parts of balancing genealogical research is wanting to analyze each bit of information you have without accidentally destroying it. The TerraSlate team has a solution for you: waterproof paper.
Preserving Valuable Documents
The primary rule of protecting old documents is to handle them as little as possible. In order to truly protect them, they need to be stored in archival-quality folders and storage boxes somewhere with temperate temperatures and low humidity. The less you take those old documents out of their protective layers, the longer they are likely to last. But how does that help you when it’s time to dig a bit deeper into your genealogy projects? A good way to minimize how often you need to pull out the actual, physical items is to scan everything and print them on waterproof paper.
Scanning
We suggest this for a couple of reasons. One, scanning technology has reached the point that you can easily capture a true representation of those important family documents. Taking the time to scan everything means you can keep digital copies at hand for your genealogical research without actually handling the delicate documents over and over. Scan them once at a high resolution then store the originals safely in archival-quality protection so the originals can last longer. Of course, the caveat here is that light is another big cause for concern when it comes to protecting old paper-based items, so you will want to have care when scanning each document.
Printing
The second part of our suggestion, to print your family documents on waterproof paper is for both fun and function. TerraSlate waterproof paper is not just impervious to liquids, it is also rip-proof and color-tight without lamination. This means that you can print high-quality, detailed, full-color images with pretty much any standard home printer. There’s no need to go to a professional printer to have duplicates made of your important family documents. Our waterproof paper means you can keep a version of your family history easily accessible without ruining the originals. The duplicates can be printed clear enough — and even blown up to a larger size, depending on the resolution of your scans — that you can make out the details without needing to reference the original documents so you can get your genealogy work done.
Just Say No To Lamination
The key to our waterproof paper is we help you avoid lamination and preserve your family history properly. Printing clear, fade-resistant images on our waterproof printer paper means you can have versions of each document to reference and show off. And, unlike lamination, you can easily cut out specific shapes without ruining the integrity of the waterproofing. The heat of lamination can damage your documents rather than protect them, and if anything happens to make the lamination bubble or separate your documents may be unsalvageable. Instead, grab a ream or two of TerraSlate waterproof paper, scan everything, and print durable, clear copies.