Today’s Follow Friday is about Caring for Your Family Papers and how the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) can help.

The NEDCC is a non-profit organization professional archivists rely on for training, advice, and preservation services. A leader in the field of supplying Caring for Your Family Paperspreservation information to museums, libraries, archives, and historical organizations, NEDCC also does a great job with information for individuals who are caring for their family papers.

NEDCC’s Preservation Leaflets cover a range of topics from the ideal storage environment to care of photographs to planning and prioritizing for preservation.

Visit their page for family collections here. Every single piece of advice you read from NEDCC you can take to the bank.

NEDCC also maintains a comprehensive suppliers list for providers of preservation services and supplies. At the top of the list every time is Hollinger-Metal Edge, the place professional archivists buy their supplies. Watch for announcements on my blog of their seasonal sales.

As I have said in the past, however, I cannot recommend Light Impressions for small individual orders. I think they have great products, but their order fulfillment for anything other than large institutional orders is just plain awful. You can get archival sleeves for your photographs and acid-free boxes from Hollinger Metal Edge. Hollinger will fill your order promptly and supplies top-quality archival products at a fair price. I have no financial interest in either company.

Here’s a list of supplies from Hollinger that any family historian can use. I had a lot of questions at Jamboree about family papers and their care, so stay tuned for more on this topic.