Genealogy Chat

Help! Am Fairly new to this but have acquired quite a lot of BMD certs. How do you store them safely? I understand transparent plastic envelopes are a BAD THING.

Think they are OK as long as they are acid free. You can buy special folders and wallets from S & N Geneaology. Kate :)

You can get a special album and sleeves from S and N Genealogy or a site I recently found called my-history Dont forget if you have the old ones you will need the longer album to accommodate them.

As long as you use acid free pockets abd folders you can store them however you like. same goes for photos, using acid free albums with corners will keep the pictures better for longer

Janet, What I do with mine is run them through the Scanner, keep a copy on the Scanner Program and a copy on the Hard Drive, then I print a copy off. This copy I keep in a plastic wallet so that they are to hand if I need them. Then the original is stored away safely in an acid free envelope. Hope that helps. Joy

whsmith also sell them look for acid free I paid 2.99 for a pack of 100 last week. Sue

Smiths sell the acid free A4 size pockets which I use for the certs I receive from the GRO and they are a perfect fit! However, as Heather pointed out, the old certs are too big for A4 pockets and I have had to fold mine to fit!. Mine were certs, hand copied, from records at the GRO and I only have two examples.....I guess that if it becomes a regular occurance I will have to review buying specialist pockets :) Chris

Thanks for all those tips. I shall investigate acid-free pockets as suggested. By the way, I know the ones from S&N are bigger than those from WHS but they seem expensive at £5.99 for 10 double ones. I wonder if the quality is higher?

Can I just say ; you are all on about these acid free pockets, but what about fire!!! Yesterday in Stationary Box £9.99 metal file boxes which I would say better to store certs in, acid free pockets Babs

Well, I guess that they must be, I mean Ive paid £5.50 for 10 (which can take 20 certs back to back) and they are really clear. In fact you fiddle about because you think you are on a page and its a clear sleeve infront of one with a cert. They are archival quality - I dont think Smiths are. I guess you tend to pay for what you get and I just bought a photo album from my-history on line because Ive got some very precious photos from dads house which I would hate to fade or perish. Blimey Babs just read your posting, never occurred to me about that! Luckily dads photos that I got from his house this week are in a big metal box (like a case, gawd knows what it was for) so I better put my albums in that. Thanks for the tip.

Heather, I did not think about it till I bought a filing cabinet to store everything in, then the next week shop had more in but metal ones as well;; then it hit me what about a fire !! now I wish I had got ametal file cabinet;; but I am going to get one of the meal file boxes mentioned and store inside the file. But heaven forbid if there was a fire all my research on paper would be for nothing !! think about it any discs comp the lot makes me shudder Babs