I really don't know what I'm doing wrong here. I've just had success sending it to another of my emails by cutting and pasteing from the word doc i saved so will attempt that now. Hope someone finds it helpful as I have. Chris Hello all Most of you will still have those photo albumns where you lift the plastic up and put your photo in and put the plastic back on top, in your collections. Most of you will no longer have the negatives for those photos. Most of you will probably not have scanned them yet either. I know that there are such albums within this organisation. These albums are not archivally sound. In fact, they are dangerous to photos and documents stored in them. The adhesive on the page itself will seriously damage the photo, and the plastic is not an archivally inert plastic and will in time turn into a gooey gluey substance. I have seen, in the conservation laboratory, such albums which are a gooey mess. Below is advice from the National Preservation Office, which has come through the nzrecords listerv. If you cannot remove the photos, it has been suggested elsewhere that after scanning etc, the plastic is removed and the pages interleaved with acid-free tissue or release paper. Tiena Archivist The following advise is given Mark Strange, Senior Photography Conservator at The National Library of new Zealand. Making high-quality reproductions requires great care and Gareth Winter is quite right in recommending that the images be digitised without the plastic cover sheet between the prints and the scanner or camera. He's also right to advise that removing the prints from albums where the adhesive has lost its flexibility can be hazardous - and may need professional assistance. If the prints are difficult to remove, contact a member of the NZ Conservators of Cultural Material (formerly NZPCG). I would suggest that the sooner this happens the better. While magnetic albums do provide physical protection, they are one of a large variety of enclosure materials that contribute to the chemical decay of photographs. Sad examples include glassine envelopes or sleeves, rubber cement adhesive, sticky dots, double-sided tapes, folders and slide pockets made from PVC... this list is too long. Magnetic album pages have a clear overlay sheet (which is sometimes PVC) and the pages are coated with fine stripes of latex adhesive. Typically the adhesive discolours, loses its flexibility, and causes fading, discolouration or staining of the images. There are good alternative storage solutions than can maintain the original order, such as acid-free paper albums with photo-corners, or polypropylene pockets and binders.