Don’t Put That in Your Scrapbook – From Duke University archivists

The Preservation Underground blog from Duke University Library’s Preservation and Conservation Departments has a post on the wild 3-D objects that show up in scrapbooks.

While it’s framed as advice to present-day scrapbookers on what not to use or paste in (cellophane tape, glitter, materials that attract insects and much more). It makes me wonder why the many 19th century scrapbooks I’ve seen that used flour paste as an adhesive weren’t thoroughly nibbled by mice. Mucilage, on the other hand (other brush?), sometimes resulted in clippings too discolored to read, and there was some 19th century scrapbook-making advice against using it. No one mentioned rocks, though.