Angry Archivist: Newspaper Bookmarks

Angry Archivist: Newspaper Bookmarks

Here is one of the first newspaper bookmarks we found in this Civil War clothing ledger. You can see more scraps of newspaper further into the book. Our angry archivist was not happy to find these....
Here is one of the first newspaper bookmarks we found in this Civil War clothing ledger. You can see more scraps of newspaper further into the book. Our angry archivist was not happy to find these….

This week, we were scanning new material to add to our Research Arsenal database. This is always fun because you never know what historic gems you might uncover while you’re digitizing, but in this case we found a new archival faux pas that we’re passing on to our readers–newspaper bookmarks.

We’re probably all guilty of this at one point or another in our lives. You’re reading a book and want to save the page, so you stick a piece of paper in it to mark it. No big deal, right? Well, it is if the piece of paper you place in the book is acidic and you leave it there for nearly 50 years.

Here is an example of the yellowed acidic discoloring left behind on the original Civil War document from the 1974 newspaper clipping. The longer the acidic paper sits there the more pronounced the damage will be.
Here is an example of the yellowed acidic discoloring left behind on the original Civil War document from the 1974 newspaper clipping. The longer the acidic paper sits there the more pronounced the damage will be.

While scanning some clothing ledger books we discovered several pages in each book “marked” by a scrap of newspaper. Luckily, one of the scraps had the publication date on it, so we know that these have probably been in the ledgers since close to that date—January 27, 1974.

Yellowed paper is a classic sign of acidity and as you can see, these torn newspaper pieces are pretty yellow. All that acid has been sitting in these books for nearly 50 years discoloring the original Civil War era pages.

This is a good reminder for any well-meaning researcher who marks pages this way, not to do that. You may mean to go back and remove those markers, but what happens when you don’t and they lie forgotten for decades? The same applies for sellers of Civil War era books and diaries who like to mark significant pages with scraps of paper (or worse, post-it notes). Please don’t do this! If you ever purchase a diary or book, please go through it and make sure that there are not things like this squirreled away inside your books damaging them.

If you do have to save pages and need to use markers, please use archival paper so that it does not damage the book’s pages. Archival paper is easy to find nowadays; you can even find it in 8.5 x 11-inch sheets at Walmart very inexpensively.

Please do not use newspapers as bookmarks! Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

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