Choose albums and papers that are lignin- and acid-free.

If you leave a newspaper in the sun for an afternoon, you'll see how fast paper yellows even in a short exposure to heat and light. The lignin in the paper causes the yellowing. Lignin is a natural substance found in trees and plants. Since most paper is made from wood pulp it contains lignin. During the process of creating the paper from wood, acid is added to break down the chips into pulp. This acid will eventually migrate to your pictures and cause staining. So it's important to find albums and paper that are lignin- and acid-free. Thankfully, this is no longer difficult. Library suppliers and scrapbook companies now carry full lines of paper that are advertised as lignin- and acid-free.

Unfortunately, not all advertising can be trusted. Unless preservationists approve the paper and album, it's best to check the acid content yourself using a pH pen (see suppliers here). Draw a line on the paper using the pH pen. If the line turns purple, the paper is acid-free and safe to use. Any other color is an indication that acid is present. On darker-colored paper use a pH testing strip dampened with distilled water, then touched to the paper.

One final caution about paper: Before using dark-colored paper, even when you're sure it's acid-free, make sure the color won't run when exposed to water. If exposed to high humidity these paper colors may bleed and destroy your photographs.

Never use original photographs.

Why use original photographs and risk destroying them when you can make copies? Most scrapbook magazines and books show you how to crop and layout your images with stickers and cutouts. That's fine as long as you don't use your grandmother's original wedding picture or special family photos. One wrong move with the scissors and you've destroyed the irreplaceable. Cropping and using cutouts can also interfere with identification by obscuring parts of the image.

There are copy options that you can do yourself. Gone are the days of taking your original image to a photographer or using a copy stand. Scanners and computers have changed all that. For instance, if you own a scanner you can digitize the images and then print them on high-quality photo paper. Or you can go to a photo store, drugstore or other retailer that has a self-operated Picture Maker kiosk from Kodak. It allows you to crop, enlarge, reduce red eye and even add creative borders to your pictures. This method is too expensive to use for all your images, but it's perfect for a select few.

Film developing offers many opportunities for extra prints. When you take film to be developed you can request extra prints, selectively choose pictures from a Web site or have them placed on a CD-ROM. In this way you can experiment with duplicate prints without harming the original. You can place one in storage and the other in an album.

Including documents and clippings in your scrapbook adds another dimension to the story you're trying to tell. But since the paper is acidic you want to be careful the documents and clippings don't come into contact with your images. Preservationists recommend de-acidification before placing papers in scrapbooks. Seek the advice of an expert before attempting to use any of the de-acidification sprays now on the market or immersing the documents in a special solution. You can also make copies on acid-free and lignin-free papers and use those instead.