As author and amateur photographer Oliver Wendell Holmes once put it, photographs are “the mirror with a memory.” Your family photographs are an irreplaceable record of people, places and events of your past. Photos are the leaves that add warmth, depth and interest to the otherwise bare statistical branches of your family tree.

But these precious “mirrors” into the past are easily “cracked.” Neglect, improper storage and even well-intentioned but misguided efforts to preserve old photos can ruin them: