News: Cut and Paste, Old Style (Scrapbooks & Archivists)

Some years back, and for what seemed like quite a while, people were talking about scrapbooking. As more aspects of everyday life were going digital, it felt like more and more people were paying homage to the paper-based mementoes of their experiences that appeared to be heading for oblivion. Quickly, and to support all the saving, trimming, and gluing that people were suddenly obsessing over, scrapbooking became a huge business, one that doubled in size between 2001 and 2004 to $2.5 billion. By 2003 over 1,600 companies were creating and selling scrapbooking products both in brick-and-mortar outlets and online.

In the years since that boom hit, scholars and material culture afficianados began to recognize scrapbooks as important cultural artifacts and to write about them in a broader historical and cultural context.

Click the source link for examples of scrapbook conservation projects.