Item Storage
Physical Storage
The main risks affecting collections of archives are fire, flood, theft and unauthorised access. Your home won’t have archival-quality climate conditions. However, keeping your material somewhere cool, dry and secure will go a long way to keeping it in good condition.
The best storage for physical materials is acid-free boxing/foldering, but this is costly. Good quality folders and boxes will do. A handwritten list of all items in a box/files should be placed inside said items, with a backup copy held elsewhere.
Easily-lost labels (like post-it notes) should not be used outside of a box/file. Instead, use a pencil to clearly write the number on the outside of the box/file.
Storage boxes/files must avoid metal elements at all costs, including staples and paper clips, as metal will degrade over time and damage items. Metal items part of the archive collection (e.g. badges) will also corrode easily and damage other items. Any existing rust should be gently removed and metal items wrapped individually in acid-free paper before storing.
Fabric items may grow mould, so it is imperative to ensure items are cleaned and completely dry before storing on a flat surface. When storing fabric/metal it can be useful to place sachets of silica gel (the kind that come when you buy leather products) into the storage boxes to absorb minor penetrating damp.
Digital Storage
There are only a few specialist repositories for reliable, long-term preservation of digital items. They are not yet accessible to general users. In the meantime, digital records can be stored reasonably securely in the cloud and on hard drives.
Invest in good quality hard drives, such as Lacie or G-Technology. Avoid cheaper consumer brands. Most hard drives last for about two years, after which they need to be replaced and the content migrated.
Try and create duplicates/mirrors of your digital archives in case of technological failure.
Storage can cost money, though cloud storage is becoming quite cheap for smaller collections. An example is Google Suite, whose first update is approximately 20e PA. It should be noted that Google photos may not maintain the uploaded quality of the original photo, so be sure to have the original stored separately on a hard drive.
Open access/widely-used formats should be utilised where possible. Good examples include:
RTF (Rich Text File)
ODT and ODS (Open Office)
MP4 (audio)
WAV (audio)
JPG (image)
TIFF (image)
PNG (image)