Plans for your journal/diary after your death?

[Caprese]

*Originally posted by Eve *
**I kept diaries from 1970-78, and they are going into the shredder the moment I buy one. **

heh
Those are almost the exact years of the journal I once kept.
I got rid of them (bunch of notebooks) sometime during the 80’s. I’d changed so much.
It was just time to let that stuff go.
Don’t keep a journal anymore.

[Sunspace]

After I die, if anyone wants my sketchbooks and diaries, they’re welcome to them. Museum? As a set? Fine.

I find it very hard to imagine that there’d be much interest in the sketchbooks though. The diaries, maybe, after reading what Lissa wrote above, but not the sketchbooks.

[Lissa]

*Originally posted by Ms Boods *
**My regret in life is that I had planned originally to get my degree in Museum Studies, and live happily ever after…but, no, I had to end up with a Ph D and no job in my field! (a lot of family pressure that ‘just’ the Museum Studies masters wasn’t as ‘good enough’ – from outside work, I know I would be far happier as a curator, or preservation worker, or archivist in a museum than as a professor, which is why I did not take that path…oh well!) **

I don’t have a degree, but since I work in a small museum, I get to do everything from cleaning and preserving artifacts, to doing research and designing exhibits.

Honest to God, I have never been happier in my life. I actually am happy when it’s a work-day.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much money in my field. My paycheck is almost a symbolic gesture, but then again, I’d probably pay to work there!

I’d suggest, if you have some free time, that you might want to approach a small museum or historical society about volunteer work. (That’s how I started out.) I think you’d really enjoy it, and small museums are so desperate for help that you might end up doing some really interesting things.

Orginally posted by Sunspace **

I find it very hard to imagine that there’d be much interest in the sketchbooks though. The diaries, maybe, after reading what Lissa wrote above, but not the sketchbooks.

**

You might be surprised. We have a lot of sketchbooks in our collection. They’re not by famous artists, nor, sometimes, very good ones, but they were made by people who lived in our community, and that makes them special to us.
A few tips for those who wish to keep their diaries forever:

1. It’s best to buy books which are made of acid-free paper, and to either use pencil, or an acid-free ink. Sadly enough, some modern paper crumbles away over time because of the way it was made. (Newspapers from the Civil War era look better than those from the early 1980s.) Inks with acids in them can actually eat through the paper over time.

2. Store them in acid-free boxes, or at least wrap them in a sheet or towel if you must put them in an ordinary cardboard box. Try to keep them in an environment which has steady temperature and humidity. (A closet works well for this purpose.) Check them periodically for signs of pest infestation.

3. If you wish to put newspaper clippings, pressed flowers, or pictures in the book, it’s best to put them in a plastic envelope first. I suggest you try to use ones which are made for baseball cards, because they’re made of a plastic which doesn’t “off gas.”

4. Try not to open them all the way, for fear of breaking the spine, especially if they’re older. Handle them as little as possible to avoid damaging the paper with skin oils.

5. With sketchbooks, the first thing we do upon recieving them is to put a sheet of acid-free tissue paper between each page, to avoid the images “ghosting” onto the backs of the pages above. It depends on the medium, of course, but it’s generally a good idea to do so to ensure preservation of the image.

Some of these suggestions may seem a little extreme, but we in the museum business always try to think of how to preserve an object for hundreds of years.