Significant unpublished documentation includes laboratory notebooks, professional and personal correspondence, and diaries. Photographs taken with colleagues and students, as well as pictures of laboratories, apparatus, pilot plants, and other facets of the professional environment provide further valuable historical documentation. Even such items as trade catalogs and commercial publications can be of interest many years later. Some people, not wishing to contemplate their own mortality, put off making a will to the ultimate disadvantage of their family. For similar reasons, many scientists and engineers put off arrangements for the preservation of their papers to the ultimate detriment of us all.
Chemistry requires chemicals.
To this end, it is best for interested individuals to make an initial approach to an archives now, while the papers are intact and before the matter is put off and forgotten. It is not necessary for donors to give up physical possession of their records until they are ready to do so. Actual transference of files can be done at the mutual convenience of both parties and may be postponed for a number of years if the files are still actively being used. If a space problem exists, the papers may also be transferred in installments. There are many institutions that archive personal papers.