In the process of working on the scrapbook I’m currently scanning and conserving, I found I was having trouble reading some of the notations. In this case, they are in white ink on black paper.
I happened to have a UV LED flashlight in my desk (what, everyone doesn’t have these sitting around?) and, as an experiment, I tried using it to view the notations and they were a LOT easier to read. I’ve not tried this on albums that are dark ink on a light background but the white ink used in the album I’m working on seems to fluoresce a bit which helps the readability.
These UV flashlights are pretty inexpensive and seem to make a good tool to provide an alternative light source in at least this situation.
Linden Tree Leaves 