Digital BW, The Print

Hello, I handle vintage negatives all day every day.  Before any treatment,
you must know what they are made out of.  Never use the PEC film cleaner on
old negatives, the majority of them it will melt the base.  Do not wash old
negatives or get wet with out first trying a sample.  Edwall or Kodak Film
cleaner can be used ON THE BASE SIDE ONLY on almost all old photo negatives.
If you do, use a fresh tissue each time you swipe the film, because the
contaminants that you remove on the first swipe will scratch the film if it
is used a second time.  These miniscule scratches are hard to see with the
naked eye but scan like hell.  If you have a choice of scanner and are
talking about 35 or 120mm size, the diffuse light source of the polaroid
give much less scratches than the condensed Nikon type of light.

First, assemble the negatives and to the best of your ability, sort them
back into the original rolls (if sheets, use the notch code and emulsion
quality control number).  You will want to keep the dud shots for
experimentation.  

Test to see if they are nitrate or safety.  fast way is clipping a sliver
and taking it outside to give it a burn test, if it really takes off it is
Nitrate.  You can use film cleaner on both sides of Nitrate if the film has
not deteriorated.  If the base appears yellow, or at all sticky, avoid any
treatment.  Test the film cleaner on an edge first, and be sure it does not
put pin holes in the emulsion, which is a very common problem in cleaning.

I would recommend turning off all automatic dust correction software.  It
has a tendency to soften detail.  Generally, I spend at least an hour per
image, sometimes much more, on spotting and healing.  If your images have
commercial value, the effort is very worthwhile.  Many of the best selling
images here are from old amateur negatives, which will blow up quite well to
13x19 Super D size if carefully processed.

Photo conservation has its own books, user groups on the internet, and is a
standard course of study at a few universities.

My advise is to quit while you're ahead.  best of luck
Tom Robinson