Journaling = written documentation or storytelling included on specific scrapbook pages.
Journaling serves many purposes as a scrapbook element. Most important, it establishes the 5Ws of each page: setting who, what, when, where and why the photos were taken.
Journaling should include names, dates, events, locations and any other basic identifiers that will make the page self-explanatory to readers down the road. Even simple journaling can be effective, if it tells the story!
Journaling enhances scrapbooks in other ways. It identifies a storyteller: the person from whose point-of-view the page has been assembled. A mother may journal about her feelings for her child. A scrapbooker may journal about him or herself in a "Book of Me" scrapbook. Heritage scrapbooks often include personal memories of the subjects, as experienced by the scrapbook creator.
Journaling also speaks to the period or emotional tone that is expressed by the page. Poems, quotes, song lyrics and even slang expressions all add a feeling of immediacy and "we are there!" to a scrapbook page.