NYU Libraries
In the Media Lab within NYU Libraries' Barbara Goldsmith Preservation & Conservation Department, my primary responsibility centered around working with archival film materials from the Special Collections. I was able to enhance my film handling skills by engaging with a range of formats, including 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8 films. The standard film inspection protocol included documenting annotations on both the film element and its container, capturing details like title, splices, edge code, generation, film base, and film stock, and mending splices where necessary. Additionally, I utilized A-D strips to assess decomposition levels and employed the Klaus Linnenbruegger 8/16/35 shrinkage gauge to determine the maximum shrinkage percentage. Following this, I updated the metadata obtained during the inspection in the online spreadsheets. Lastly, apart from conducting film inspections and updating metadata information, I also acquired hands-on experience with the Lasergraphics film scanner. This was particularly exciting for me, as my previous exposure to film scanning had been limited to working with a Cintel scanner and an MWA scanner.
