David Neary, Oregon Historical Society, Summer 2014, IMLS
I spent the summer of 2014 in Portland, Oregon, working in the Oregon Historical Society's film archive. The main focus of my work was on the Society's nitrate collection. Stored in a temperature and humidity-controlled vault, this collection of more than 400 cans of film had been only partially cataloged. I went through every film in the collection and made certain that a full database record was created for each film - including a database code, a shelf location, a title (creating one where one was not available), and various information about the condition of the film(s) in each can. When the entire collection was fully processed, I took the films suffering most severely from the effects of nitrate deterioration and began a clean-up process. This included dusting nitrate powder from the reels, scraping sticky nitrate residue from them and winding through the films removing the most damaged segments to prevent a spread of deterioration. I was able to save more than 20 films that had been marked for disposal over the course of the summer.
