David Litster and Professor Gordon Daines, HBLL Special Collections
Film and video preservation and restoration is one of the most pressing unsolved problems faced by libraries and studios today. The basics of this science, unlike that of book preservation, are still being explored and developed. The end goal of my project was to compile and create a resource using materials culled from the best research to date on this problem. The preservation committee of the BYU Harold B. Lee Library would then use my resource to develop a workflow, set of standards, and “best practices” approach to dealing with BYU’s film and preservation issues. I worked under the direction of University Archivist Gordon Daines and Video Production Manager Mike Hill of the Library to decide the scope of my research and the final format of my findings.
The advent of motion pictures has been one of the defining inventions of the twentieth century. Film and television have changed the way we think, vote, learn, spend, act, etc. It is difficult to envision one aspect of our world that has not been touched by these two mediums. However, this powerful tool we have used continuously for the last century to create art, influence opinion, and record history has itself become critically threatened. From a 2005 Library of Congress press release, “Fifty percent of the films produced before 1950 and 80 to 90 percent made before 1920 have disappeared forever.” This statement, while capturing the essence of the problem, fails to address the subject of audio and video recordings, which face different deterioration issues, but the same grave situation. Most of these preventable losses have happened through ignorance of proper care and storage techniques, since the medium itself was new and at the time, not well understood. Also, the creators of these recordings may not have perceived the value that their creations would have to future generations. The challenge and dilemma of video and film preservation and restoration is one that all institutions are just beginning to grapple with. The problem has gained prominence within the last thirty years, and sorting through the billions of hours of unique footage, deciding how and what to preserve, and saving that which is in danger of being lost forever is the primary challenge for the 21st century librarian.
My original proposal was written in the context of an active preservation project stemming from the work I was involved in with Mike Hill. Since the problem of film and video preservation is both such a new and urgent issue, many institutions grasp only the magnitude of the problem, not how to solve it or even how to design a solution. Since we had to begin own research from scratch, I wanted to document the process and the research we did and make it available to help other institutions in our situation decide how best to approach the problem. Our documentation and findings during the process would be compiled and presented at the 2007 Conference of the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
Mike Hill suggested that I work with Gordon Daines, a member of the newly formed HBLL Preservation Committee, to continue my research into the subject. Gordon and I decided that the goals of my original proposal would need to be postponed until basic policy decisions had been made and implemented by the committee. Gordon helped me focus my research into creating a resource that his committee would use to make policies on what the Library would choose to preserve, how it would be preserved, and what steps the Library could take to prevent damage or loss of precious Film and Video materials. I would produce a resource that would deal with basics of format identification, recommended care and storage practices, common signs of deterioration and recommended practices, and preliminary guidelines for selecting what to preserve, how to preserve it and what formats and practices to consider for future preservation.
I soon realized that the resource I was preparing would not be useful as a static report, but needed to be adaptable to give the committee the best idea of what to do. Presenting Gordon with a “research notebook” would give the committee the freedom to modify and expand on the research I had done as necessary to accomplish their goals. The resource I was to deliver could be used by the committee to learn more about the problem and make decisions, then expanded with workflows for various types of media and issues.
I decided to use Microsoft OneNote 2007 to compile my research and recommendations into this format, a flexible, “living” document that could be expanded and formatted at will to meet Gordon’s needs as his committee carried out its work. Under Gordon’s direction, I compiled what I felt was the best research and recommendations. I also included numerous links to audio and video preservation projects and institutions on the Internet, as well as the full texts of various existing preservation guides, each dealing with a different aspect of preservation.
I delivered this document to Gordon, and explained and demonstrated to him how he could use this format to expand and modify my initial research to fit his needs. When the work of the committee is finished, I hope that a future preservationist will be able to refer to a future “notebook” in his daily work of understanding preservation issues, selecting media to preserve, and following the guidelines within to preserve BYU’s audiovisual heritage for generations to come.
References
- Library of Congress Press Release PR 05-262, Sept. 27, 2005, ISSN 0731-3527