The Film Preservation Guide: The Basics for Archives, Libraries, and Museums, and: IPI Media Storage Quick Reference (review)

The National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) recently published The Film Preservation Guide: The Basics for Archives, Libraries, and Museums, a guide that is noteworthy not only for its underlying simplicity, jargon-free language, and logical arrangement, but particularly for its comprehensive scope. The text is user-friendly, defining technical terms both at first use and in the book's glossary. Crafted for the novice, the guide deals with the basics in film preservation and is arranged in an order that parallels the film archivist's work, from initial handling and viewing of the celluloid to its public exhibition.

The guide includes several tables that prove extremely helpful—especially Table 3, "Film Damage and Decay: Summary." This table identifies a particular problem, explains how to detect it, offers possible symptoms, and finally a remedy. Coming from the NFPF, this information and step-by-step direction at the archivist's fingertips necessarily instills confidence in the proper handling of the films in his or her care. The guide's photographs are equally instructive. One series of photographs, for instance, illustrates the best way to open a film can, to remove a film that is on a core (instead of a reel), and to clean mold from a film reel.

The guide's value lies not only in its practicality but in its wide application to a range of preservation institutions. In Table 5, "Film Equipment by Function: Safe Handling Tools for Every Budget," the NFPF surveys equipment for three different budget levels: basic, midlevel, and high-end budget. Implicitly dispelling the myth of elitism surrounding preservation, the NFPF makes quality preservation a possibility for all archivists, even those with very little money in their preservation budgets. All archivists, the NFPF suggests, can make progress toward their goal of preserving the films in their care. In this case, a simple table actually offers inspiration.

In the past, knowledge and popular discourse surrounding film preservation and restoration by large, well-funded, high-profile archives had the dual effect of not only inspiring the less fortunate archives with some understanding of what was possible (always with the unspoken caveat "if only you have a large enough budget") but also of overwhelming the more modest institutions with the reality of an ever-widening gap between the latest technological possibilities paired with the extremely limited budgets within which many of them (us) must operate.

The guide presents the "Basic Budget and Mid-Level Budget" lists of equipment useful for replacing containers, transferring film from reel to core, viewing, inspecting for damage and collecting technical data, making repairs, and restoring leader. By presenting a "basic" budget list of necessary equipment for each of these functions, the NFPF helps the poorly funded archive set priorities, so that even if it cannot obtain the entire "basic budget" list, the archivist can make sure to acquire certain items first, and not expend the budget on some of the higher-ticket items until the archive has carried out the most crucial functions listed. An archivist can further refine equipment acquisition priorities by using this table. If the archivist of a small archive is just beginning film preservation work, she can more economically initiate the process with only those items designated for replacing containers. As resources allow, the archivist can proceed through the list. The logical arrangement and progression of activities simplifies the steps toward preserving films and outlines the basic tools and supplies needed to do this.

In addition to helpful tables, appendices, glossary, and index, the guide includes a select bibliography, as well as a list of pertinent Web sites, useful listservs, and discussion groups. The value of this book cannot be overestimated. To provide some personal context, in 1990 when I began working in a moving image archive (the Peabody Awards Archive), I had to learn on...