Publication Date

Summer 2014

Document Type

Article

Keywords

Digitization, Preservation, Photography collections

Abstract

Film-based photographic collections of nitrate negatives pose major challenges to preservation and access because of unstable media and the lack of item-level indexing. Digitization offers an opportunity to capture the content of deteriorating negatives, to extend access to them, and to restore their usefulness as information resources. Digitization as a preservation strategy has been the subject of ongoing debate. This article contributes to the discussion by exploring access to and the preservation of film-based photographic collections and by presenting the digiti- zation project at the American Geographical Society Library as a case study. The project, Saving and Sharing the AGS Library’s Historic Nitrate Negative Images, was undertaken from 2010 to 2012 to preserve and provide access to over 69,000 nitrate negatives from its historic collections.

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Publication Statement

Copyright held by the author or publisher. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Krystyna K. Matusiak, Tamara K. Johnston

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

29 pgs

File Size

5.1 MB

Publication Title

The American Archivist

Volume

77

First Page

241

Last Page

269

ISSN

0360-9081

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