Connecting to Collections Care Webinar – Preserving Film Collections for the Future: A Web Application

Do you have movie films, slides, microfilms, and photographic film negatives of various types in your collections and you are not quite sure of the best way to take care of those materials? Are you unsure about whether you have a critical situation on your hands because of nitrate films or negatives? Or, do you know what to do if your collection has deteriorating acetate films? Do you know what or where to find the latest recommendations for preserving your materials? FilmCare.org is designed to help you keep up to date on the latest recommendations and to make it possible for you to make the best preservation choices for your collection.

This webinar will show you how to use FilmCare.org – a stand-alone, free resource designed to help guide you through the process of not only understanding what you have, but also how best to take care of it. You will learn the ins and outs of the website and understand how to access the critical information you need to know and be guided through the process of making informed decisions to optimize the longevity of your film collections. A series of interactive steps enables you to identify what you have, to set priorities, evaluate material needs, program and design storage strategies, and implement and monitor the preservation of film collections. Using the website’s resources, you will be able to analyze survey results, to evaluate the benefits of any storage on film stability, to choose between alternative approaches, to implement an appropriate preservation strategy, and most importantly, to proactively monitor your collection’s state of preservation over time.

Presenter

Jean-Louis Bigourdan is a senior research scientist at the Image Permanence Institute (IPI). He has a background in Chemistry, photography and conservation of photographic materials and he has been active in preservation research at IPI since 1994. He led the development of FilmCare.org. Bigourdan has studied the effect of microenvironments on the stability of acetate film. As well, he has been investigating the effect of cycling environmental conditions on library and archives materials and the implementation of dynamic management of temperature and humidity control in museums and archives. He received the 2016 Silver Light Award from the Association of Moving Image Archivists, Carrier Achievement in Moving Image Archives in recognition for his contributions to the field of film preservation.