We are very pleased to report that we have received a Preservation Assistant Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities! This grant will support a general preservation assessment of the WCS Archives film collection, which contains approximately 2,200 film prints created by WCS zoo, aquarium, and field conservation staff over the twentieth century. A preservation consultant will conduct a formal assessment of the film collection and its storage environment in order to inform the Archives’ goals of creating a sustainable preservation plan for the collection and making it accessible.The assessment will support the Archives’ future ability to budget and plan for the collection’s rehousing and stabilization and determine options for the collection’s future accessibility.
We look forward to keeping you updated as the assessment gets underway this year!
For more on the NEH’s recent awards announcement, see here.
Wow! Congratulations on obtaining this planning grant. My memories of the WCS film collection go back to the days when the Heads and Horns Building included a concrete vault in the basement, designed for the storage of nitrate film. I believe there were still one or two cans of nitrate film on site when I started.