[Martha Grenzeback]

We have just discovered some 150 negatives, some dated 1936, others that were donated to us before 1920, so clearly predating that. The later ones are clearly marked along the edge Eastman-nitrate-Kodak; the older ones are not, but I am assuming are also the dangerously flammable non-safety type of negative.

The images are important, and we are digitizing them. But I am wondering what to do with the original negatives. Dispose of them, and if so how? And I’m a little anxious about destroying the only original image. On the other hand, we don’t really have the facilities to keep these in chilled conditions. On the bright side, I don’t see or smell any obvious sign of deterioration. Yet.

[Grant Briscoe]

Do you have any partnerships with other museums? I would consider, after digitization of course, sending them off to another local museum or archives to be stored which has the appropriate storage capacities and facilities.

[Carolyn Schimandle]

We have an approximately 2 square foot collection of nitrate negatives. We are digitizing the images, but will also archive prints of all of them to avoid issues with digital media no longer being readable or having to be copied into a new format multiple times as technology changes. In addition, digitization is most likely going to keep improving dramatically, and today’s high-resolution will be low-res a few years down the road. That said, we are also going to keep the negatives, because even a print is a copy of the original, which is the negative. We were considering offsite storage until I got the recommendation (from this community) to check out NPS’s Conserve O Gram number 14/11, “Cold Storage for Photograph Collections – Using Individual Freezer Units.” It provides excellent information on purchasing and using a heavy-duty upright home freezer unit for nitrate negative storage. This is much more manageable budgetwise and spacewise than what we had thought we’d have to provide to store the negatives onsite, so this is the way we are going to go. Just in case you don’t have the Conserve O Gram webpage already bookmarked in Favorites, here it is:
https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/cons_toc.html

[Martha Grenzeback]

Thanks! Good reminder about Conserve O Gram. I don’t think our collection is large enough for our administration to think it worthwhile to purchase a freezer. I like the idea of creating a set of prints. And there is a local museum that might be interested in these negatives. But they would expect to be able to sell the digital images.

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