Final Week?

This week, in addition to film inspections, I took time to talk with David Grinnell, the chief archivist of the Heinz History Center. The interview was very insightful, and provided me with good information for my research topic. One of the most useful pieces of information involves what areas of a film policy are most important for the History Center. I intend to draft a portion of a policy that may be used as a starting point for creating a formal film policy for the Historic Society of Western Pennsylvania. I also redrafted and modified my survey, which I intend on giving on Tuesday, since we were closed on Saturday. I hope that with the survey, and one additional interview I will be able to start to capture the attitudes toward the film collection.

So far it has been made pretty clear that the film collection is almost a bother to deal with. However, the Historic Society of Western Pennsylvania is more dedicated to film preservation that other institutions have been in the past. This is apparent in how they acquired the Westinghouse Film Collection, the collection that I have been working with. I thought that it was part of the George Westinghouse Museum and brought in as part of the merger, this was not the case. The film actually comes from the Westinghouse Electric Collection, when Westinghouse Electric was sending material to archives and museums, the Westinghouse museum actually refused the film collection.

Part of making the film a more welcome part of the collection is with the drafting of a policy governing storage, use, and access. This will go a long way in solidifying the role of film within the museum and archive collections. I hope that the work I do will help make a difference at the institution, but it is hard to change people's attitude about the medium, when so many know so little about it. Luckily, as I may have mentioned before, David went through this program and took the film archives class as it was taught by Dr. Gracy. Though he has other priorities, film is definitely something that he sees as being an important asset and worth putting work in toward a policy to dictate how it is handled, and so ensure that it continues to be processed and cared for.

It seems that there is no shortage of cinephiles, and I wonder if other institutions have gone through this active process of changing attitudes about a new medium. Though I see similarities in how many people with a more traditional conception and education about archiving relate to digital materials. Many institutions do not have policies for things like how to accession emails, and very few people at all have any ideas on things like accessioning blogs and wikis or websites. Since I am not a cinephile, I like movies but that's about as far as it goes for me, I feel that this is a good jumping off point for getting into issues relating to other oft ignored mediums.