We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
459
but also by greater demands that films be accessible. Some collections have no funds at all for preservation copying.
The goal in film preservation is to extend the useful life of collection materials so that they remain accessible to future generations. The problem is to maximize each preservation dollar. Moreover, it is often not enough just to understand how to improve the care of collections; the benefits of preservation actions taken now must be communicated to funding agencies and somehow quantified in order to lay claim to scarce resources. This has been a source of great difficulty for film archives because so much of their work is preventive, rather than remedial, in nature. The benefits of such work are difficult to quantify in terms of dollars-and-cents or years of extended life.
Take an analogy from health care: Preventive medicine (regular checkups, immunization, etc.) is very cost effective, because when conditions are diagnosed early they are less costly to treat and involve fewer complications. Still, there remains a reluctance to endorse a new preventive medicine emphasis because the traditional "late treatment" pattern is already so expensive. Only with thoughtful analysis and a long-term view does the value of prevention become clear.
The film preservation equivalent of preventive medicine is the collection storage environment. Making original films last longer will reduce the need for emergency duplication and will "buy time" for collections. In the future, film will be reproduced and distributed by a host of new technologies, some now available and some as yet undreamed of. The key to access in the future is to preserve the original long enough to be converted, restored, and distributed in these new ways. Original films have the maximum image and sound quality, and will be the best "platform" from which to create access copies in the future. Digital restoration techniques will be a part of, but not a substitute for, preservation of original film materials.
The major preservation problems which now occupy so much of our efforts — degrading nitrate and acetate film base, color dye fading, audio and video tape deterioration — are all heavily dependent upon storage temperature and relative humidity (RH). Both science and actual experience agree that temperature and RH are the primary rate-controlling factors in such deterioration. Every treatise on preservation and conservation advises that cooler and (within limits) drier conditions are better for film.
Supporting Document A: Keeping Cool and Dry 35