National Archives and Records Service film-vault fire at Suitland, Md. : hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session, June 19 and 21, 1979 (1979)

177 The first American motion picture came into the collection as a copyright deposit in 1894. The primary objective of our collection at the Library is to have this material available for researchers looking at the record of American civilization. We collect foreign materials, but with greater selectivity than applies to materials of American origin. Prior to 1912, the Library retained copyright deposits of motion pictures in the form of prints on paper, made from the original negatives. In 1912, the copyright law was amended to make possible the deposit of prints on motion picture film, but since film was not considered a permanent medium, they were not retained after copyright registration. Instead, the Library retained scripts, stories, summaries, and other supporting documents of the films. In the late 1940's, the motion picture industry began to phase out 35 millimeter cellulose nitrate stock. The advent of safety film in 35 millimeter made possible a more permanent collection of early motion pictures by photographically copying the nitrate onto safety film. By 1958, the Library was receiving support for this activity from Congress and began, in a limited way, to reprint small amounts of nitrate motion picture film in its possession onto permanent film stock. The fact that a certain portion of it is on nitrate stock is simply a factor with which we must cope. Begun in the late 1950's and relying, first, on outside laboratories, the nitrate duplicating program entered a new and vigorous phase in 1970, with the establishment of our own duplicating laboratory. In the present decade, we have converted more than 30 million feet of nitrate to safety film. The laboratory has become the main force in our conversion program. In recent years, it reached an output of 4 to 6 million feet per year. We intend to relocate our laboratory in 1980, and we hope to substantially increase production. We have 70 million feet of nitrate film in our Wright-Patterson Air Force Base vaults and our Suitland vaults awaiting conversion. The historic importance of nitrate preservation is exemplified by numerous elements in our collections. The important Theodore Roosevelt Collection shows life from the earliest days of this century. Preservation of this collection has been completed, along with a computerbased catalog which is soon to be published. With the move to the James Madison Building, scholars will have informed access to this unique collection. The salvaging of another significant collection, the Kleine collection, from the early years of the film industrv, both fiction and documentary, has also been completed, and an index has been compiled. German, Italian, Japanese, and other films came to the Library after World Wai II via the Alien Property Custodian Act and represent another major collection whose duplication is nearing completion. It originally included 29 million feet of nitrate in fiction, documentary, and newsreel from the early 1930's and 1940's — an extraordinary record of how a world had gravitated toward war. Of this material, 9 million feet were disposed of because of deterioration and damage. Copving of the remainder has now been virtually completed. Numerous shipments of the originals have been returned