This post was contributed by Bronwen Maseman, a Madison-based librarian, educator, consultant, and researcher. This case study is part of the Community Archiving Workshop Regional Training of Trainers program, funded by an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant (RE-85-18-0039-18) in partnership with the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
The Museum and its Collections
As Wisconsin’s Museum of Nature and Culture, the Milwaukee Public Museum welcomes visitors to three and a half floors of exhibits drawing from a collection of over 4 million artifacts amassed since the museum’s genesis in the 1850s. Among these collections are over 500,000 items related to anthropology and ethnography, including original field notes, photographic collections, archeological artifacts, and audiovisual materials.
Meeting the Collection Challenge: Participating in the Community Archiving Workshop Training of Trainers Project
Dawn Scher Thomae, the Museum’s Curator of Anthropology Collections, attended the June 2019 Community Archiving Workshop Training of Trainers event with a specific collection in mind. Dawn was concerned about the condition of some of the Museum’s original fieldwork and audio tapes and wanted to find out how to best preserve them so they could be digitized and returned to source communities. The focus of the project was on the Native American film and audio tapes created by Museum anthropologists doing fieldwork primarily in Wisconsin and Canada between the 1940s and 1980s. Along with Collections Informatics Manager Alyssa Caywood and A/V Technician Heidi Spencer, they embarked on a transformative journey with the help of CAW Mentor Amy Sloper, and Emily Pfotenhauer, Recollection Wisconsin Digital Strategist and Grants Manager.
The Milwaukee Public Museum had originally envisioned a Community Archiving Workshop to assess the condition of these materials, involving not only MPM staff, but also Wisconsin tribal members, archivists from the Milwaukee County Historical Society, and UW-Milwaukee graduate students in the Museum Studies and Library and Information Science programs.
The at-risk materials assessed by the MPM team consisted of 78 16mm acetate films, 75 open-reel audio tapes and 9 videos. Open-reel audio tape has a unique set of preservation risks and priorities, outlined in more detail in the case study of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire’s participation in the CAW Training of Trainers project. Here, we will focus on the team’s work on 16mm film.
Preservation Spotlight: 16mm Acetate Film
With the goal of assessing preservation status and also creating a comprehensive inventory of all films, the MPM team borrowed the CAW film inspection kit that is available from Recollection Wisconsin for loan. The kit contains equipment including a film rewind set, a light table, film ruler, various types of leader and splicing materials, and other tools useful for identifying and assessing 16mm film.
The MPM team looked at:
Acetate deterioration: Like all storage media with an acetate base, 16mm films are at risk of deterioration as the acetate is transformed into acetic acid over time. Acetate deterioration is otherwise known as “vinegar syndrome,” and it’s fairly easy to detect by smell alone. To get a more detailed picture of preservation risks, however, the MPM team used A-D strips.
When placed inside a film canister or other closed storage container, the A-D strip will change color in the presence of acidic vapor. Depending on the color of the strip, the team assigned a numerical value indicating the extent of deterioration. These values can be used to prioritize preservation activities.
Storage conditions: 16mm film should be stored horizontally in order to spread the weight of the film evenly over the maximum surface area of the canister. While metal canisters do provide protection from dirt and other contaminants, they can rust, presenting further risk to the film inside. The bulk of the collection had already been transferred from metal canisters to archival boxes during a prior inventory project. The MPM team rehoused films in metal canisters if they had available archival boxes of the right size, and planned for further rehousing in future.
Winding: Many of the films in the MPM’s collection were being stored on metal or plastic reels, instead of cores. Archival best practice is to store 16mm film on cores made of chemically inert plastic. Cores take up less space than reels, and reduce the surface area of film that is in contact with the winding surface, lessening the risk of contamination or damage.
In addition to assessing preservation status, the MPM team also learned new skills for film identification. Using a modified version of the CAW Film Inventory Spreadsheet and Instructions, they assessed and recorded information on:
Film length: The length of 16mm film is measured in footage, or the number of feet of film on a reel. Instead of unwinding the reel and measuring its length, it is much easier to use a specialized film ruler, which indicates the footage in a reel based on its radius. Dawn, Alyssa and Heidi simply placed the end of the ruler at the center of the reel, and read its length from the ruler.
Film sound: Did you know that you can see the sound on 16mm film? By unwinding the film using the rewind set included in the film inspection kit, or by simply placing a small section of film on the included light table, the team could tell whether a film was silent or included sound. Films with sound have a visible “sound track” next to the images, in the form of a squiggly or banded line (called an optical track) or a brown magnetic stripe adhered to one edge of the film (called a magnetic track).
Film content: To identify the content of the films, the MPM team relied on several sources of information. Some film containers had information printed on their boxes or on papers or cards found inside the box. The team also had access to legacy data from an earlier inventory project. The team used existing metadata to differentiate between original films and duplicates in order to help prioritize digitization. They also worked together to establish rules for determining film titles, numbering unnumbered canisters, and other cataloging quandaries.
Meeting the Covid Challenge: A Modified Plan for Collaboration and Skill-Building
The beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the immediate closure of the Museum, in March 2020 forced Dawn and the rest of her team to reconsider their plans for an in-person workshop. They decided to wait until workplace conditions changed and the team had time to return to the project. The time to move forward came in April 2021, when the team began focused work that continued until August 2021.
The MPM team chose to conduct several intensive 2-3 hour sessions to work on identification, assessment, and metadata recording activities. Although they were not able to collaborate with community members as they had originally envisioned, Dawn, Alyssa and Heidi still benefited from collaboration as they learned new skills and confronted challenges.
Some of these challenges involved learning to use new equipment and techniques. The team provided valuable feedback on their struggles with measuring film, using A-D strips, and learning how to use reel to reel audio materials. By working together to solve problems and show each other new skills, the team members gained confidence and feel prepared to share their new knowledge with others.
Moving with Confidence into the Future
As they worked through the assessment and inventory process, the team also gained a more clear picture of next steps for the collection. By looking at each item in detail, they gained greater insight into the diversity of the collection and its representation of Native American groups, confirming their initial desire to digitally return this material to its source communities as part of the MPM’s dedication to cultural repatriation.
The inventory of these materials, and the skills gained, will be crucial for assessing and designing collection storage in the planned new museum building. The inventory process was also essential in enriching metadata for patron and community access, and for planning and funding future digitization of the films and audio materials, in consultation with tribal communities.
