The Metropolitan Government Archives, a division of Nashville Public Library, collects and preserves the historically valuable records of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County, as well as other records of historical or documentary significance reflecting the history of our city. The Archives has over 5 million records dating from the 1780’s to the present. The audiovisual collection and preservation program was founded to conserve, preserve, and make accessible the moving image and sound collections in the Metro Archives and to collect and care for audiovisual records vital to the history and culture of Davidson County and Middle Tennessee. The archive seeks to preserve and increase awareness of Southern history and culture, create positive partnerships with other archives and the public, and support and contextualize artifacts and documents under the care of Metro Archives.
In service of these goals, over the last few months and continuing until October, we have been going through our entire film collection, approximately 400 16mm, 8mm, and super-8mm analog films– rewinding, identifying, inventorying, and testing the collection for decay. The purpose of the project is to create a healthier storage environment for our entire collection, and to build the foundation for preservation of and access to our rare content on film. Through this blog, we hope to share our progress and our resources, and to build a dialogue with you and with other smaller regionally-based collections.
I’m Melanie Meents, collections processor and digitization technician here in the Audiovisual Archives, and I’m your blog host along with the AVCC’s Audiovisual Archivist, Kelli Hix. We hope you’ll join us as we venture into the film inspection and rehousing world as we preserve and provide access to our collection’s rich content!
The Film Preservation Project is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation Assistance for Smaller Institutions Grant.
The AVCC is generously funded by Nashville Public Library Foundation and is located at the downtown library in Nashville, Tennessee.
