Preserve and Create Online Access to Historic Acetate and Nitrate Negatives within the GE Photograph Collection

FAIN: PA-51398-05

Schenectady Museum Association (Schenectady, NY 12308-3198)
Chris G. Hunter (Project Director: July 2004 to August 2008)

Digitizing and cataloging 12,000 General Electric Company photographs dated 1892-1971, and developing a Web site featuring the images, which depict the impact of electric power on 20th-century American life. Additionally, purchase of cold storage units, boxes, and folders to rehouse 68,000 acetate and 12,000 nitrate negatives.

The Schenectady Museum & Planetarium will create an educational web site, "Inventing Modern America," utilizing images from the Museum's GE Photograph Collection and additional materials from the Museum's International Technology Archives. The Museum will preserve, re-house and refrigerate or freeze more than 81,000 acetate and nitrate negatives that have been identified by a photograph conservator as being at-risk. The Museum will create access to the negatives by digitizing and cataloging a selection of 12,000 negatives and creating a searchable online database for its collections.