Photograph Image Preservation Project

FAIN: PG-50049-07

Kitsap County Historical Society (Bremerton, WA 98337-1813)
Carolyn McClurkan (Project Director: May 2006 to January 2008)

A general preservation assessment of six collections comprising 86,000 photographs and negatives that document the history and culture of western Washington State from 1913 to the mid-1980s.

With the receipt of the proposed NEH Preservation Assistance Grant, the Kitsap County Historical Society Museum Archives (KCHSMA) will engage Nicolette Bromberg, the Visual Materials Curator, Special Collections Division, University of Washington Libraries, to conduct a preservation assessment of its photograph collections, beginning in January 2007. The preservation assessment will focus on evaluating the current conditions of the collections, including over 25,000 photographs, 59,000 negatives and slides, and 2,000 other images. These items are in varying degrees of deterioration, including disintegrating acetate negatives, nitrate film in corrosive metal canisters, and glass negatives with photo emulsions beginning to detach. Areas of assessment will include storage, housing, and preservation materials, with suggestions for development of a programmatic approach to appraisal, storage and preservation of the photographic collections, and methods of increasing user access to collections.