Home About ANICA Search News Contributions Contact Us Members' Corner

ANICA Home > Status of Collections > June 2002 Summary Report


June 2002 Summary Report

The following collections have been processed and relocated over the last 6 months:

Frank Johnston 13,030 negatives
'ANU and Early Canberra' (Robert Strangman) 6,635 (in process)
Athol Shmith 369 negatives
AIS Material Cabinet 62 (in process) 560 (in process)
Total 20,594 (20/6/02)

Almost all of these negatives were on cellulose acetate.

The Frank Johnston collection was found to be in uniformly good condition, and has been relocated to the NLA Cold Store.

The 'ANU and Early Canberra Collection' has now been identified as belonging to the Robert Strangman Collection. All but 14 negatives are on cellulose acetate and in good condition.14 were found to be on cellulose nitrate. This collection is almost finished, one subcollection containing 979 negatives remains to be rehoused.

The Athol Shmith Collection was also on cellulose acetate. 76 out of a total of 369 negatives were found to be actively deteriorating and smelly (20.6%). These deteriorated negatives are now in the Preservation Services freezer, the others in the NLA Cold Store.

The AIS collection in Cabinet 62 contains material relating to Papua New Guinea in the 1950's and 1960's. It was missed when the earlier AIS material was processed because it was physically located in another area. Unfortunately, a substantial proportion of the negatives in this collection are already severely channelled, while most of the rest are actively deteriorating. Looking at the patterns of deterioration in this collection suggests that film type is an important factor in determining when a collection or parts of a collection will 'go' - all the channelled negatives have had a 'U' shaped notch, while none of the 'V' notched films have been channelled or shown AD readings greater than 1. This is in spite of the fact that some of the 'V' notched films are apparently older than the U notched films. It also appears at this point as though film type could be just as important, if not more important, than physical proximity to 'smelly' negatives, in determining the onset of active deterioration. 1

Apart from the physical relocation process, the reporting process of the project has been refined, and standardised, in order to make the many details more intelligible to others, such as Special Collections cataloguers, for example. This information is now available Library wide, in 'Cellulose Acetate' folder on the J-drive. The new reporting format details factors such as film base, format, how many are black and white vs colour, new location details of the negatives as well as locations of relevant paper and/or electronic files relating to the material, as well as the significance, level of use, discard decision and copy priority rating of the material.


(1) All AIS negatives are already labelled with 'L' numbers, however, they are physically arranged by subject, which bears no relationship to the L number. If the data that has been collected so far is sorted by L number, rather than by PIC number (which we are assigning and which is an indicator of physical proximity in storage), it becomes evident that the L number appears to be a better predictor of deterioration than Pic number.


Home About ANICA Search News Contributions Contact Us Members' Corner