A lot of what we know about Oregon’s past is preserved in photographs. The Lane County Historical Museum has been working for over a year to protect thousands of those pictures.The museum is about halfway finished with a project to digitally enhance and copy roughly 9,000 nitrate negatives. Most date back to the early 20th century.
Rachel Byers is a digital archivist who’s working on the project. She says there are a couple reasons why this project is important. First, many of the negatives are damaged and the film deteriorates over time.
“I really like this job because it’s like a treasure hunt,” Byers says. “You never know what you're going to see each day. Having the images as digital files just makes them so much more accessible to the people in this museum and also to the public."
There is also some urgency to getting this project completed. The nitrate film is highly combustible if not kept in cool temperatures, so they could be dangerous.
The equipment the museum is using to preserve the images also allows it to imbed information about the pictures in the digital files—information like names, dates and locations.
The museum hopes to complete the project later this year.
