Week Two

Well today I began to get down and dirty with my collection, and I meant literally dirty. By the time I was completed with my two hours, my white glove had become completely brown from rust. There is every type of film deterioration present within my collection, ranging from simple dirt to mold and vinegar syndrome. One film in particular, “Spring Practice Varsity-34 vs. Old Timers-7 1952,” is in such poor condition that Miriam could not even believe the level of deterioration. (It was pretty gross..) This is very troubling, as some interesting and important material can be found in this collection, like the 1956 Sugar Bowl in which the first African-American player, Bobby Grier, broke the southern bowl game color-barrier. The depth of this collection and the interesting history of the Pittsburgh Football Team have lead to my decision to base my presentation topic on the concept of film as a primary source using this collection as a case study of sports film as representative of college history.
Anyway, back to today’s progress. I began by removing the cans fro their storage containers (mostly cardboard boxes and milk crates) and began to place them in chronological order. I decided to do this before creating an inventory or condition report because multiple reels exist for single games, and I thought it best to have them in order then sort out the other details. Films that did not have cans were housed in STiL Design cans. It is desired that the entire collection be rehoused, as all the current containers are horribly dirty and rusty, but for the moment only those without cans were rehoused. Two cans were so rusty that they had to be carefully tapped on the ground and pried open with a letter opener. I placed an AD strip in one of these rehoused films to test the vinegar syndrome of the film.
Additional notes to make based on last weeks observations are that the collection dates are wider than previously though, actually spanning from 1940s-1970s. My initial assumption that previous inventories were incomplete were verified today, as some sets of game cans are still held together with original masking tape, proving they have not been looked at since they were received. So far I am pretty disgusted but excited about my project and its possibilities.