Projecting the Future Needs of Preservation

Gregory Lukow at the new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, whose development in Culpeper he has overseen for the Library of Congress. (By Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post)
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We have experts in amateur movies and home films, a major area of film study in academia in the last 10 years because it documents a region or town at a particular time. There's a [1930] film called "From Stump to Ship," filmed in Maine during the silent era, and that's an incredible record of an incredibly important industry, the logging business.

How much comes to you on any given day?

We acquire every year 100,000 to 120,000 items; most of that is 90,000 to 100,000 sound recordings and 20,000 to 30,000 films and TV programs. There's sometimes more because of legacy acquisitions from estates of creators who've died.

Will you use your power as division chief to make a film you like a priority in preservation or screening?

I look forward to being able to show early nitrate films by Ernst Lubitsch or Josef von Sternberg or King Vidor or John Ford that'll be eye-opening. The new theater has a new organ that can be brought up on a riser from underneath the stage, so we'll replicate the process as close as possible as the original audience 70 or 80 years ago could experience.

What's it like to be responsible for so many items that form the backbone of our cultural heritage?

The biggest thrill is in the acquisitions area. One of the highlights was the Rick Prelinger archives, the largest film collection we've acquired in the history of the library, about 150,000 reels of film. Prelinger began collecting decades ago what he referred to as "ephemeral" film -- educational, industrial, training, high school driver's ed films, a film of the conversion of a Chrysler factory from making cars to making tanks in World War II. It's all the filmmaking that's other than Hollywood.

Do you ever have to get rid of things because of limited space or changes in priorities?

No.