The first core competency put forth by the American Library Association is Gateway Knowledge. This constitutes the innate understanding of the library profession, its history, its role in society, and its implications for the future of information access and inquiry.
Library sciences, at its core, relies on a strong foundation of ethics. Usually when we are talking about ethics, we mean moral principles, as in something being morally right or wrong. More nuanced than morals, ethics can also extend to practices that library professionals are beholden to, practices that foster and maintain trust with the communities they serve. As a film archivist and restorationist, I contend that we have the obligation to preserve media in a way that is transparent and faithful to the original medium. We often see commercial “restorations” of film media that creates a visual object intentionally catering to modern audiences’ tastes rather than one evocative of the era of original creation. The following literature review, Ethics and Aesthetics in Digital Film Restoration, written for the course INFO 5000 Information & Knowledge Professions, explores the ethical responsibilities film restorationists have in preserving not only the visual object, but the context in which it was created.
Before pursuing my MLS, I received a Certificate in Film Archiving & Preservation from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman Museum (formerly known as George Eastman House). While my interests in information sciences have broadened since beginning the graduate program, that speciality knowledge has been a foundation for further research. In the course INFO 5297 Introduction to Special Materials Preservation, one of our assignments was to discuss a particular material form in terms of physical preservation. Drawing upon my experience in archives specializing in small gauge (16mm & 8mm film formats), I chose to write about the motion picture film substrate, cellulose diacetate.