Iron & Glass

Pratt's 16mm Collection

Post submitted by Travis Werlen, Special Collections and Digital Initiatives Coordinator at Pratt Institute Libraries. 

Frame from Pratt Puts It On, a film about a 1981 Bill Tice fashion show at Pratt Institute.

Did you know that the Pratt Institute Libraries have a Collection of 16mm Films and Projectors that are available for use by faculty, students, and staff?  Some of them are even available to circulate! This post will trace the history of the collection over the last 40 years, as it moved from one location to another within the Institute, enduring administrative changes, format obsolescence and even a fire, finally ending up under the stewardship of the Special Collections Department and Visual and Multimedia Resources, which are responsible for maintaining and circulating the collection.

Before Pratt’s audiovisual holdings were centralized in one location, the Institute’s 16mm films were scattered between different Schools, with each School holding a few titles relevant to its curriculum.  This changed in 1980 with the creation of the Multi-Media Services (MMS) department, which was designed to manage audiovisual holdings, develop a more robust media collection and oversee the circulation of audiovisual equipment.  F. William Chickering was appointed as the first director of the department and was given an initial budget of $5,000 to grow the collection. By 1985, MMS had over 400 titles in its collection, split between different formats (in addition to 16mm films, the department collected video formats such as VHS, Betacam and U-matic.)

Frame from the Libraries’ copy of Ken Burns’ Brooklyn Bridge, one of the first 16mm purchases made by Multi-Media Services

MMS was originally housed in the newly-renovated center wing of Higgins Hall, which connected the north and south buildings.  In addition to storage space for the collection’s materials and a place to circulate media and equipment, the location also featured an auditorium on the second floor where film and video screenings were held.  By the mid-80s, additional screening rooms were added on the third (mezzanine) floor.

Left: Aerial view of Higgins Hall.  The collection of 16mm films was housed in the center wing connecting the north and south buildings.  Right: Interior view of the auditorium on the second and third floors of the center wing. For 16mm screenings, a projector cart was wheeled in between the rows of chairs.  Media/equipment storage and circulation was on the third floor.

Although Multi-Media Services was developing its own collection of films, it relied on outside institutions for borrowing, renting, and leasing titles.  It’s important to remember that the cost of purchasing a single title could range between $500-$2,000, and in making purchasing decisions the department had to weigh the cost against the expected frequency with which the title would be used.  Because of these costs, MMS regularly borrowed titles on film and video from local collections and vendors. If the department needed quick access to a particular title, it would require an MMS employee to travel to the holder of the title, procure the film, bring the film back to campus, screen the film, and later return the film.  Kim’s Video, MoMA, and the Mid-Hudson Consortium are some of the other institutions from whom MMS rented or leased films and videos. MMS continued to purchase titles on film and video throughout the 1980s and 90s, with the collection encompassing over 1,700 titles in different formats by the mid-90s.

On the night of July 21, 1996, a fire started below Higgins Hall’s auditorium stage, eventually causing the roof of the center wing to collapse, completely destroying the Multi-Media Services space.  Although the building was decimated, the 16mm films somehow survived the fire (the cans used to house the films did not.) The films were sent to a vendor for assessment and cleaning, and Multi-Media Services moved into its new location in the Lower Level of the library.  Due to the temporary loss of the collection, the department had to lean heavily on the partnerships it had built over the last two decades with the public libraries and media vendors. When the 16mm films were returned, many of the reels were unlabeled and MMS had students watch the films to identify and re-label them.

Aftermath of the Higgins Hall fire showing the destruction of the central wing. Image by Michael Trencher.

Around the same time, the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) was in the process of deaccessioning its collection of 16mm films.  The medium had already become fairly obsolete with the advent of consumer analog video formats, and DVD was just starting to make its way into the video market.  BPL initially wanted to donate the collection to a public institution in order to keep the films accessible, but did not find anyone who would accept the collection as a whole.  On June 23rd, 1998, BPL donated its collection of 2,400 16mm titles to Multi-Media Services, retaining only 42 titles relevant to Brooklyn history.  This acquisition greatly expanded the scope of Pratt’s 16mm collection, which previously had focused almost exclusively on films about art and architecture, with a few Hollywood features and shorts used for film history classes. As one might expect from a public library, BPL’s holdings included many educational films, instructional/public service films, and children’s films.  However, the subject matter of the collection also reflected the community it served, with a strong focus on African-American history and culture, as well as the Brooklyn films. The collection also included an eclectic selection of animated films for both children and adults, pioneering experimental works by filmmakers like Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren, and Stan VanDerBeek, and feature films spanning from the 1920s-1980s.  Along with the films, BPL donated several Elmo 16-CL projectors that they had formerly circulated.

Left: Junkdump (1970), a sample film from the BPL collection with a nicely matching gold-colored can/reel.  It also includes a list of post-screening trivia and discussion questions. Right: Title frame from Junkdump.

Ephemera from the BPL films includes these instructional paper inserts found in film cans.  Our current film inspection process includes removing these from the cans, as the acidity of the paper contributes to the films’ degradation.

When the films first arrived at the library, they were kept in the open section of the Lower Level that today serves as a classroom space. After a few years, it was decided that the films shouldn’t be kept in “open stacks” and they were moved to a closed-off room, which is where the collection is stored today.  The library installed air conditioning and a dehumidifier in the room in order to mitigate the effects of vinegar syndrome as heat and humidity are two of the biggest contributors to film degradation. The films could be accessed by browsing printed inventories in binders, which were organized in two ways: there was an alphabetical list of titles that included brief summaries and an index of the films by subject.

Left: 16mm films in their racks. Right: A page from the 16mm subject index binder.  Communism, Computer Graphics, and Jimmy Cliff all in one place!

The 16mm collection had been restored and massively expanded thanks to the BPL donation, but use of the collection waned in the 2000s as DVD became the prevailing media format – DVDs are a lot easier to screen and titles were much cheaper for the library to purchase.  Further, the 16mm films remained largely unprocessed and uncataloged, so very few of the films were searchable in the online catalog (none of the newly-acquired titles from BPL had been cataloged). During this time, the collection was only used as a teaching resource by a few Film History and Animation professors.  This started to change in 2010, when MMS Office Manager Amy Belotti took on the task of organizing the languishing collection. Amy had previously worked on the collection during her days as a student worker and Pratt Film major, cleaning and repairing some of the prints. She trained a few students on film inspection and started the first real effort to create a database for the films. When Johanna Bauman joined the Libraries as the Visual Resources Curator in 2011, she assumed stewardship of the collection and migrated Amy’s Microsoft Access database into a more comprehensive FileMaker database. These actions were the start of the reconceptualization of the collection. 

In 2012, Multi-Media Services merged with the Visual Resources Center to become Visual and Multimedia Resources (VMR).  At this time, the library started a 16mm user group to reevaluate the collection and its use. This user group was made up of library staff (Johanna, Amy, and the head of VMR, Chris Arabadjis), and professors from Film/Video, History of Art & Design, and the School of Information.  Over the next few years, the user group enacted changes to how the collection was processed and used in teaching. For one, the collection was weeded to remove duplicate films, titles easily accessible on other formats, and films too damaged to project. Duplicate prints and titles that were deemed to be out of scope were donated to other institutions including the Harvard Film Archive and Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive.  Damaged films were donated to Pratt’s Film/Video department to give film students access to prints they could use in creative projects, and films in advanced stages of vinegar syndrome were donated to the Chemistry department for study.

The user group also explored the different ways in which the collection could be incorporated into Pratt’s curriculum.  It was decided that the collection could be used not just for its content, but also to teach the materiality of the medium.  This would give hands-on experience to interested students, such as film majors in Film/Video and students studying audiovisual archives in the School of Information. 16mm films and projectors were restricted to the Brooklyn campus, and only certain professors and library technicians were permitted to project films. Between 2013-2015, the user group devised a system for training patrons on 16mm projection basics and made the films and projectors available for circulation.  After going through the training, Pratt Institute students, staff, and faculty can host their own screenings on or off-campus. The Libraries also created more events that would feature the 16mm collection, including a preservation workshop and special themed screenings.

Posters for three 16mm-centric events held between 2013-2017.

Selected images from a film preservation workshop held on April 23, 2013.

Today, Special Collections has primary stewardship of the collection, but VMR is still responsible for circulating the films to patrons.  Special Collections funds a graduate assistantship, the recipient of which is responsible for the inspection and cataloging of the 16mm collection.  Previously, films were inspected piecemeal to assess whether they were in good or bad condition. Over the last five years, the inspection process has been formalized and now records information including the degree of film shrinkage, color fade, perforation and edge damage, the number of splices, and notes any prominent base or emulsion scratches.  After inspection, films are cataloged and made available through the library’s online catalog. 

As of the time of writing, 2,939 reels have been inspected and 1,720 titles appear in the catalog.  Some of these prints are the only 16mm copies available in WorldCat. The library also promotes the collection through a weekly series called “16mm Wednesdays”, which are held every Wednesday in MMB between 12:30-1:30pm.  Patrons interested in using the collection can make an appointment for a half-hour 16mm training session by emailing video.library@pratt.edu.  For more information, please visit our Film & Video LibGuide.

An example of a film from the collection: 3rd Ave El. Produced and directed by Carson Davidson (1957).

Author: Travis Werlen, Special Collections and Digital Initiatives Coordinator at Pratt Institute Libraries