The Library of Congress plans to move its priceless collection of original motion picture negatives and prints to a new storage center in Culpeper, Virginia, in late 2003.
The collection, which includes the original negatives of such classics as Birth of a Nation and The Maltese Falcon, has been stored since 1969 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Fairborn, Ohio. The base’s vaults, built by the Air Force after World War II to store reconnaissance film, are now deteriorating, the Associated Press reported July 27, threatening the 25–30,000 movie titles stored in 110,000 cans there.
The library’s new National Audio Visual Conservation Center, to be housed in an underground building previously owned by the Federal Reserve, will also contain a new preservation laboratory. David Francis, chief of LC’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, said the move would enable LC to consolidate its film storage and preservation operations, which also include storage facilities in Boyers, Pennsylvania, and Suitland and Landover, Maryland.
Posted July 31, 2000.