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Photos available for download
Preservation Education Curriculum Image Library

Images have been provided to assist you in illustrating most of the lessons. This collection should not be considered the definitive source for preservation images. Rather, use it to enhance your presentations and perhaps update some of your existing images. NEDCC is grateful to the many vendors and institutions—libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies—that were willing to share their photographs for this project.

These photographs are available as 72 dpi JPEG files, which can be downloaded for multimedia presentations in the classroom. You can view the caption and copyright notice for each photograph when you view the enlarged image. These images are to be used for educational purposes only and should not be published without permission from the copyright holder.

Click on the classes (left) to view image thumbnails.
Click on a thumbnail to enlarge the image.

Cross-section of polyester base color photographic film. Cross-section of polyester base black-and-white photographic film. Deteriorating nitrate film. This acetate negative, in the last stage of deterioration, shows channeling where the emulsion has separated from its base. This scan of a negative in advanced-stage decay (vinegar syndrome) shows channeling, buckling, and bubbling throughout. The support and binder materials have separated. Flaking emulsion is characteristic of deteriorating gelatin dry plate negatives, most often as a result of storage under poor environmental conditions. The brown portions are residual processing chemicals. Motion picture film reels and original boxes. Early nitrate roll films tend to curl very tightly; in 1903, manufacturers began to coat the reverse side of the film with gelatin to prevent this problem. The cyan and yellow dyes in this slide have faded, leaving only the magenta color. The shift of color dyes can be exacerbated by storage in a high-humidity environment. These film negatives are stored in chemically unstable enclosures and do not have proper support to prevent distortion. Safe storage of cellulose nitrate negatives in a freezer. © University of South Dakota Archives and Special Collections, I.D. Weeks Library Moisture indicators inside plastic bags help monitor relative humidity in a freezer holding nitrate negatives. 
Testing the severity of acetate film deterioration using A-D Strips. Strip color is measured against the color scale printed on the accompanying pencil. Courtesy of Image Permanence Institute Relationship between A-D Strip levels, film acidity, and film condition. The four temperature categories. In this context, ROOM, COOL, and COLD are characterized by one