AIC's 45th Annual Meeting

The current landscape of art conservation faces many challenges when it comes to digitization technologies that are used to render artworks for public display and preservation. Chicago Film Archives (CFA) faced a unique challenge in acclimating the newest instance of the Kinetta Archival Film Scanner into its digitization workflow. I aim to discuss acting as the inaugural user of the machine and its operating software after a previous instance of the scanner was revised by its two-person production team. Acquiring the scanner was a result from CFA's aspirations to expand its means of collection care through digital preservation and access efforts; the urgency of this being solidified after being granted a MacArthur Foundation MACEI award in February of 2016 with the understanding that this aspiration was to be fully underway within the year. Upon receiving the scanner in March of 2016, CFA's small staff was trained on the scanner by its creator at its Chicago-based office. From there, the staff worked to learn the workflow from notes taken during the initial training sessions and remote support from the scanner's creators; no instruction manual was available to consult as CFA offered the first set of regular users to approach the daily workings of the machine and its software. The staff faced regular calibration failures, software crashes, digital artifacts, and breakdowns of physical scanner parts. By learning how to effectively communicate issues through providing focused contexts and details about them, CFA worked with the creators of the Kinetta Archival Film Scanner to correct these recurring issues. Working through the scanner's technological and physical challenges allowed CFA to author an operations manual meant to be both relevant to future Kinetta users, as well as define a new approach to caring for the archive's collections.