Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

5 “Report on Programmming and
Access by Catherine Gautier on Behalf of
the Commission for Programming and
Access to Collections”. The results were
published in the Journal of Film
Preservation no. 49, 1994, pp. 11-14. Cf
Appendix I.
6 Ibidem.
AMPRO Projector
of which is handled differently – i.e., each of which is governed by a different
set of rules developed by an archive according to the user’s particular
requirements:
- individual users
- cultural and educational organisations
- commercial enterprises
a) Individual users consist of:
- researchers (including students) investigating a specific topic who
come from educational institutions (universities, (film) schools,
archives, festivals, etc.).
- historians
- other (e.g., people interested in cinema generally; relatives of an actor,
director, writer, etc.; researchers from other fields looking for images
of a particular region, country, occupation, etc.).
b) In the second case, requests are made by groups of users such as cultural
organisations, film societies, universities and film schools.
c) Commercial enterprises include television companies, private film and
video producers, advertising agencies etc.
In a survey of the accessibility of film collections carried out
by the FIAF Programming Commission in 1992, over half of
the replies gave the number of visitors per year as consistently
less than 100. Given an average of 260 working days in
the year this represents one visitor almost every three days
requiring supervision. 5
There are a few archives with a significantly higher number of
visitors each year. This is often a result of their own unique
qualities; for example, those archives with a large staff, a wide
range of viewing facilities, and a collection which is rich in
either preserved or highly specialised films prove very popular.
In general, the number of visitors seems to reflect the
individual character of each archive. 6
In order to guarantee the highest level of service, it is vital
that an archive be aware of the make-up of its own group of
visitors. This is dependent upon the archive’s environment
and connections, and upon the collection itself. If the institution,
for example, works together with a film school or is situated on the
campus of a university it follows that students and teaching staff will
form the majority of clients. If the collection contains many unique
items, requests will come in from historians and programmers from all
around the world. If the collection is the only one of its kind in the
country, a greater proportion of requests can also be expected to come
from local television stations, etc. A particularly close link to one or
more group(s) will often shape the policy of an archive.
10 Journal of Film Preservation / 55 / 1997