Preservation Lab at the National Archives St Louis

Go behind-the-scenes to see NPRC's new state-of-the-art preservation lab. In 1973 a fire in NPRC's former building destroyed 18 million military personnel files. Six million more were recovered with varying degrees of fire and water damage. As individual files are requested, preservation technicians painstakingly treat the documents for damage and mold. Preservation officer Marta O'Neill and her staff demonstrate the arduous work required to preserve these permanent records of the United States. The preservation lab also treats archival microfilm, an extensive process shown in the video. In the digital section of the preservation lab, military personnel files of "Persons of Exceptional Prominence" are scanned and the images transferred to CDs. In this manner frequently requested records are removed from circulation and preserved, even as their contents are made available to the public. And in a startling display of digital technology, viewers see how text seemingly lost to fire damage can be restored to legibility.

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