Library and Information Science

Generally speaking, “Film Library” means, in Japan, an organization which stocks films, mainly, for social and school educational purposes. But, in this paper, the author discusses film deposit libraries on national level. The term “Film Archive” is sometimes called cinematheque, cinema museum or film archive, and they have almost same meaning.

The main purpose of such film archives is to preserve films and other related materials such as, film projectors, cameras, posters, still photos, and books and magazines on cinematography, etc. Therefore, they stand on the interdisciplinary field between the library and museum.

The film archives have many problems today, which have to be solved as soon as possible; for example, to collect many films before they are lost and scattered, to preserve color films before fading and to encourage international lending and exchange of films, etc.