What I don't understand at all is why allot of the films that are restored are never seen, but for the occasional live sreening or so? Then stashed away again, sometimes for years at a time. Also why solid information is so hard to come by? And numerous sources even seem to contradict one another on the survival status of various films.
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In archives and museums, it depends upon what the deed of gift says. Each time a donor gives something to a museum or archive, they have to fill out a deed of gift.
They can place restrictions on their gifts. And they often do, collectors especially because they don't want the feds knocking at their door.
The most important thing that we have to remember is that film preservation only became an issue
in our lifetime, meaning the last thirty years or so. Remember that film is over 100 years old.
For more years than we can count studios thought their film libraries were liabilities and took up much need storage space.
Over the years, studios were slipshod (MGM seems to have been the top of the pyramid in a good way) in record keeping of what was kept and what was destroyed.
Film studios, archives, museums and international archives were never big on sharing information. We have to remember that Europe endured two world wars which re-wrote much of the map of Europe and Asia over the years. Add the Cold War and the final remnants of that and foreign archives, in some cases, have been through two or three governments and not all of them friendly.
Today the problem is how many archives have collections that are searchable on the web? Not many because that is a huge undertakng that costs money. Should they spend the money to make the collection searchable or spend the money to save a film or two. That's often the choice.
The Hollywood of today is run by multi-national corporations which is very different from in the past when they were run by men and women who cared about the movie business. Today it is about the bottom line.
We are a niche market that accounts for a fraction of the overall DVD sales. While people like Scorsese, Spielberg, Hugh Hefner and others put their money where their belief in film preservaiton is, you have many more who love to pay lip service to it and move on.
Studios are not going to fund the preservation of their film libraries until we as a society make it important for them to do so. They will continue to point to the National Registry as an example of preservation. Meanwhile, the AFI discontinues its film preservation efforts because of lack of funds.
The moving image archive and the men and women who pioneered that field developed lists, inventory and guidelines as they went along because they were dealing with it in real time as opposed to today where industry standards are more in place.
Think of the number of times in our life times that we have seen standards established for something and then been forced due to growth, new media, new evidence, etc that those guidelines had to be adjusted.
Each medium that film has been transferred to whether its three-quarter videotape (once the blue chip standard), then Beta SP (once the blue chip standard), and now DVD all come with long range guarantees.
In reality, videotape had a much longer shelf life than DVD will ever have because the digital technology we are in is constantly changing.
Films that were preserved on video had long legs in terms of years (almost forty in some regards) but they decay over time.
Add to that the problem as we go forward, how will subsequent generations be able to play the media. Will they have film projectors or ways to read hard drives that are the current vogue today but even ten years from now may be obsolete and unreadable?
These are some of the problems facing archivists as we go forward in film preservation.
The problem lies with us as a society and a country in not demanding that more be done to save and preserve our film heritage.
Wow! this is big, big, news! According to silentera.com, Josef' Von Sternberg's THE EXQUISITE SINNER (1926) Starring Renee Adoree, and Conrad Nagle, and with a young Myrna Loy in the cast, long believed lost, has been found complete in the MGM-United Artists archive! Man what I wouldn't give to see Renee in a film with a title like that! And it's Von Sternberg after THE SALVATION HUNTERS (1925), but before UNDERWORLD (1927)! It appears that they may have ran across the movie while searching for LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT AKA "THE HYPNOTIST"? I wish I knew what kind of shape the film were in, but I don't have the details at this time. 
In addition, another lost John Gilbert film has been uncovered too! 12 MILES OUT (1927) with both Joan Crawford, and Billie Dove was supposed to only exist in 9.5 Millimeter, and only about 45 minutes was known to survive for many years. Recently, a complete 35 Millimeter print was discovered! After hearing about this a couple weeks back, I have now confirmed that the story is true! Although most sources still list this title as just a fragment, or even a Lost film? 
In still another remarkable find, 3 out of the five reels of Lon Chaney's TRIUMPH (Universal, 1917) have also been uncovered! Does anyone have more information concerning any of these remarkable finds? I am still trying to confirm that a print of FORBIDDEN HOURS (1928) with Renee and Ramon Novarro is in the same collection? If you have more info please share what you know? 
However, Silent Era doesn't have all the latest developments I'm sorry to say. For instance Clarence Brown's BUTTERFLY (1924) status is listed as "UNKNOWN" So is HER BIG NIGHT (1926), both with Laura La Plante. Not only do those two films still exist in 35 Millimeter, but they have been recently restored by UCLA! They also list Tod Browning's-Lon Chaney's THE BLACK BIRD (1926) as surviving only in a 16 millimeter reduction positive, and how outdated is that information??? The movie is not only on TCM this month, but as I have seen this already, I can assure you that it is most definitely not derived from a 16 Millimeter source! I sent them some notes. 
Another really new one to me is THE BLOODSHIP (Columbia, 1927) with the beautiful Jacqueline Logan, and Richard Arlen. This film was apparently restored in the past two years, and even received a live screening about a year ago? Sounds like a good one. I couldn't even find this film listed in any category on Silent Era.com??? Anyone with additional inforamtion please give us the scoop? 
Back in July, Charles Tabesh inferred that Warner's might at least be looking into Sid Terror's claims concerning LAM just on the off chance that while fuzzy on the details, Sid may have actually seen something back then? He didn't elaborate though. Probably because Mr. Tabesh didn't have much solid information himself on what was going on.
Here is the link to the story about the FORBIDDEN HOURS screenings in 2001-2002! Richard May is even quoted in the article! What does Warner's, or your archive list's have to say about this matter??? Why is information so sketchy? Silent Era.Com needs to be informed. They still list the film Status as "Unknown". 
What I don't understand at all is why allot of the films that are restored are never seen, but for the occasional live sreening or so? Then stashed away again, sometimes for years at a time. Also why solid information is so hard to come by? And numerous sources even seem to contradict one another on the survival status of various films.