Just to help sweep the Burtt damage thing away as anything related to the purposes of this thread:
As TServo said, he would not have been handling negative. No one but the lab would have been handling negative. By "every screening" he would've meant during post production, not theatrical exhibitions. Nothing seen in theaters is ever a copy of anything in a work print. A workprint is a branch of the tree that has no branches of its own. When a work print is finalized, the edge numbers are matched up back at the lab and the Negative Cutter conforms the negative to match, and THEN copies made from that. The only time workprint is duplicated is for promotional stuff: trailers, TV spots, documentaries, etc.
So the damage he made would have no bearing on the Taxonomy effort.