Digitizing our Audio-Visual Collection

The archives hold a vast amount of material and material types, some of which are easier to preserve and make accessible than others. Often it is the more recent items that have the most issues. The pages of an 18th-century letter book are made of sturdier material than a newspaper from the 1930s. A letter from the Revolutionary War will be readable for centuries while your emails will be lost to obsolescence in a few years. And a videotape from the 1980s… well, that requires some outside help.

Thanks to a generous donation we were recently able to send a selection of our Audio-Visual collection to Henninger Media Services in Arlington, Virginia. We had previously highlighted some important visiting speakers and events including the Sesquicentennial in 1932, President Eisenhower, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Lady Bird Johnson, George and Barbara Bush, and others in the world of politics.

 

This donation allowed us to include materials outside this parameter to include some early sporting events and promotional materials. It let us add materials we had on film and reel-to-reel audio tapes. All in all, Henninger digitized 8mm and 16mm film, ¼ reel-to-reel audio, audio cassette tapes, a Dictaphone cassette, digital video cassettes, VHS tapes including UMATIC and Betacam formats, and a 36mm transfer of a 1930s newsreel. 

 

We want the Washington College community to be able to access and engage with these materials. We hope that people will listen, learn, and create using these newly accessible materials. So, don’t change that channel and stay tuned to see what is next.