Work Life final report wrapped and sent 10:35 AM

Fifty new finding aids for moving image collections documenting work life between 1916 and 1960 have been published as EAD-encoded finding aids, with 1,081 reel descriptions using the PBCore metadata structure. The finding aids are here.

We hope this work will be helpful for both scholars encountering these records and for our peers seeking to solve their own hidden collections issues. Audiovisual texts are essential records for humanities research. This opportunity has been an important step. As Mark J. Williams, Dartmouth Film & Media Studies, says, “This project succeeds in relation to both stalwart commitment to preservation, and a progressive commitment to establish new modes of access and study, by working to realize standards that conjoin both analog and digital sets of tools for access, annotation, and the futures of moving image scholarship.”

There were delays with our database system due to the complexity of the original coding. We await a last deliverable, the CollectiveAccess OAI-PMH utility, to support the upload of records to WorldCat. This capability is promised by the developer for August.

ASSESSMENT EXCERPTS, full reports on request

1. Comments on Hidden Collections of Work Life databases
Martin Johnson, NYU Cinema Studies doctoral student

What you are doing is rare. Most moving image archives don’t offer stills. Need to answer the researchers’ question, “What do I have to do to see this material?” For close reading they will want to know, “How can I get to this (are there digital moving images?)”

Next steps
What about more organic gathering of collections, creating virtual collections, for example a Web-only aggregation of “Movie Queen” material. Or summer camps. Or Jewish summer camps. Also, a layer of community-created pages.

2. Intellectual Access to Moving Images of Work Life, 1916-1960, Assessment of Project Outcomes
David Rowntree, archival media consultant, Special Media Collections Archivist at Washington University, St. Louis (2001-2009)

….the experience gained from the Work Life project and successful integration of different metadata standards put NHF in a position to take a leading role in sharing strategies with other similar institutions. It would be a coveted position to be thought of as a leader in the profession, as IPI [Image Permanence Institute] is thought of for storage and preservation.
Establishing mechanisms to transfer generated knowledge and increase scholarly/informational output in the form of white papers, panel presentations, and articles in professional journals can enhance the reputation of NHF in the profession – both as a place that is generating scholarship from study and use of its collections, and as a place that is a leader in moving image archiving. This can include applying for grants to conduct research and create recommendations and best practice guidelines.

Next steps
There are two main paths the NHF should follow as it goes forward from the Work Life Project. The first focuses on the activities around the dissemination of the newly created resource and encouragement of scholarly access. The second path is derived from the lessons learned and experience of the project to position the institution as a center of excellence and leader in the profession.


3. Northeast Historic Film’s Work Life Collection: Its Uses and Benefits in Digital Education
Jim Wells, Maine Learning Technology Initiative, Dept. of Education

The ability to sort through the database by different criteria, such as place, industry, decade etc. as given on the Work Life homepage enables the student to find information faster, with more accuracy and with confidence.
Far from being an anonymous collection of clips, from which students must extract meaning and understanding, they are provided with detailed notes on contributors, dates, places and notes found with the films. In terms of citing the source this is invaluable, contributing to a deeper academic level earlier in the grades system.

Next steps
Georeference-based projects and video publications by students.


4. Assessment of the Project Intellectual Access to Moving Images of Work Life
Mark J. Williams, Department of Film and Media Studies, Dartmouth College

All of these critical questions and emphases are newly elaborated by the importance of the digital aspects of the Work Life project. Let me conclude by referencing several key factors in this aspect of the assessment. The format and design of the site is clean and recognizable, despite (or rather, clearly because of) its conceptual innovations. The stills selected to represent each film are distinctive and noteworthy, attracting attention and interest. Each is paired with a brief video excerpt that further elaborates the regional, period, and indexical value of each film. (Indeed, this paired format seems to echo the very spectacle of early film screenings, as still images that might seem of interest at one level, spring into motion and take on a “life” both unexpected and familiar.) The descriptive work for each entry is well-researched, copiously detailed, insightful, and elegant. A map feature for each entry is especially notable, literally “placing” the film in its local context, and therefore re-locating the text in a manner that accents and highlights both its historicized site of production and its relation to the mission of the archive.

Next steps
One could for example posit a set of research potentials between this project and other online archival projects, such as the Library of Congress site titled America at Work, America at Leisure. It is not difficult to imagine capacities for crowd/cloud annotations in relation to this project and the cluster of projects to which it will exist in relation. Various additional and related mappings and historical geospatial overlays are clearly within reach, as new scholars and audiences (or newly digitized older scholarship) are brought into interface with these materials. Indeed, this collection and project beg us to imagine the future and alternative functionality of research, and even entirely new areas of research that online access and networked capacities may generate.

Work Life Content Overview 6:25 AM

Moving Images of Work Life, 1916-1960

Consistent with the characteristics of the region, the work life in the hidden collections represents a range of largely rural content with some industrial documents. One of the surprises was the strength of the scientific expedition coverage, which would otherwise have been unknown and thus unlikely to attract use without this identification.

Luther Holbrook Collection 1934 scientific voyage by Admiral Donald MacMillan, schooner Bowdoin to Labrador and Newfoundland. Dr. Alfred Gross of Bowdoin College, ornithologist, and Dr. David Potter of Clark University, botanist.

Irving Forbes Collection 1931 expedition by Alexander Forbes to survey the northern third of the Labrador coast. The expedition included the Ramah, and two airplanes, a Fairchild cabin monoplane and a smaller Waco biplane, Reel here.

Charles S. Houston Collection Mountain climber and expert in the effects of high altitudes on human physiology; mountaineering footage in Alaska, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Attracting scholarly attention presently, the itinerant women filmmakers who worked for the Amateur Theatre Guild, Boston, shooting Movie Queen films. The Moving Image (Univ. of Minnesota Press journal) in its most recent issue featured itinerant films and filmmakers. Evidence of itinerant filmmakers’ practices and the businesses they recorded has been recently discussed at the Association of Moving Image Archivists annual meeting, among the students at The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House, and at our archives.

Belfast Historical Society Collection 1935 footage from Belfast, Maine, Movie Queen

John Bruner Collection 1939 Movie Queen by Margaret Showalter, shot in Groton, Mass.

Norwood Historical Society Collection 1935 Movie Queen shot in Norwood, Mass.

Daniel Lapointe Collection 1936 Movie Queen filmed in Van Buren, Maine, on the Canadian border.

Industrialization and mechanization is represented in several strong pieces depicting factory work with close attention by creators with ties to the industries in question. The themes include transition from handwork, pre-industrial processes, innovation, use of automobiles and internal combustion engines.

Charles B. Hinds Collection 1925 processes at Hinds Laboratory, manufacturing cosmetics in Portland, Maine.

Leadbetter Collection ca. 1932 from white pine lumber to spools for sewing thread at John MacGregor Corporation spool mill in South Lincoln, Maine.

Ernest Groth Collection 1926 ice harvesting and distribution, Spring Brook, Connecticut.

Edwin Bienick Collection, ca. 1929 American Writing Paper Company in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in a bilingual sales film.

Electrical generation, hydropower, the community and environmental impact.

Central Maine Power Collection 1920 to 1938 Central Maine Power Company and E.H. Maxcy. Bucksport, Maine. Paper mill and Wyman Dam in Bingham, Maine, corporate and community life.

Milford Baker Collection, 1930-1932 Wyman Dam in Bingham, Maine, construction details with laborers and equipment such as turbines, generation units.

Roger Lincoln Collection, 1915-1916 film from Enfield, Mass., which was destroyed when flooded by the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in 1939.

Agriculture, fisheries and pre-industrial work, with extraordinary aesthetic qualities to the film in many cases. Traditional and persistent economic areas (tourism, summer camps, and forestry) are well represented.

Palermo Historical Society 1930-1960, Milton Dowe amateur film of haying, alewife fish run, documentation of wooden fences in agricultural fields, and other rural activities.

Irving Forbes Collection 1915 sheep herding on Naushon Island, Mass.

Pierce Pearmain Collection 1926 Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, Boston, and the suppliers of agricultural products the the market. By Philip Davis, a significant figure in sponsored films with a background in the union movement.

Philippe Beaudry Collection 1927 Cary Maple Sugar Company of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and Lennoxville, Quebec, the world’s largest maple sugar company.

Moving Images of Work Life Screening 4:56 AM

Catalogers Katrina Dixon, Karen Wyatt, and Tim Rohe curated a public screening, Work Life Revealed, on January 20 at Northeast Historic Film's cinema.

The audience included community members and scholars. Among the viewers were artists, graduate student Sarah Ruddy, University of Maine art historian Justin Wolff, long-time and new members of Northeast Historic Film, and board members. Staff support by Jessica Hosford, Jane Donnell, and Barbara Manning.

Special guests from Palermo, Maine, introduced the work of Milton Dowe from the Palermo Historical Society Collection. In the center above Gary Dyer, who said that the moving images were important for understanding both the nature place and the creativity of individuals. Dyer spoke movingly of his sense of patriotism and the human bonds the film represents.

Joe Gardner and Audrey Young were responsible for the transfers on the screen, with Phil Yates and Gemma Perretta projecting. Simmons GSLIS intern Tim Rohe, who received his degree this month, traveled from Boston to present excerpts from two collections he cataloged: the Charles S. Houston Collection, and Everett Greaton Collection. See program below.

Audience members spoke up during the screening; we noted particular interest in ice harvesting, hay baling, and the mayhem of landscape architect's Sidney Shurcliff's Motormaulers Club film. The evening was also a thank you to media cataloger Katrina Dixon, who--sadly for us--leaves Northeast Historic Film this week.

Movie Queen Collections excerpts

Boston Amateur Theatre Guild productions, 1936

Maine Sea Coast Mission Collection

Launching of Sunbeam III, 1939

Charles S. Houston Collection

Excerpt from Navy-sponsored film

Operation Everest, 1946

Irving S. Forbes Collection

Sheep on Naushon Island, MA, 1915

Ernest Groth Collection

Excerpt from Harvesting Ice, Spring Brook

Ice Company, New Britain, CT, 1926

Palermo Historical Society Collection

Hay baling, 1938

Remote control breakfast, ca. 1937

Everett Greaton Collection

Seaweed harvesting in Maine, ca. 1946

Hiram Historical Society Collection

Hiram Fire Department’s first fire engine, 1937

Charles B. Hinds Collection

Interior of the A.S. Hinds Laboratory, 1925

Sally Johnston Collection

Summer stock actors at Lakewood Theatre

in Skowhegan, ca. 1936

Alan Bemis Collection

Excerpt from the Motormaulers Club film

Junkman's Holiday, 1932

Metadata LIVE 4:53 PM

50 Collections of Work Life finding aids written using the DACS content standards with film reels in PBCore are now up on the project page here.

These and more Northeast Historic Film finding aids are here.

Work Life Revealed Screening Jan 20 4:03 PM

Northeast Historic Film's cinema at the Alamo Theatre, Bucksport, Maine, will host a free screening of moving images of work life on Thursday, January 20 at 7 p.m. The event highlights a year of exploring the moving image archives to describe collections not previously known to the public. The cataloging was supported by funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program. Teachers and scholars are invited to inquire about the collections for research and use.

Catalogers Katrina Dixon, Karen Wyatt, and Tim Rohe will be on hand to introduce the screening and share their year of discoveries. Among other surprises, the team found a glimpse of actor Humphrey Bogart taken by another theater professional working at Lakewood Theatre near Skowhegan in the 1930s. On screen will be footage from the Charles B. Hinds Collection, 1925 footage of workers manufacturing Hinds Honey and Almond Hand Cream. Other selections will include Maine Sea Coast Mission's Bar Harbor-based service vessel Sunbeam, and Movie Queen, Belfast, one of a series of itinerant productions. There will also be an example of the work of Everett Greaton, who documented Maine in personal and promotional films as the first head of the Maine Development Commission, as well as clips showing the comedic antics of the Motormaulers Club and a breakfast-making robot.

This screening is the first in a series celebrating the 25th anniversary of NHF's founding, with screenings highlighting different aspects of its collections through 2011. A wine and cheese reception for Northeast Historic Film members will be held at 6 p.m. To become a member, call Jessica Hosford, Northeast Historic Film's external affairs director, 207 469-0924, extension 107. Or email jessica@oldfilm.org

Cataloging Throughout New England 11:19 AM

One of the definite pluses of networked online software is the opportunity to engage a cataloging team regardless of proximity. The CLIR Project was glad to welcome Tim Rohe, Simmons College GSLIS graduate student on as a part-time cataloger after his fine work as an intern.

Because we are using CollectiveAccess (and previously used the OpenWebWorks item-level webform created by Jack Brighton), I am able to create copies of pertinent file information and send materials to Tim in Massachusetts. Tim Rohe has been an invaluable addition to the CLIR cataloging team, and his finding aids and item records attest to his original cataloging skills.

Below, please enjoy his recent discoveries:

"I got a weird sense of deja vu the other day while I was working on a film from a former Executive Director of the Maine Development Commission. The footage I was looking at was shot at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. In the film, a marching band passed in front of the Maine pavilion and that’s when it hit me. I could swear that I had seen this before. It turns out that I had. I remembered that another collection I had worked on contained some footage from the 1939 World’s Fair. When I went back and looked at the footage from the previous collection, I was struck by the similarities between the films. It’s very possible that the two cameramen were standing right next to each other when the footage from each collection was being shot. While I was looking through my notes to find which film in the previous collection contained the footage I was looking for, I started to notice other similarities between the two collections as well. Both of them had footage from an event organized by a sporting camp where people dress up in costumes and act out scenes in and around an old narrow gauge train. I looked at a map of Maine and the two creators of the collections lived pretty close to each other. I started to wonder if they knew each other.

Since then, I have noticed other similarities across other collections that I’ve worked on, which started to give me a strong sense of community about Maine. Many of the films from the former director of the Maine Development Commission were promotional films produced by the commission in an effort to entice people from around the U.S. to spend their vacation in Maine, claiming that the state has any kind of vacation you could want on offer. He worked for the State of Maine for forty years and I can see why they kept him around so long: he was good at his job. The films certainly worked on me. After watching all the footage of people skiing down scenic mountains, relaxing at sporting camps on the porches of their lakeside cabins after a fishing trip and enjoying wonderful, fresh food at clambakes and lobster shacks along the shore, I’m sold. I want to go to Maine!"

-Tim Rohe, CLIR cataloging assistant.

Selznick School Presentation 5:16 AM

A trip to Rochester, NY, through snow and wind resulted in a delayed arrival--and departure--Tuesday, December 7, on the way to presenting to the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation class of 2011 at George Eastman House.
The Selznick students participated in discussion of regional moving image archives policies and practices. This class of twelve was particularly tuned in to acquisition and access issues. "How do you generate public interest?" (Justin LaLiberty). "How do you determine the cultural value of materials before acquisition?" (Marissa Haddock). "What do you do for rare materials in poor condition?" (Nikki Shayer).

These questions are addressed in the case of the Norma Willard Collection footage, which was originally accepted at the archives with a donation of a VHS videotape showing three young people with a kayak and a three-section rowboat. Research determined that the unique footage related to a significant marine architect, Norman Skene, and our online finding aid points others to his publications. Happily in the course of this project our executive director recontacted the donor who still had the original 35 mm. film and was pleased to donate it to Northeast Historic Film. The print has been accessioned and will be sent to the laboratory for film-to-film preservation. Here is the collection record for the Norma Willard Collection.

During the day's presentation we talked about descriptive practices and our use of the PBCore data structure standard. The item-level description will help expose the content to the public and will provide important metadata for finding and managing the future digital copies of the 1921 work.

Bemis and Shurcliff, excerpts 2:19 PM

The Alan Bemis Collection contains 47 reels of 16 mm. film shot by Alan Bemis and Sidney Shurcliff between 1927 and 1948....
The collection contains a group of Motormauler films, conceived and shot by Sidney Shurcliff.

Alan Cogswell Bemis (1906-1991) was a professor of physics at MIT, and was director of MIT's Weather Radar Research Project. He worked on guided missile technology during World War II and retired from MIT in 1972. The Bemis family spent part of every year in Maine, building their summer home "High Head" on Naskeag Point in Brooklin in 1937. For further biographical information about Alan C. Bemis, see the donor file, which includes his "Random Recollections" which were dictated in 1988 and 1989. The Collection File also includes a biography created for his Harvard class reunions, a list of owned cars, and recollections of family fun. A copy of The Saga of the Motormaulers, by Bemis and Sid Shurcliff written in 1980 which describes the making of the Motormaulers film series, is also included in the collection.

Sidney N. Shurcliff, who photographed and edited the Motormauler films in this collection, was a classmate of Alan Bemis's at Harvard. His father, Arthur, and Frederick Law Olmsted, founded the Harvard School of Landscape Design, the first professional program of its kind in the world. Arthur Shurcliff was the landscape designer for the gardens of Colonial Williamsburg. Sidney N. Shurcliff received his education as a landscape designer at Harvard, and joined his father in practice in the 1930s, expanding the office to become Shurcliff, Merrill & Footit. He is notable for being instrumental in the revival of interest in Olmsted's work. Papers of Arthur A. Shurcliff and Sidney N. Shurcliff can be found at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Frances Loeb Library Special Collections. Sidney Shurcliff was a frequent guest of Bemis's in Maine, and also edited many of the sailing/cruising films in this collection. The papers include information about Sidney Shurcliff's interests in movie-making, sports and automobile racing.

The Motormaulers Club

The general plan was that the Club would meet once a year. Each member was to show up with a $10.00 automobile which he would contribute to the outing. Sid Shurcliff would dream up a movie scenario involving a chase of some kind.
We would prepare the cars by removing all the glass (if indeed they had any). For sending cars off banks and for head-on collision we would rig a throttle control that could be yanked wide open as the driver bailed out at the last moment. Marshall was a maestro at high-speed bail-outs, but we all took our turn. The bail-outs were made on grass to minimize bruises.
The whole operation, as well as being a pole of fun, took much planning, and two weekends for each one. On the first weekend we did little motormauling, but took all the character and plot-development shots. Then, on the second weekend we got going on the fender-benders and big final crashes. As anyone knows who has done any movie editing it is a tremendous and demanding job. Sid did it all. What a great result!

The Saga of the Motormaulers, written by Alan Bemis and Sidney Shurcliff in 1980, which can be found in the Collection File.
Excerpted from the finding aid, researched and written by Karen Wyatt and Katrina Dixon.

Provincetown, 1916 11:04 AM

frame enlargement of an unknown woman painting, Oregon Historical Society/Eugene Stoeller Collection, Provincetown 1916

Provincetown, 1916 Film

A story in the New York Times about painter Charles Webster Hawthorne, his oldest living model and his art school barn, prompted us to contact the current owners of Hawthorne's barn, Joshua Prager and Ricky Opaterny, about Northeast Historic Film's film containing footage of Hawthorne teaching his art students. Prager and Opaterny have formed a nonprofit organization to support the preservation of the barn, which was built over 100 years ago and used for most of that time for painting classes. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today we talked about film preservation--as the moving image record of Hawthorne and other artists such as Hans Hoffman, of Provincetown's people and landscape, will be part of the story of the barn going forward.

In the New York Times story, Doris Bryant Makas, who was born in 1910, remembers going with her mother to sit for Charles Webster Hawthorne. Doris's daughter, Elaine, describes the painter's context:

Provincetown had a large Portuguese immigrant population back then, and Hawthorne mostly hired Portuguese models,” Elaine Makas recalled. “But it’s likely he knew my grandmother and her hardships at the time. She was desperate for money, and he would have known she was a tough, single mother and maybe that’s why he called it ‘Motherhood Triumphant.’

The film identifies an elderly man as "A type of Portuguese fisherman that is fast passing," a following scene, "Overhauling the nets," shows three men working on fish nets in town.

Martha McNamara, Ph.D., Wellesley College, director of the New England Arts and Architecture program, is responsible for lectures, workshops and symposia as well as teaching. She is an American Studies scholar with a regional specialty in the arts and architecture of New England, teaching a seminar this spring on that subject. She is interested in the 1916 Metro Pictures travelogue. In conversation with our CLIR visiting team, McNamara said,

It's this incredible clip of Provincetown at the turn of the century with great footage of the plein air arts school out on the Cape run by Charles Webster Hawthorne. The rest of the school is even more captivating to me and more helpful for my class this spring because it really gets at this question of how New England is represented. There is an aerial shot of Provincetown with schooners in the harbor, crooked narrow streets, these characters, old people in old clothing. It depicts New England as a bygone place. The idea of New England as a quaint place that time has forgotten is a generator of the tourism industry. This one clip brings it all together, the vision of New England as a backwater, the artist come up from New York runs a plein air school: the creation of the image and the image creators.

See Yourself as Others See You 8:05 AM

A pictorial blog post today on landing back from the Association of Moving Image Archivists/IASA conference. Northeast Historic Film team members Joe Gardner (tech services) and Katrina Dixon (media cataloger) attended their first AMIA conference and played key roles in our hidden collections itinerant film presentation. Joe prepared and ran moving image clips. Katrina presented on her experience describing "See yourself" films. See previous blog post. Special thanks to Martin Johnson, NYU, for his comprehensive chronology with great examples.

Christa Williford, Program Officer at the Council on Library and Information Resources, attended the session. At least 50 people were in the room; many knew of itinerant film creators--and had pursued research on luminaries such as H. Lee Waters and Melton Barker.

Karan Sheldon, Martin Johnson, Christa Williford, Katrina Dixon.

Andy Uhrich, University of Indiana, loaned his laptop so we could play DVDs between showing slides.

from left: Dan Streible, Regina Longo, Liz Coffey, Caroline Frick Page, Melissa Dollman. Moving image preservation colleagues in the room.
Below, cover of the Spring 2010 issue of The Moving Image, journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, an itinerant-themed issue. Marsha Orgeron and Devin Orgeron, editors; Teri Tynes, managing editor (appreciate the cover, which we used in our presentation).

Scholarly Engagement Site Visit 7:49 AM

Kelly Miller (University of Virginia Harrison Institute) and Tim Stinson (North Carolina State University) spent the day on October 29 in a Scholarly Engagement Site Visit. They were investigating past and prospective interactions with our Moving Images of Work Life cataloging project and broader issues. Conversations with scholars included Martin Johnson, NYU Cinema Studies, Karen Alexander and Bill Leavenworth, University of New Hampshire fisheries historians, and Martha McNamara, Wellesley College Art and Architecture.

Katrina Dixon, media cataloger, here on the left next to Bill Leavenworth, Karen Wyatt, media cataloging assistant, and other Northeast Historic Film staff members participated in the morning discussion and facilities tour led by Gemma Perretta.

The chief topic was how our moving image materials are used and their value to researchers, teachers, public programmers, and the public. Alexander and Leavenworth have been working with primary source materials relating to 17th century fisheries and are moving into the modern period looking at documentation of coastal fisheries. The film record provides evidence relating to forage fish, clupeidae such as Atlantic herring.

Martin Johnson and Martha McNamara underlined their challenges in finding film for their work. "Moving images gave not been given the scholarly attention they deserve. This project will enable people like me to use them for teaching and other activities," said McNamara, who joined us on the phone from Wellesley College. Her spring seminar for art historians, "New England Arts and Architecture," will use our 1916 Provincetown travelogue. Besides the plein air painting class, the importance of the film is how New England is represented as a land time has forgotten, a backwater--to discuss in learning more about such image creation and the image creators.

Our thanks to Karen Alexander, Martin Johnson, Bill Leavenworth, and Martha McNamara for their knowledge, skills, imagination, energy, and time.

Time Traveler In Amateur Film 7:35 AM

As reports of the "time traveler" in the Chaplin DVD extra criss-crossed the globe, Northeast Historic Film finds evidence that time travelers passed through amateur films. Here is a frame grab captured from Lauren K. Woods' home movies: the woman on the right sports a bluetooth headphone, providing her a hands-free connection to the future.

Friday at AMIA/IASA come to our 2 p.m. session on Describing Local Films: New Thoughts on Itinerant-produced Work. Martin Johnson found the Lauren Woods image in Bucksport this morning; Woods was proprietor of the firm that sent young women to rural towns directing Movie Queen plays and short films.

Lauren K. Woods--home movies, Reel 2, ca. 1935-1936, found in the Sally Johnston Collection, one of the 50 Moving Images of Work Life Hidden Collections.

Describing Local Films: New Thoughts on Itinerant-produced Works 4:45 PM

Friday, Nov. 5 at 2 p.m. at the Association of Moving Image Archivists/ International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives conference in Philadelphia we will present on "See yourself" films from the 1930s. See the finding aids for ten of these works in the collections of Northeast Historic Film here.

State archives, historical societies, universities and colleges, and regional history collections often have local films made by itinerant filmmakers in their collections. When we identify, classify and make accessible these films we make decisions that affect how the public understands them. As this advertisement from a 1938 Rotary magazine indicates, service clubs were targeted as sponsors for many of these productions.

Martin Johnson, a doctoral candidate in Cinema Studies at New York University, and Katrina Dixon, Northeast Historic Film media cataloger, will show itinerant film examples and discuss access strategies. Tomorrow in Bucksport, Maine, Martin Johnson, Katrina Dixon, and Karan Sheldon, the session chair, will polish up our presentation--and share new discoveries.

The Hidden Collections of Work Life project includes PBCore item level records on Movie Queen films, and the home movies of Lauren K. Woods, whose business, the Amateur Theatre Guild in Boston, sent itinerant directors into farflung communities. To select these records click here. Where it says Search this collection enter "movie queen" then press Submit. 

Over two weeks each young woman who acted as field producer wrangled committees, put on a live show and made a short film cataloging local businesses with a comedy "kidnapping drama." Woods's printed instructions stipulated "Put film on 400 foot reels for organization, end each one with next reel follows, watch closely, be sure there is enough agfa to mark each reel, number the boxes in there [sic] order, and give to general chairman." Surviving 16mm films remained in their communities since the 1930s. They represent a detailed record of the towns' livelihoods, significant both to each town and in comparison to one another, and as a record of the unsung experiences of the women on the road.

Priceless Process 8:05 AM

As we work through the project, we are constantly building, testing, and either tweaking/rebuilding or celebrating.

The latest development that has shifted from rebuilding to celebrating is our updated EAD XML output that is not limited to EAD or XML! This discovery is thrilling for a number of reasons, but, the two most important to me at this moment: this is how we will be able to wed PBCore items to our EAD collections beyond CollectiveAccess; there is no limit to how many configured mappings/outputs we can create. We will be able to share and share alike with a freedom that has happily replaced a lump of anxiety formed by the unknown of future sharing.

How is this possible? As CollectiveAccess creator/developer Seth Kaufman explained it: "The new system generates export data based upon rules and mappings between elements in the export format and CA fields, so it's not limited to EAD or even XML. It's also possible to have multiple mappings for a given format, and to have mappings for different types of objects, collections, etc. The new system currently supports EAD, PBCore, NewsML and OAI DublinCore. More formats can be added if the need arises."

Maine Archival Collections Online (MACON) is an initiative among Maine archives and libraries in development of a multi-institutional repository with EAD search capability. Gemma Perretta, NHF collections manager, conducted a comparative analysis between our EAD XML and that of the MACON EAD best practices mapping, and we'll be able to create an output specific to sharing our records with the proposed repository.

As we develop the public utility we are not enjoying the gigantic list of place names. We notice variations of the same place names (Massachusetts, Mass., Ma, MA) and place names that lead to nowhere (aka The Mystery Places). Clicking on a place name should result in a listing of related collections; clicking the Mystery Places result in a page without any listings. Zero results. Karan Sheldon has been tracking heritage data issues, and we will be working on a new plan for integrated collection and item-level place browse and search.

We are halfway to being OAI compliant, meaning we can import, but are waiting for export capabilities. WorldCat, here we come!

Northeast Historic Film looks forward to hosting Kelly Miller and Tim Stinson on their site visit for the CLIR-funded study "Observations on Engagement with Hidden Special Collections and Archives." The goal of the study is to document current practice regarding scholarly engagement with hidden special collections and archives that may be useful to others. We will meet Kelly and Tim on Friday, October 29, as they spend the day learning about Northeast Historic Film, our hidden and previously hidden collections, and get a chance to meet some scholars we are working with.

I look forward to sharing more celebratory updates very soon. Until then, I hope you're enjoying the transition from outdoor fun to indoor fun with some loving company!


Philip W. Hussey Home Movies, Philip W. Hussey Collection, Northeast Historic Film. Boy plays checkers with grandfather, ca.1940.