The UCLA Film & Television Archive, the second-largest repository of motion pictures and broadcast programming in the U.S., is now part of the UCLA Library.
The Archive, which had operated under the auspices of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, will now be more closely aligned with the UCLA Library’s world-class archival and research collections; the move positions the Archive’s holdings to be better integrated in instruction and research at UCLA, and it will expand access to the Archive through the Library’s robust digital platforms.
Source: UCLA Film & Television Archive
“The UCLA Library and the Film & Television Archive are longtime partners with a shared vision of preserving unique, historical materials and making them available to the UCLA and wider academic communities,” said Ginny Steel, UCLA’s Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian. “Having the Archive as part of the UCLA Library strengthens the collective impact of print, digital and audiovisual resources on teaching and learning.”
The Archive’s administrative offices, preservation labs and collection storage vaults will remain at the Packard Humanities Institute’s Stoa in Santa Clarita, California, while the Archive Research and Study Center, located in Powell Library on the UCLA campus, will continue to serve as a campus access point to the Archive’s collections.
Materials at the Library and Film & Television Archive already significantly complement one another, including both units’ shared commitment to documenting diverse communities:
UCLA Library Special Collections holds photographs, correspondence, audio recordings and other materials from the first female member of the Directors Guild of America in the Dorothy Arzner Papers, while the Archive has restored several of her films, including “The Wild Party” and “Working Girls.”
The Archive preserved and has made accessible online all 21 seasons of “In The Life,” the first nationally broadcast newsmagazine series advocating LGBTQ visibility and equality. Enhancing the episodes are synopses and transcripts, story research and publicity files in Library Special Collections.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
