Pratt Institute School of Information: “Students Race Against Time to Digitize Archives Of 1970s And ’80s LGBTQ+ Radio and TV Programs”

From the Pratt Institute:

During the rise of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the 1970s and ’80s, visibility and community were crucial, and some leaders took to radio and television to elevate their voices and showcase culture. This spring semester, Pratt Institute School of Information students in Projects in Digital Archives digitized, catalogued, and curated online material from two of these programs: the Gay Morning America (GMA) public-access TV program (1984-85) and the Lesbian Nation radio program (1972-73). Recorded on now-obsolete media and fragile after being boxed away for decades, digitization prevented these programs from being lost forever.

Anthony Cocciolo, dean of the School of Information who teaches Projects in Digital Archives, explained that he sees supporting grassroots archives as essential because “digitization projects such as these can be fairly costly.” Cocciolo has been leading his classes in digitization for the Lesbian Herstory Archives since 2010 and the LGBT Community Center National History Archive since 2019, recognizing that Pratt Manhattan’s home on 14th Street is just blocks from sites like the Stonewall Inn and the NYC AIDS Memorial, meaning that “in many ways, the LGBT civil rights movement is a local history story” to the Institute.

Read the Complete Article (approx. 1100 words)

More News From Pratt:

Pratt Institute in Collaboration with NYU Receives $600,000 Mellon Grant For Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network (DPOE-N) Project

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, Funding, News, Preservation