Notes & Quotes
Staff Notes…
by Mary Lou Neighbour, AV Librarian
Goodbyes…
Reference Librarian, Jim Frutchey, left the College at the beginning of August to take a new position as reference librarian/assistant professor at Marywood University in Scranton. We will miss him and we wish him all the very best in his new job.
Periodicals Assistant, Max Shenk, left the College at the end of August after 6 years on the Library staff. He has moved to Burlington,VT to pursue his career in writing. He also may go back to college to gain qualification as a high school counselor or teacher. We wish Max all the very best in this new, exciting phase in his life.
Kudos
AV Cataloger/Reference Librarian, Kate Pourshariati, has been doing interesting work in her other part-time position at the film archive of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Kate has been working there to preserve and digitize 16 mm. films at the Museum – helping to facilitate arrangements with the Internet Archive to make films in the Museum’s collection freely available via videostreaming on the Web.
One title of particular note that Kate has been working with is the classic documentary series, “Through Navajo Eyes.” This is a series of seven films made in 1966 in which filmmakers from a culture that makes and uses motion pictures taught people who had never made or used film to do so for the first time. Thanks to a National Science Foundation Grant and support from the Annenberg School of Communications of the University of Pennsylvania, Sol Worth and John Adair taught filmmaking and editing to a group of six Navajos in Arizona. The results were amazing short documentaries on weaving, silversmithing, a singer (medicine man), a lake, digging a well, and a complex, almost avant-garde film, “Intrepid Shadows.”
The University of Pennsylvania Museum owns the films, the practice films made by the Navajo filmmakers, and the outtakes. Kate has been in contact with the Library of Congress National Film Registry, which has named the series to the Registry as dictated by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988. This specified that each year, the Librarian of Congress name 25 “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” motion pictures to the Registry to reflect the full breadth and diversity of America’s film heritage. “Through Navajo Eyes” is one of those films.
Kate is making arrangements to send the films to the Library of Congress, as they do not have a copy. The films will be copied and digitized, with Library of Congress keeping a copy and the originals plus the DVD copies will be sent back to the Museum. There are also some plans to work with the Navajo filmmakers to edit some of the outtakes into new films. With her dedication to preserving films and making them accessible, Kate is accomplishing great things at the University Museum film archive.
