Summer Internship Report in Special Collections

The following post was written by Luke Moses, who worked this past summer full-time in the Langsdale Library Special Collections Department. Luke is currently a graduate student in NYU's Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program.

This summer at Langsdale was my first time working in a university setting, and by far my most extensive hands-on experience with film inspection/repair and videotape digitization. Siobhan Hagan [Audiovisual Archivist for Langsdale] is an incredibly smart, talented, and resourceful archivist and I cannot thank her enough for her tutelage. Working with the collections of local television stations WMAR and WJZ was a fantastic experience, giving me a chance to dive in to Baltimore’s history. One of the last U-Matic tapes I digitized of WJZ’s Evening Magazine program is a perfect example of this, and can be seen in full here. Most episodes of Evening Magazine are fantastic (I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I refer to it as both a local and national treasure), but this episode from 1977 is particularly interesting. Highlights include a best-in-show cat competition and an explanation of punk music. 

A fundamental goal of archiving is to preserve markers of specific times and places as historical evidence, and the modus operandi of Evening Magazine, which explored Baltimore with an impressive breadth, makes it a veritable goldmine of an archival collection. The utilization of the Internet Archive as both a preservation platform and access portal is a smart move for the University of Baltimore; in some cases I was able to digitize a tape and have it viewable online the next day. As just one small example of the remarkable range of the audiovisual collection, consider the juxtaposition of the intensely specific local stories of WJZ’s Evening Magazine with the raw news footage of WMAR (many hours of which are also accessible via the Internet Archive), and you can see how important an audiovisual collection can be in illuminating local history and culture on a truly sublime level. 

Working with this collection over the summer was such a wonderfully immersive way to experience Baltimore, and I am really looking forward to seeing more of the collection as it continues to expand on the Internet Archive.

The Granddaddy of Video

The silver reel you see on your right is an example of the first videotape format ever released into the world (as compared to the size of a standard VHS videocassette tape on the left). The name of this format is 2-inch Quadruplex, also known simply as "Quad". The "2-inch" refers to the size of the width of the tape (please see below the open reel brown 2-inch-wide Quad tape versus the 1/2-inch VHS tape encased in a plastic shell, respectively).

CBS was the first on-air user of the 2” Quad machine, to tape-delay the evening CBS News broadcast with Douglas Edwards on Nov. 30, 1956. From that point until the late 1970s, the vast majority of broadcast television was recorded onto this video format.  

In the WJZ-TV and WMAR-TV Collections at the Langsdale Library Special Collections Department, we hold approximately three hundred 2-inch Quad reels from these local television stations. Highlights from the labels suggest that they are masters of several local television broadcasts and even national broadcast news ranging in date from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. However, we can't be entirely sure of the content until the tapes are digitized--an expensive endeavor due to the professional expertise, time, and obsolete equipment needed. According to an estimate by the Library of Congress' National Recording Preservation Plan, by approximately 2027 these tapes will no longer be physically able to even undergo digitization! Contact specialcollections@ubalt.edu for more information.

Archiving History in Special Collections

Our own audiovisual archivist Siobhan Hagan did a wonderful piece for Humanities Connection on WYPR last Thursday.

In it Hagan discusses the wealth of material found in Langsdale's WMAR and WJZ film and video collections. These two collections contains both raw footage and news and feature programming spanning the mid 1940's to 2000. WMAR was the first Baltimore news station and the 11th in the country, so our collection reflects the full run of local television broadcasting from the dawn of the medium through the end of the 20th century and can provide scholars of history, media studies, popular culture and many other humanistic disciplines a rich treasure of materials. Seeing and hearing this footage can bring history to life for many users in Baltimore and beyond.

See more from our AV archives at AV@UB and on the Internet Archive.

Partnering with the Internet Archive

The Langsdale Library would like to officially introduce its newest Internet Archive presence. As is stated in its mission, the non-profit Internet Archive “is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public.”

In particular, Langsdale will be posting audiovisual content from its Special Collections Department (Level 4 of the library—please come visit!). The mission of the Internet Archive and Langsdale Library’s Special Collections Department matches up quite nicely, as the Department “collects, preserves, and provides access to archival, printed, and digital resources that support the research and instructional needs of students, faculty, scholars, and the general public.”

Along with oral histories, we are posting audiovisual content of Baltimore, Maryland-regional television-news footage and special programs from WMAR-TV (Channel 2) and WJZ-TV (Channel 13), ranging in date from 1948 to the year 2000. This footage is FREE to download and non-commercially re-mix and re-use in any way the world wants (as long as the world properly gives us a credit line* in their work). The Internet Archive has allowed Langsdale Library to do this by providing us with free and unlimited digital storage, for which we are extremely grateful. Having a large amount of storage is imperative for the much-larger-than-your-average-JPEG digital-video files (which you will encounter if you download one)—and we have hours of these treasures!

In addition to the Internet Archive site, we now have a presence on the social media site Tumblr, where we are posting shorter and more topical audiovisual highlights each and every week.

If you would like to use parts of our footage in a commercial endeavor or would like to find out more about what we have in our WMAR-TV and WJZ-TV Collections, please give our new Audiovisual Archivist, Siobhan (shi-VON) Hagan, a call at 410.837.4268, or email at shagan@ubalt.edu. Although certainly not required, if you re-purpose our footage, we would love it if you would please share your work with us as well!


*Credit line: Courtesy of the WMAR-TV and WJZ-TV Collections, University of Baltimore