The Other Side of Summer

Dance Troupe, 1972. Robert Breck Chapman Collection. Via flickr

When I decided last week to do a seasonal library display of items in Special Collections with a theme of “summertime leisure”, I couldn’t imagine a fluffier, less serious topic. I thought that-- aside from having multiple boxes across collections retrieved from storage-- the whole thing would be a breeze; just rainbows and kittens and glitter and sunshine all the way. Of course, mostly, it is:  selecting photographs taken by Robert Breck Chapman, former photographer for City Hall, is always an opportunity to gaze at beautifully composed images capturing city life during the 1970s. Also, poring through scenes from the Post Card Project-- featuring kitschy vintage paper and ephemera-- is pretty fun.

Helen Delich Bentley: Farewell to a Firebrand

Former Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley

Langsdale Special Collections is crestfallen to hear of the passing of feisty former Maryland Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley. Many remember Mrs. Bentley as a tireless advocate for the Port of Baltimore; a seasoned journalist-- where she covered maritime for the Baltimore Sun and WMAR-TV; and a trailblazer for women in politics and in media (the beats she covered-- labor and the waterfront--  were hardly the norm for female journos of the era).

Digital Maryland AV Conference

Digital Maryland is a collaborative, statewide digitization program located at the Baltimore Enoch Pratt Free Library/State Library Resource Center with the mission "to facilitate the digitization and digital exhibition of the historical and cultural documents, images, audio and video held by Maryland institutions."

The Langsdale Library and Digital Maryland recently joined forces to put on a one-day conference about preserving audiovisual materials in archives, museums, and libraries across the state. The conference was called, "Digital Maryland AV: Making the Overwhelming Possible", and included speakers from the Smithsonian, the University of Virginia, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Salisbury University. The program was made possible with funding by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, through the Maryland State Department of Education, Division of Library and Development Services and partnership with Digital Maryland, Maryland Library Consortium and The University of Baltimore. The conference was held in the Learning Commons' Town Hall, and was a great success with a bevy of interaction and discussion from the 70 attendees. 

Please check out tweets from the day under #DigiMDAV. If you would like copies of the presentation PowerPoint slides, please contact shagan@ubalt.edu.

Baltimore in Shades of Grey

A few days have passed since the closing night of the 16th annual Maryland Film Festival (MFF), and the overall consensus seems that it was a huge success--despite lacking The Charles as a venue. In its stead, there were several new venues, one of which was the Langsdale Library Auditorium.

On our blog, we have previously discussed the illustrious cinematic history of the auditorium, but today I would like to discuss another film that premiered in the Landsdale Library Auditorium during MFF: BALTIMORE IN BLACK IN WHITE (2014). A documentary feature, co-directed by Emily Topper and Mary Posatko, it focuses on one of the filmmakers themselves. Emily Topper was born and raised in the Edmondson Village neighborhood of Baltimore, and the film follows her and her crew through the maze of grief and memory in search of answers to the 1972 murder of her grandfather.

The filmmakers create a sense of place without using archival footage or very many historical photographs. There is present-day footage of the specific landmarks involved in the story, along with a few family pictures from the time. It was less a historical documentary, and more of historiographical process: they try to find the transcripts of the trial, but they were lost in a flood at the Maryland State Archives; they try to conduct interviews of those who attended the trial and lived through the aftermath, but they find that firsthand accounts are often biased and changeable. One of the only interviews of a non-directly-involved participant is that of former Baltimore City Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who grew up in Edmondson Village during the time, and (side note) who has just been announced this morning as the new President of the University of Baltimore.

There isn't necessarily a strict conclusion to the documentary, and all of its players come across much more complex than initially introduced, and historical truth as much less (dare I write it?) black and white, more a limited smattering of shades of grey.

<<Siobhan Hagan, AV Archivist