The inaugural cohort of Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellows at the University of Alabama has wrapped up their first semester by creating Special Collections for the AAPB website featuring the material they digitized over the Fall 2019 semester. Three Special Collections present newly digitized material from Virginia Public Media (formerly WCVE), WSRE in Pensacola, Florida, and the Center for Public Television and Radio at the University of Alabama.
This first Fellowship marks the start of an ongoing collaboration between the AAPB and the University of Alabama to provide students enrolled in the UA School of Library and Information Studies distance master’s degree program with hands-on experience in working with analog video and audio materials and managing a digitization project at a public media organization.
Interested in becoming a Fellow? The call for UA’s EBSCO scholarship applications is now open through March 15th.
Check out each of the new collections below, and stay tuned for upcoming blog posts and reflection from each of the fellows being published throughout this week.
The Alabama Experience
The Alabama Experience collection focuses on pieces that bring to life inspiring stories and empowering characters who have helped form Alabama’s past and are working to shape its future. There are 46 programs in total covering Alabama’s history from 1982 until 2007. Topics covered in the programs include the life and work of notable people from Alabama like pioneering advocate in Alabama for African American voting rights, W. C. Patton; Pulitzer Prize-winning publisher and journalist Buford Boone; acclaimed novelist and investigative reporter William Bradford Huie; and media and political consultant Frank Greer.
Housed in a multimedia product and broadcast facility, the University of Alabama Center for Public Television and Radio (CPT&R) has been producing content for public broadcasting for 57 years. The collection of work from CPT&R was digitized in the fall of 2019 by Hannah Hurdle, a Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellow at the University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Studies, in collaboration with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.
Browse the collection at https://americanarchive.org/special_collections/university-of-alabama-cpt!
Virginia Public Media: Journey through the Archives
The Virginia Public Media: Journey through the Archives collection contains more than 100 programs produced by Central Virginia Educational Television and the Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation (later renamed Virginia Public Media) from 1976 to 2009, highlighting people, places, history, and issues concerning residents of Richmond and the state of Virginia. Series in this collection include From Our Archives, For the Record, Richmond Memories and Hollywood Cemetery: Richmond’s Garden Cemetery.
VPM has produced a number of notable historical and biographical documentaries, ranging in subject from Thomas Jefferson to suburban sprawl and horses. The collection also includes noteworthy political events, such as senate and gubernatorial campaign coverage and Queen Elizabeth’s address to the Virginia General Assembly. This collection showcases and celebrates the vibrancy that can be found throughout Virginia, both past and present.
Operating for more than 50 years, VPM (formally WCVE) brings the best of PBS and NPR, as well as local community-based programs, to nearly two million people in central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. VPM is committed to fulfilling the promise of public broadcasting by using the power of media to enrich the human spirit and make our community a better place. This collection was digitized in 2019 by Ben Steck and Nancy Paulette as part of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting’s Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship, a collaboration with the University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Studies.
Browse the collection at https://americanarchive.org/special_collections/vpm-journey-through-the-archives!
Local Programs from WSRE from Pensacola, Florida
This WSRE collection is made up of 80 episodes from three series produced locally at WSRE in Pensacola, Florida. The episodes in this collection were produced during the period from 1998 – 2010, with most of the episodes originating in the mid to late 2000s.
The first series, AWARE, explores the varied cultural interests of the many ethnic communities throughout Northwest Florida and parts of Alabama. The second, Connecting the Community, is a weekly, half-hour public affairs show. The third, Food for Thought, is a monthly program exploring thought-provoking topics, featuring select speakers, civic presentations, and enlightening events throughout Northwest Florida. Additionally, some episodes discuss current events that are of lasting historical significance, including the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, climate change, and the outcome of the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
WSRE is Northwest Florida’s Public Broadcasting Service member station licensed to the Pensacola State College District Board of Trustees and supported by WSRE-TV Foundation, Inc. Established in 1967, WSRE broadcasts four free over-the-air channels serving 1.5 million people along the Gulf Coast from the Alabama/Mississippi state line to Destin, Florida. WSRE provides its viewers access to television programs from PBS while also producing its own programming. WSRE is located on the campus of Pensacola State College in Pensacola, Florida. The collection was digitized in 2019 by Melissa Anthony, Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellow, through a collaboration between the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) and The University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Studies.
Browse the collection at https://americanarchive.org/special_collections/local-programs-from-wsre!
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