Recently in libraries and archives Category

Thought long lost since 1927 -- a full eighty years ago -- an almost completely intact 16mm print of the original full-length premiere version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis has surfaced in the archives of the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires.

Read more about here at Film.com...

Written, Directed and Produced by Evan Weinstein

Check out the list of new film studies books and dvds acquired at Temple Libraries in March.

Some highlights:

The Paley reference collection is now home to Harrison's Reports and Film Reviews. This 15 volume set reprints the film reviews and some editorials originally published by P.S. Harrison in Harrison's reports, 1919-1962, with some corrections. Harrison's reports was a weekly sent out to independent exhibitors. The reviews and editorials were directed toward independent theater owners to assist them with booking. Articles in Harrison's take positions on a variety of the concerns of cinema distributors and exhibitors ranging from topics such as censorship to the advent of 3D.

A large number of scripts now appear in the library catalog now that we've uploaded records for the scripts that are available in the full text online database American Film Scripts Online. There are currently 823 scripts in the database, ranging from 1903 to 2006.

Temple's own Oliver Gaycken will speak on
"A Modern Cabinet of Curiosities: George Kleine and the Educational Film" at University of Pennsylvania's Department of History and Sociology of Science.


Spring 2008 Workshop

Monday, April 7, 3:30 p.m.
Oliver Gaycken, Assistant Professor of English and Cinema Studies at Temple University, will speak on cinema, science, and their meeting in the educational film.
The workshop is on Monday from 3:30 pm until 5:15pm in 337 Logan Hall, with refreshments to follow.
All are welcome!

Most research databases and online journal subscriptions cover content from the mid nineties to the present, meaning you have to rely on print copies in the library for earlier issues. Good news - with Temple University Libraries recent subscription to PAO Periodicals Archive Online, you now have full text access to pre-1990s issues of the following film/media journals.

Cinema Journal (formerly Journal of the Society of Cinematologists) 1961-1996
Film and History 1971-1995
Film History 1987-1995
Film Quarterly (formerly Quarterly of Film, Radio, and Television and Hollywood Quarterly) 1945-1957
Framework 1975-1992
Journal of Popular Culture 1967-1991
Journal of Popular Film (and Television) 1972-1978
Literature/Film Quarterly 1973-1993
Monthly Film Bulletin 1934-1991
Sight and Sound 1932-1995
Velvet Light Trap 1973-1995

Access the PAO database here.
See the full list of journals in this retrospective collection here.
To get access to current and more recent journal issues online, look the journal up using Journal Finder.

"...The Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center is a state-of-the-art facility where the Library of Congress acquires, preserves and provides access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of films, television programs, radio broadcasts, and sound recordings. The Campus has globally unprecedented capabilities and capacities for the preservation reformatting of all audiovisual media formats (including obsolete formats dating back 100 years) and their long-term safekeeping in a petabyte-level digital storage archive. In addition to preserving the collections of the Library, the Packard Campus was also designed to provide similar preservation services for other archives and libraries in both the public and private sector." The Library of Congress goes on to describe how "the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound (MBRS) Division reading rooms on Capitol Hill"... "will be linked directly to the Packard Campus and remain the public face of the NAVCC for researchers and patrons....MBRS holds approximately 6.2 million collection items, comprised of 3 million sound recordings, 1.2 million moving image items and 2 million related documents (scripts, copyright records, photos, posters, manuscripts, etc.). Of these, 5.7 million are destined for final storage at Culpeper, a relocation effort that began in January 2006. By the end of fiscal 2007, nearly 5.2 million of these had been relocated to the 140,000 square foot Collections Building from existing storage facilities in Capitol Hill; Boyers, Pennsylvania; Elkwood, Virginia; and the Landover, Maryland, annex. The collections moved include all 3 million sound recordings, 800,000 moving image items, and 1.4 million related documents. The 500,000 items still to be moved are primarily nitrate film in Dayton, Ohio, and additional moving image items still stored in Boyers and Landover."