In the first of what is hopefully many website reviews to come, I introduce you, my readers, to the Alaska Film Archive (AFA) at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Let me first start out by saying as an archivist with many films of my own to preserve that of all the states in the U.S., I would like to be in Alaska when in need of a cold-storage room for film reels! Anyway, the site is basic at first, which is not a bad thing: in fact, the simple structure allows discover of materials to be much less cumbersome than huge, fancy websites. Per their project's mission statement, the AFA:
". . . has built the largest collection of archival films in and about Alaska, with particular strength for the pre-statehood era. The current collection of films and videos combines hundreds of individual donations to UAF with films collected earlier by the Alaska State Library. Since 1993 these materials have been maintained in the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of the Alaska and Polar Regions Department in Elmer E. Rasmuson Library. Our goals are to:
Locate and collect film and videotape pertaining to Alaska through donation.
Document the region, date and activities of each film.
Catalog each film or tape and make them available for viewing.
Store original materials in controlled environmental conditions."
The AFA has done remarkable outreach work in the process of identification of their films and the subjects contained therein. Particularly impressive is their cooperative work with native Alaskans and Eskimos to preserve the latter's cultural film heritage: "During the course of the project VHS tape of the films and more than 1100 still-frame photographs captured from film were reviewed by Native elders in six Alaska locations." Not only did the AFA gain immediate users and records requests from this outreach, but the Native Alaskans benefited through the united cultural identification experience. If nothing else had come of it, the archivists would have learned a great deal from the tribal elders about their people and experiences, useful in supporting the awareness and study of Alaskan heritage and native cultures.
From this collaboration came an identification list that is still being built regarding films that would have taken archivists years on their own to identify and describe. Because of the AFA's outreach, they have been able to make use of social networking, placing large numbers of samples of cultural films on their YouTube channel that has resulted in over 100 channel subscribers (quite a bit for an archives' video site), with 153,409 video views since the YouTube channel's creation in October 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/user/alaskafilmarchives).
All of the work the AFA has done with a state that has only been in existence since 1959, and with numerous cultural and economic issues facing them, is quite remarkable in their creative use of resources to promote their relatively remote archival films. Their mission is unique and they are going a great job with such a special project. You all should check them out:
library.uaf.edu/film-archive
-The Eclectic Archivist
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