The following is a guest blog post by Alan Gevinson, Special Assistant to the Chief, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and the Library’s AAPB Project Director.
Today, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) pays special tribute to the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) with two of their five annual awards.
The Ray Edmondson Advocacy Award will be presented today to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration between the Library of Congress and Boston public media creator GBH to ensure that historic public radio and television broadcasts will survive for future generations to enjoy. Since 2013, when the Library and GBH took over management of the project from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, we’ve preserved and made accessible more than 200,000 digital files of programming from over 1,000 stations, producers, and archives across the nation. More than 120,000 are now available online at the AAPB’s website. The complete collection is available onsite to researchers who come to GBH or to the Library’s Moving Image Research Center and its Recorded Sound Research Center. And last year, the AAPB received a $16 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to digitize an additional 150,000 at-risk programs to add to the archive.
The Advocacy Award, according to the AMIA website, “recognizes an individual, an organization, or a project that promotes greater public awareness, appreciation, or support of media archives or those working to preserve and provide access to media archives.” A number of AAPB’s core goals align with the Award’s intent. We’ve worked closely with media archives to support numerous digitization grant applications, and after grants have been awarded, we’ve aided recipients to work effectively with digitization vendors. We’ve learned that there is no better way to increase public awareness and appreciation of archives than to demonstrate the significance of the content in their collections. And so, with the help of scholars, educators, and interns, we’ve created a host of online exhibits and primary source discussion sets on topics of enduring interest, bringing historical context to selected clips and programs on these subjects in the AAPB’s collection. We hope to encourage deep dives into the importance of the content for people living today.
I’ve had the good fortune to serve as the Library’s AAPB project director for the past eleven years. It’s been immensely rewarding to work with hundreds of people throughout the nation who respect the mission of public broadcasting to educate, enlighten, and entertain. When we began the project, we really had no idea of the richness of the programming that public broadcasting has produced over the past seventy-plus years. We had no idea, for example, that Gen Z students would find these old programs riveting and relevant to their own lives, yet that has been the case over and over again as Library of Congress interns have immersed themselves in documentaries and discussions from earlier times, and from them created some of our most engaging online exhibits. Our archive, we’ve found, functions as an open doorway into countless experiences of communities and individuals throughout the nation. At the Library of Congress and GBH, we take great care to ensure that these voices will survive for future generations.
As I am about to retire from the Library, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues at GBH and the Library who have worked to create this remarkable archive. Currently, they are Karen Cariani, the GBH AAPB project director, Rachel Curtis, who manages AAPB ingest operations at NAVCC, and, in alphabetical order, Emily Balk, Suzy Carrington, Kevin Carter, Therese Codd, Laura Drake Davis, Jay Fialkov, Rebecca Fraimow, James Graham Jr., Ryan “Harpo” Harbert, Peter Higgins, Grace Horne, Michelle Kelley, Owen King, Caroline Mango, Rochelle Miller, Andrew Myers, Henry Neels, Hope O’Keeffe, Keith Paramore, María Peña, Nick Ranieri, Bill Ryan, Raananah Sarid-Segal, Meghan Sorensen, Erica Titkemeyer, and Miranda Villesvik. I especially want to thank Karen Cariani and Casey Davis, AAPB’s former project manager from GBH, with whom I worked closely from the project’s earliest days to establish and implement its goals and procedures. And I also want to single out four unsung heroes from the Library whose efforts from the start helped put the project onto a firm foundation. Former NAVCC Chief Patrick Loughney and former Associate Librarian for Library Services Roberta Shaffer enthusiastically ensured Library support for the project from its beginnings; and Senior Associate General Counsel Hope O’Keeffe, along with former Assistant General Counsel Christopher Greenman, worked diligently and effectively with Jay Fialkov, Suzy Carrington, and Sue Kantrowitz from GBH to establish the AAPB’s legal policies and procedures, and facilitate public access to AAPB’s treasures.
The older I get the more I’ve come to appreciate the enormous value of institutions that serve the public in vital ways, and I’ve become more grateful than ever for the efforts of those who have built and maintained those institutions. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of the AAPB community.
Along those lines, I’d like to congratulate my former boss Greg Lukow on receiving AMIA’s prestigious Keystone Award honoring the role he has had over his long career in helping establish and guide a number of major audiovisual archival institutions and programs. The following has been adapted from AMIA’s press release:
AMIA’s Keystone Award honors organizations or individuals who have had a foundational role in the Association or in the field. Awarded only twice before, the Award this year honors former NAVCC Chief Gregory Lukow for his contributions across the field to create foundations that have allowed the profession to grow and continue to evolve. In 1984, he began working at the American Film Institute’s newly created National Center for Film and Video Preservation, later serving as its administrative director until it ended in 1998. While at AFI, Greg provided organizational services for AMIA’s predecessor, F/TAAC. Greg became a principal founder of AMIA, serving on the board for five terms. There is no doubt that AMIA could not have developed as quickly in its formative years were it not for his work. While at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Greg’s primary responsibility was to establish UCLA’s Moving Image Archive Studies program — the first such graduate degree offered in the U.S. UCLA established the first AMIA student chapter shortly after the program began. Greg’s first seven years at the Library of Congress were focused literally on building a foundation. As the lead representative in overseeing the design and construction of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (Packard Campus), he guided one of the Library’s most advanced technological undertakings to its opening in 2007. Serving as its Chief from 2012 to 2024, Greg oversaw the NAVCC’s growth and its future-focused strategy, ensuring the long-term preservation and accessibility of our national audiovisual collection.