As we enter the homestretch of the 2016 Presidential campaign, we’re sure to see an increasing number of television ads. Although social media is now an important part of any candidate’s promotional arsenal, the amount of money spent on TV ads continues to grow with each cycle. Given the ubiquity of TV spots, it’s hard …
The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson, an Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus. Thursday, July 30 (7:30 p.m.) “Classic Jazz from the Library of Congress Archives” (1940s-1980s) An evening of rarely seen performances by such legendary jazz musicians and singers as Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gilliespie, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, John …
I programmed the Packard Campus Theater in April, and rather than pick my “favorite” films and television shows, I chose titles that have some deeper personal significance in my life and career. For example, we’re showing Orphans of the Storm (1921) on April 11 because that’s the first silent film I ever saw, two Les …
The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson, an Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus. Thursday, March 19 (7:30 p.m.) Public Broadcast Laboratory (1967-1968) Public Broadcast Laboratory (PBL) was the first regularly scheduled educational television program aired nationwide, shown on National Educational Television (NET) stations. It premiered in 1967, offering incisive reporting, examinations of …
When Martha Teichner and a crew from CBS Sunday Morning came to the Packard Campus a few months ago for a story about our preservation work, I put together a varied package of clips from the moving image collections for her to react against. Now, I’ve put together clip shows for what feels like countless …
The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center has garnered a fair amount of media attention over the years and 2014 was no exception. Here’s a selection of print and broadcast stories from last year that, taken together, provide a good overview of who we are and what we do. The announcement of new additions to the National …
I wrote in an earlier post about how few copies of Johnny Carson’s first ten years of hosting the Tonight Show survive because of NBC’s re-use of the 2″ Quadruplex videotapes on which the show was recorded, a practice that stopped once Carson purchased the show from NBC in 1972. One of our video preservation …
The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson, Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus. Thursday, November 20 (7:30 p.m.) A Night of Electric Blues: Great Blues Performances on TV (1955-1989) Selected from the Library’s video collections and digitally restored by Video Preservation Specialists at the Packard Campus, this memorable evening features legendary blues artists …
She remembers the “hot packs”–towels soaked in boiling water, wrung out, then wrapped around her legs. She remembers the blisters. She remembers the endless hours of physical therapy, the manipulation of her limbs, especially her right leg, the one affected by polio. She also remembers the kindness of her doctors and nurses, the friendships she …