The 2008 Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) was held over the past several days at Silver Spring, MD. Focusing on making history local, workshops were featured on documenting events on film, audiovisual collections, collaborative projects, and other archival resources.
I had an opportunity to participate in a session on audiovisual collections and local history. The conference planners had assembled an interesting panel composed of Jeff Krulik, a filmmaker and curator of the George T. Merriken collection; Rebecca Kinglsey, filmmaker, the Last Colony; and Jennifer Snyder, co-organizer, Washington D.C. Homve Movie Day Event. My part was to talk about how a small historical society goes about developing its AV collection.
As I listened to our panel and some of the earlier ones, I learned a great deal. Jeff is caring for the work of a 20th century filmmaker, George T. Merriken. He showed some of his footage from Glen Echo Park from the middle-third of the 20th century. It’s so wonderful to have these scenes so expertly and clearly captured on film. Rebecca is developing a documentary that examines the political rights of citizens voting in the District. While this is still a process in the works, she showed some of the intial footage. It was excellent and I’ll look foward to the final product. Jennifer showed some of the home movies that were screened at the Home Movie Event in the District. Chuck Howell of the Ujniversity of Maryland moderated the event. Earlier I attended a session on documenting 1968, which will be helpful to my research.
I was pleased to have an opportunity to participate in this session and share some of our experience.