The pivotal role of student labor in the clarke historical library's moving image access and preservation project

TY - JOUR

T1 - The pivotal role of student labor in the clarke historical library's moving image access and preservation project

AU - Matyn, Marian J.

AU - Graves, Tressa

N1 - Funding Information: One of the Clarke’s prints of the film was digitized by a vendor and presented as a gift to the SKNA as an access copy. The digitized version was shown during the 2018 visit of a recently retired South Korean ambassador to a full auditorium of CMU students, faculty, staff, and administration. The Korean orphanage film, which is part of the CMU Film Collection, 1940–1970, includes scenes of children playing, eating, studying, and singing. The orphanage was begun by American Harry Holt. Significantly, CMU was the first U.S. college to support a Korean orphanage. Students and staff voluntarily supported the Young Sen orphanage with approximately seventy children in Munsan, Korea, beginning in 1962, although the idea was first introduced three years earlier by Neil Kirwan, a CMU student who had previously served in the U.S. Army in South Korea.26 Channel 9 & 10 News documents the PBB event in Michigan, which began in 1973. Millions of Americans were permanently poisoned by PBB-contaminated meat and dairy products when a fire retardant with PBB was accidentally mixed into animal feed. Farmers unknowingly fed the feed to their farm animals, pets, and wildlife. PBB entered the soil through the manure of contaminated animals, animal carcasses, and the milk farmers poured on the ground when they were barred from selling it. Farms, fields, nearby forest areas, chemical plants, and the soil around homes remain contaminated. The discovery of the PBB news stories in the film has resulted in collaborative work with CMU professor Brittany Fremion. Fremion received a National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant in 2018 to document the experiences of Michiganders affected by PBB in oral histories, in conjunction with ongoing health surveys and research conducted by Emory University and the University of Michigan. Fremion and Matyn are also collecting primary-source paper-based archival collections of those who experience the effects and aftermath of PBB firsthand. Interest in the PBB materials, including the films from the Channel 9 & 10 News Collection, is growing. A journalist and a State Museum educator are interested in reviewing all PBB primary sources. We hope to secure a grant to allow digitization of the PBB film news stories.

PY - 2019/9/1

Y1 - 2019/9/1

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099017732&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.5749/movingimage.19.2.0026

DO - 10.5749/movingimage.19.2.0026

M3 - Comment/debate

AN - SCOPUS:85099017732

VL - 19

SP - 26

EP - 49

JO - Moving Image

JF - Moving Image

SN - 1532-3978

IS - 2

ER -