The Pacifica Radio Archives is one-third of the way through a remarkable
grant project “American Women Making History and Culture: 1963-1982” funded in
part by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, to
preserve all of our audio related to the American Women’s movement during that
time period.
The Pacifica team, led by Project Director Brian DeShazor, decided to
undertake this project back in 2011 after reviewing our collection and noting
that even though we had digitally preserved nearly all of our recordings
related to the Civil Rights movement and LGBT Rights movements, there was still
a large number of recordings related to the Women’s movement that had not yet been
digitized and were not “discoverable.” Hundreds
of recordings featuring well-known women activists such as Gloria Steinem,
Angela Davis, Germaine Greer, Dolores Huerta, Rosa Parks (and many, many more) had
been digitized, but over 1,500 recordings featuring lesser-known and unknown
women who made the movement a movement
were still on reel format.
As I searched our online database using keywords such as “women,”
“feminism,” “lesbian,” “male-chauvinism,” “abortion,” etc., I was so excited to
find documentation of nearly the entire movement in our collection: the
experiences of women from different ethnic groups during the Women’s movement, reports
of Women’s movements happening around the world, Women’s sexuality, Women and
work, men discussing what they think about Women’s rights, Women-centered art,
music, theater; it goes on and on.
One good and bad discovery has been the realization of how much
Women’s content had not yet been preserved. One recent example was a
male-hosted series about films and the film industry, where nearly all of the
interviews featuring male movie directors and actors had been digitized, but
those centering on women actors and filmmakers were yet to be digitized. Also, when adding contributor names (i.e.
producers, engineer, etc.) to our database, if I enter a women’s name such as
“Jennifer,” one or two names drop down. But if I enter a man’s name like
“Steven,” about 30 names drop down. Not only have recordings about women not
been equally preserved, but also the women who created them haven’t been equally
acknowledged. Sometimes I run across a
recording that seems so important and think “Why hasn’t this been preserved
until now???” I get heated, but then remember, “Hey, but we’re doing it now! Keep
calm and keep cataloging.”
I’ve heard of archivists getting emotionally involved in the materials
they are preserving, and I have definitely had that experience with this
collection. While I sometimes feel enraged by the sexism I see even in my
catalog, I remember how lucky I am to get to work with all of this great
material and how honored I am to be helping to preserve it. The project team
including Director Brian DeShazor, Project Coordinator Adi Gevins, Archivists
Holly Rose McGee and Joseph Gallucci, Production Coordinator Edgar Toledo, the
Pacifica staff and I are looking forward to seeing this important content being
used by students, professors, artists, writers, filmmakers, and the general
public.
If you’d like to learn more about our project
and stay up-to-date with our progress, please follow our blog at: http://womenmakinghistoryblog.wordpress.com/ .
To learn more about the Pacifica Radio Archives, please visit: http://pacificaradioarchives.org.
Jolene M. Beiser
Project Archivist
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