Moving Image Archive News - A clearinghouse of information on film archiving and related endeavors

When comic actor, director, television producer, and author Dom DeLuise died in 2009 at the age of 75, he left a large collection of materials relating to his career.

Much of the material has already gone to large collections. …MORE >>

There were always rumors about the Intercollegiate Athletic Film Collection, that a treasure trove of films documenting the UW’s athletic history were buried somewhere in Husky Stadium. In early 2009, Hannah Palin, film archives specialist at the UW Libraries, Special Collections, met with representatives from the Intercollegiate Athletics Department to discuss a project to evaluate, inventory, and make recommendations for the care and storage of the department’s films. At that meeting, Ms. Palin was taken to the fabled storage room in Husky Stadium, containing hundreds of boxes filled with thousands of films and videotapes. The rumors were all true.

By Hannah Palin

“Yeah,” I was told with a yawn, “that’s what field work is like.”

No one seemed overly impressed or even disturbed by the fact that it was 104 degrees outside and at least four times that inside the storage room, tucked under the bleachers in Husky Stadium, where my students and I were working. (No one even seemed bothered that a reel of nitrate from the storage room took four hours to cool down in my air-conditioned office later that afternoon).

Raccoons lived in here. That’s what Bob, the facilities manager, told me one morning when he stopped by to check my progress.

“Oh, and that leak in the corner there,” he said, “runs down the wall four floors below to the ROTC office. It doesn’t look like any water’s getting into any of those boxes, though. I wouldn’t worry about it.” …MORE >>