Dr. Mayme Agnew Clayton was a librarian and collector in Los Angeles who
left behind a collection of remarkable value. Over the course of more than 40 years, she had collected the largest privately held collection of African-American materials,
with over 30,000 rare and out-of-print books, 1,700 films dating back to 1916, as well as more than 75,000 photographs and scores of movie posters, playbills, programs, documents and manuscripts. Her collection, which has been compared to the
Schomburg Collection in the New York City Public Library, was
opened to the public in 2007.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 8, 2010 -
6 comments
Old-time radio (often abbreviated as "OTR," also known as the Golden Age of Radio) refers to a period of radio programming in the United States lasting from the proliferation of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s until television's replacement of radio as the dominant home entertainment medium in the 1950s, with
some programs continuing
into the early 1960s. The origin of radio dramas in the United States is hard to pin down, but
there is evidence of a remote broadcast of a play in 1914 at
Normal College (now California State University at San José), and the first serial radio drama was
an adaptation of a play by Eugene Walter, entitled "The Wolf," which aired in September 1922. Given the age of the programs and the fact that
home reel-to-reel recording started in the 1950s (followed by Philips "compact cassettes" in 1963), it might be surprising that quite a few of
these old shows have survived. Thanks in part to original radio station-sourced recordings made on
aluminum discs, acetates, and glass recordings and other unnamed sources, many radio dramas and newscasts from decades past are
available online, and more are being digitized and restored to this day.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 25, 2009 -
53 comments
As a belated tribute (of sorts) to
Victoria Day, may you find interest in a variety of
Victorina era literature, short and long. In the short category, there is
Chit-Chat of Humor, Wit, and Anecdote (Edited by Pierce Pungent; New York: Stringer & Townsend (1857), who has written
quite a bit of such work)
[via mefi projects], and
Conundrums New and Old (Collected by John Ray Frederick; J. Drake & Company Publishers Chicago, 1902)
[via mefi projects] This publishing house also published
The Art of Characturing, copyright 1941. If you prefer your antiquated humor with a twist, take a gander at
bizarro version of Conundrums New and Old [via mefi projects]. In the category of longer works, behold the
The Lost Novels of Victorian New Zealand [via an older mefi projects].
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on May 29, 2009 -
4 comments
In June of 2004, fifty-eight friends and acquaintances joined in a collaborative labor project that lasted for eight days. They were instrumental in organizing the
Prelinger Library in San Francisco, CA. One month from today will be the little library's fifth anniversary celebration. The
library project/ public art project/ art installation/ archive/ part information center is an
appropriation-friendly collection of books, periodicals,
zines, and print ephemera.
The library isn't organized by the Dewy Decimal system, but
sorted by Megan Prelinger into
four constant threads: landscape and geography; media and representation; historical consciousness; and political narratives from beyond the mainstream. The library is the less-known work of
Rick Prelinger, and his wife, Megan. Rick is most commonly known for his video collection, which is the primary source of
ephemera films on
archive.org. (
All things Prelinger previously)
posted by filthy light thief
on May 7, 2009 -
7 comments
