| | The Library of American Broadcasting Foundation (LABF), owns the collection known as the Library of American Broadcasting (LAB). The LABF is committed to the care, growth and oversight of the Library. The board of directors represents the broadcasting industry in its relationship with the University of Maryland, which provides the hands-on administration. It’s our job to provide the connection between the Library and the industry, to be its principal liaison with the real worlds of television and radio, to assist the curators in their pursuit of collections, to conduct a program of oral histories and – most importantly at this tender moment in the Library’s 21st century reincarnation – to raise funds to keep it viable and in touch with the times.
A great research library has many functions, but one primary mandate, to preserve the record of the past. This is accomplished through acquisition, preservation and access.
Acquisition
In order to keep the past for the future, we must first identify its various parts, such as rare and unique research materials, and then work toward acquiring them for the Library. This history is collected in many varied formats; books, newspapers, periodicals, videotapes, kinescopes, scripts, recordings, magazines, interviews, photographs, personal papers, and memorabilia, for example.
Preservation
Preservation ensures the protection and accessibility of all of the Library’s resources. The first step in preservation is conservation, which is the repair and care of individual pieces within a collection. Many of our older technologies (recordings, kinescopes, wires, even tape to some extent) will become difficult to access as the technologies change and the media begins to deteriorate. Books, manuscripts, pamphlets, and a growing number of perishable materials present a continuous challenge to the archivist.
Access
Neither acquisition nor preservation has much historical value without access and long-term accessibility is a multifaceted task. A collection must be organized in order for it to be accessible. Materials in a collection must be catalogued, cross referenced and indexed based on topics, assignments and subjects. Readying a collection for use is a time consuming process. Making collections available to a broader audience through digitization, for example, is another one of our goals. Digitizing manuscripts, photos and other documents makes it possible to bring documents from several different facilities or even universities together for research. It also means documents can be reconfigured and used in new and innovative ways since the original document remains intact and a digital form is substituted.
Eventually, we would like to link the LAB to other scholarly and professional broadcast collections all over the country and the world.
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