May meeting, Archivists Round Table

May meeting of the Archivists Round Table of New York : The Interaction of Private Collectors and Repositories.

Thursday, May 24
5:30 – 8:00 pm
Rockefeller University
1230 York Avenue (at East 66th Street)
Fee: $4 Members, $6 Non-members

Repositories have to consider many issues before deciding whether or not to acquire a private collection. At the same time, private collectors are faced with a host of decisions when it comes time for them, or their heirs, to dispose of their collections. How do – or should – these two groups interact?

Chuck Howell, curator of the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland, one of the largest repositories of radio material in the United States, and private collector David S. Siegel and his wife Susan Siegel will discuss the interaction of these two groups and how they can work together to achieve their mutual goals. While the panelists will be focusing on print and audio materials from the 1920s to the late 1950s related to the Golden Age of Radio, the concerns they will be discussing are common to archivists working with other subject areas. Among the issues to be discussed are: What is important to a collector when it comes time to dispose of his collection? How does he know if a repository will be interested in his collection – or which repository it should be offered to? For the archivist or curator, does the collection duplicate or complement the repository’s existing holdings? Will the collection arrive in a relatively organized fashion?

David S. Siegel has one of the largest privately held collections of audio and print materials related to the broadcasting aspects of the Golden Age of Radio in the United States. Built up over a 45 year period, the collection includes over 65,000 hours of reel-to-reel tapes, CDs and cassettes of programs, over 2,000 books, thousands of magazines and other radio related ephemera. Over the years, he has supplied audio and print materials to researchers, documentary filmmakers and private individuals. He has authored four books dealing with radio, two about specific programs and two reference books, including A Resource Guide to the Golden Age of Radio that includes descriptions of over 2,300 special collections relating to radio housed in more than 200 repositories in the United States. He is currently working on a fifth book about how Jews were perceived on radio during the Golden Age. Prior to his career as an author, David was a Superintendent of Schools.

Susan Siegel is the co-author of the couple’s two radio reference books, as well as The Used Book Lover’s Guides, a series of seven regional guidebooks to used book dealers in the United States and Canada, and most likely will be the person making the decisions about the disposition of her husband’s radio collection. Prior to her career as an author, Susan was a public relations professional.

Chuck Howell is the Curator of the Library of American Broadcasting (LAB), one of the two collections that comprise the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland in College Park. He began his archival career as an Associate Archivist in the other of those collections, the National Public Broadcasting Archives. After serving as move coordinator when the LAB arrived on campus in 1994, he was able to indulge his interest in media-related archival issues as Audiovisual Archivist for the Broadcasting Archives before becoming curator of the LAB in 1998. Chuck received his M.A. in Radio, Television and Film from UMD in 1994. He is a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists, and has contributed to several media-related works, including Talking Radio: An Oral History of Radio in the Television Age, the Encyclopedia of Radio and most recently, Methods of Historical Analysis in Electronic Media.

Co-Sponsored by:
Rockefeller Archives Center and The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc.

Date:
Thursday, May 24, 2007

Place:
Caspary Auditorium, Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue (at East 66th Street)

Time:
5:30 – 6:30 pm Social
6:30 – 8:00 pm Program

Directions:
Subway: Take the Lexington Avenue Local (No. 6) to the 68th Street and Lexington Avenue Station and walk east. Bus: Two buses stop near the main entrance: the York Avenue/ 57th Street cross-town (M31) and the 68th Street cross-town (M66).

Fee:
$4 Members
$6 Non-members

RSVP:
To Leilani Dawson by Monday, May 18, 2007: ldawson <at> brooklynhistory.org (recommended) or telephone: (718) 222-4111 x295. Please be reasonably sure that you can attend before responding. **To gain entrance, your name must appear on the security list at the front gate.**

If you are person with a disability and need reasonable accommodations to attend this meeting, please contact Jocelyn Wilk at (212) 854-1338 at least 7 days in advance so that we can make the appropriate arrangements.