The WCFTR blog highlights collection news, projects, and services with posts by staff, student assistants, and volunteers. We also cover WCFTR events and events with our campus partners.
Recent Posts
The Hartford Smith, Jr. Collection
by Matt St. John The Hartford Smith, Jr. collection provides an audio record of Detroit in the 1960s through Seeds of Discontent, the 1968 radio series Smith created, wrote, and produced. Over 26 episodes, the …
January 12, 2023
Upgrading and Redesigning the Media History Digital Library
For the past two years, the MHDL and WCFTR teams have been working to upgrade the online presence of the Media History Digital Library. While there have been incremental updates and band-aid fixes throughout the MHDL’s history, a dedicated modernization and redesign was long overdue. Thanks to the generous support of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an ACLS Digital Extension Grant, new versions of the MHDL website as well as the Lantern search platform were launched in late 2022.
December 20, 2022
It Happened in Hollywood
by Pauline Lampert This video file is the result of a minor archival miracle! It is an illuminating and scarily prescient film strip that details the many injustices perpetrated by the House Un-American Activities …
December 6, 2022
Archival Screening Night Roadshow! November 18th at 7p
Join the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and the Wisconsin Historical Society as they host the Archival Screening Night Roadshow on Thursday November 18 at 7 pm in the Historical Society auditorium. This …
November 4, 2021“Girls’ Voices Now” Wins Emmy
Girls’ Voices Now, a new show currently streaming and airing on HereTV, recently won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Children’s Program. While most of our blog entries have focused on historical works or …
August 23, 2021Exploring the WCFTR: Searching for Marginalized Identities in the Archive
When I first visited UW-Madison as a prospective student, I had the chance to spend some time in the WCFTR. I did not initially realize campus had this wealth of historical content framing the trajectories …
July 14, 2021Reflecting on Wendy Clarke’s “New York Tapes” (1990) Three Decades Later
by Lauren Wilks New York City has been in the news lately for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the current mayoral election which has unearthed questions around whether candidates can equally …
June 28, 2021Saving & Sharing 15 Hours of Wendy Clarke’s “Love Tapes” from the World Trade Center (1980)
Before the invention of YouTube, Zoom, and Instagram, before a city was transformed by waves of “urban renewal,” the AIDS crisis, and a terrorist attack, hundreds of people took turns entering a video booth inside …
June 1, 2021Scanning Film and TV History
by Pauline Lampert At the WCFTR, we are committed to the preserving historic films and making them as broadly accessible as possible. For these reasons, our new ability to scan films in 4K has been …
May 27, 2021Marc Blitzstein & Lenny Bernstein
by David Ronis In thinking about research, historic reading rooms in places like London, New York, and Washington D.C. come to mind. But sometimes there are great riches to be found in one’s own backyard! …
April 29, 2021- Older Posts