April 29, 2003

Library of American Broadcasting 
Wins NEH Grant

A newly announced federal grant for the Library of American Broadcasting (LAB) will benefit researchers, scholars and students – eager to study some 18 collections related to women in broadcasting. The National Endowment for the Humanities announced March 24 that the LAB would receive nearly $99,000 to process and do basic preservation on the collections. 

“Much of this material is not currently in a researcher-friendly state,” says LAB Curator Chuck Howell. “Our task now is to rehouse, organize and create web research aids for this valuable resource.” 

The collections include correspondence, manuscripts, photographs and scrapbooks that focus on women in broadcasting from the 1920s into the 1980s. 

According to Howell, these collections carry a tremendous amount of information, not only about women in broadcasting, but also how that industry viewed women as an audience. He says “The kinds of jobs into which they were guided, the programs on which they were allowed to work, and the difficulties they overcame in order to succeed are all evident in these collections. They speak volumes about the relative status of women in the industry prior to, during and after the birth of feminism in this country.” 

The collections include oral histories from the 1970s and 80s, the correspondence of Helen Sioussat, Director of Talks for CBS from 1937 to 1958, the scrapbooks of Edythe Meserand, founder and first president of American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) who worked in the broadcasting industry for more than fifty years, and more than 3,500 radio and
television scripts written by Mona Kent, creator of the well known radio soap opera Portia Faces Life. 

Altogether, the collections include some 1500 photographs, 284 audio items in various formats and 19 videotapes. 

Howell says that preserving broadcast history is a challenge because so little thought is given to the historical nature of the work being done. As he wrote in his NEH grant application, “New content is required constantly. There is little time to dwell on yesterday’s broadcast (let alone the work of last month or year), as there is always another show to prepare.” 

Howell added, “No thought is given to historical significance, to what the scholars of the future might be able to glean from these programs and the records of their creation. The programs these women helped create are for the most part already gone forever. Should the documentation of that work be allowed to follow? These stories deserve to be told.” 

For more information about the Library of American Broadcasting, browse to  http://www.lib.umd.edu/LAB/.