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Managing Mennonite Memory: Audiovisual Archivesby Dennis Stoesz (Seventh in a Series) The articles in this series have focused mostly on records management. I now turn to a slightly different subject and see if here too ideas such as “historical value” and “administrative value” apply. I am talking about audiovisuals that make up our lives. Everyone must remember the missionary slide sets shown in churches on a Sunday evening. Or the film “Berlin Exodus” that Peter Dyck showed in many churches across the United States and Canada in the late 1940s. What makes these old slides and films archival?
8mm CPS film and “The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It”
It has been almost two years since Paradigm Productions in California asked if we had any film footage of Civilian Public Service (CPS) camps during World War II. They wanted to make a one-hour documentary for PBS television on conscientious objectors (COs). I knew of black and white CPS photographs, but I found we did not have any films.
I called a few older persons involved in CPS to ask if they knew of such films. Eventually the names of Elizabeth and Ralph Hernley came up. They had been giving some of their older personal papers and photographs to the archives, and I remembered they had been involved in CPS. They had a number of old 8mm films documenting their time of service in four CPS camps from 1941-46. These had been transferred onto a VHS video in the 1990s. Paradigm Productions was interested in previewing the images on a copy of the VHS video. They then decided to transfer the original 8mm films onto a beta format in a lab in California (since the beta was of higher quality than VHS). In the end, they used two minutes and ten seconds of this footage for their one-hour film. To quote one of the assistants who worked at the archives, Kent Holsopple; “Fifteen seconds of film footage is a life-time” when it comes to moving images.
So yes, old 8mm films as they sit in the canister can be very valuable, depending what is on them.
Slide Sets: Allegheny Mennonite Conference WMSC, The First Fifty Years
Over a year ago, Mervin J. Hostetler from Virginia came to the archives and asked about the slide set that he and his wife, Fern, had produced for the fiftieth anniversary of the Women’s Missionary and Service Commission in the Allegheny Mennonite Conference, 1927-77. He wanted to have these slides transferred to a more modern format.
The Allegheny Conference collection contained two Kodak carousel trays filled with slides of this anniversary celebration and a reel-to-reel tape to be synchronized with the trays. The narration was done by Fern Hostetler and Elta Graybill.
About six months later, Hostetler sent the archives a VHS videocassette, as well as a DV cassette. A media lab had transferred the 153 slides and the narration into digital images on a computer – about six to eight gigabytes of memory. This could then be transferred onto a digital video cassette which can hold about 5,000 times more than a floppy disk. From this digital image one can then make a VHS cassette. This permanent digital image of the slides can then be used by a computer, instead of a slide projector. However, this transfer into digital images can be quite expensive, but this is the forefront of current technology. (For example, Paradigm Productions could not afford digital technology to make their movie, and had opted for the beta format.)
This project shows how one can bring old WMSC slides from the past and convert them so they can continue to be viewed by the next generation.
Slides: Fiftieth Anniversary of PAX, 1951-2001
I recently visited with Philip A. Roth from Pennsylvania. He had served in the PAX program under Mennonite Central Committee in Peru and Paraguay from 1954-56 and had some slides as well as 8mm films of his time there. He wanted to know in what form the archives wanted the slides – the originals, video transfer, or digital on a computer disk.
I told him it is important to keep the original slides and 8mm films and to deposit them in an archives. These originals have been around for fifty years, and I expect can be preserved for another fifty years. Despite the rapidly changing technology, one can always go back to these originals and convert them into the latest format. He could also have these slides and 8mm film transferred onto VHS format, which is an easy-to-use medium.
One of the very important things, however, is to provide a script for slides. A description of each slide is needed, giving the meaning of the photograph, names of people, and the situation. Explain the significance of the place or the specific work being done. Not all of your slides may be useful. Pick out the important ones and use them to tell a story. Number each slide. Include a written explanation of each. Roth went through a tray of his slides and in an hour told me the story of his time of PAX service in Paraguay.
This then is how one can make slides into an archival collection. The images themselves may be archival just as they are. However, if you also provide a script, it can become a story of your faith pilgrimage, and how this particular time may have changed your life and the life of others.
Roth is in the process of having his materials transferred onto video. He hopes to put the narration right on the video as the images are being shown.
Conclusion
These are three examples of how audiovisuals can become historically valuable and be placed into archival collections. Content, description, and format are important factors.
Two audiovisual collections at the archives that are particularly rich are found in the Mennonite Central Committee collection and the Mennonite Board of Missions collection. Examples of personal collections include the Peter Dyck 8mm and 16mm film collection of Mennonite Central Committee in Europe, 1941-70, and the Paton Yoder 8mm films from India, 1937-59, as taken by Jonathan and Rhea Yoder.
Stoesz has served as archivist since 1989.
Mennonite Historical Bulletin, September 2001