New App Puts the Library in the Palm of Your Hand

The new app is provided in partnership between PLS Library and Boopsie.com. It will allow users access to a host of Peninsula Library System services including:

• Downloading eBooks and eAudiobooks
• Look for events
• Locate a library
• Find items
• Scan ISBN barcodes
• Check your account
• Stay connected to the library's latest blogs, Twitter posts, Facebook posts and more

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Library of Congress announces 2013 National Film Registry selections

The Library of Congress announced Wednesday the addition of 25 films to its National Film Registry, a growing archive of American motion pictures earmarked for preservation because of their cultural, historic or aesthetic significance. According to Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, who hand-picks the films each year from a shortlist winnowed from thousands of online suggestions, the National Film Registry — which includes everything from home movies to Hollywood blockbusters — is not just a best-of list, or even a list of his favorite films, but a “vehicle for understanding our culture and society more broadly.”

Simply put, Billington says, “our responsibility is to help define a national patrimony.”

To that end, the 2013 honorees include three early works from the silent era: “A Virtuous Vamp” (1919), “Daughter of Dawn” (1920), and the proto-feminist Cinderella tale “Ella Cinders” (1926). The inclusion of these titles will come as particularly good news to fans of silent cinema, many of whom were no doubt alarmed this month to learn, through a report issued by the Library of Congress, that as many as three-quarters of all silent films made through the 1920s have been lost or utterly damaged. 

The most modern film yet accepted into the Registry, which is restricted to works at least 10 years old, is “Decasia,” a 2002 experimental collage piece by New York artist Bill Morrison. Ironically, it was assembled from deteriorating film footage, some of which Morrison says he found at — wait for it — the Library of Congress. According to the artist, “Decasia” is not a call to arms, but rather a celebration — in such sequences as one in which a boxer appears to be battling a blob of decaying film stock — of the beauty and inevitability of decay. 

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Silent Films Preservation Study Underlines Difficulties of Film Archiving

A recent study commissioned by the Library of Congress found that, of the more than 11,000 silent films produced by American movie studios between 1912 and 1929, just 14 percent (1,575) survive today in their original domestic release. Another 11 percent are still technically complete, according to the study conducted by film archivist David Pierce, but only in imperfect formats. Some are repatriated foreign release versions that lack the original English title cards and may have been edited to appeal to foreign audiences, which Pierce compares to imperfect retranslations of novels, where the story remains the same, but nuances may be lost. Others may be preserved on smaller format, 16 or 28 mm film stock, which can negatively impact image quality.

The report underscores some of the difficulties faced by archivists dedicated to preserving the world’s cinematic heritage, from full length features to educational filmstrips. Some of the films may remain intact in archives where harried film technicians have not had time to identify, much less restore the work. Others, though, are likely gone forever, lost to an early Hollywood culture that saw no value in maintaining movies they couldn’t sell tickets to anymore.

“For theater owners and studios, after sound came in in the 1930s, nothing had less value than a silent movie,” Pierce pointed out. “You had ongoing expenses to store and copy films that were producing no income and showing no prospect of producing income.” That meant that many films were simply thrown out, or recycled and harvested for the silver in the film stock.

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Manuscripts in danger as admn starts sealing state library

Manuscripts dating back to several hundred years are in danger of being lost to the public memory with the Allahabad Development Authority (ADA) initiating process to seal premises of Rajkiya Pandulipi Pustakalaya in Allahpur area of the city.

Housed in four two-room flats alloted by the ADA in 1977, the library, governed by the Department of Culture, owes Rs 36 lakh to the authority, due to which the allotment has been cancelled, the ADA officials say.

"So far, only one of the flats has been sealed. Other premises will be sealed if the library does not get its allotment restored, as per the norms," an offical informed.

The library officials say the department is waiting for the release of the money which has been approved by top state administration as dues to be paid to the ADA. 

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