U. of Tennessee Libraries Launches New Digital Collection of Smoky Mountain Photos, Film Clips From 1940s-1960s Set to Local Music

The UT Libraries has created an online digital collection of photos and home movies of the Smokies taken in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s by a Townsend businessman. Folk songs performed by local musicians have been added to the originally silent film clips. The William Derris Collection, composed of 334 slides and twelve film clips, is available online for free. 

William Derris, owner of the Derris Motel in Townsend, Tennessee, crisscrossed the Great Smoky Mountains by automobile, recording the people and scenery in both slides and silent film. He used the images and films to entertain and inform the guests at his motel. Derris’s images document landscapes, flora, wildlife, and people in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, including Townsend, Tuckaleechee, Cades Cove, Wears Valley, Little Greenbrier, and Fontana. 

Approximately 4,400 slides and eight reels of 8mm film shot by Derris were donated to UT Libraries. The film footage was first digitized, and then the most interesting Smokies content was excerpted to create shorter clips.

View films online | View slides online

New Database: American Archive of Public Broadcasting

From the Press Release:

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration between the Library of Congress, WGBH Boston and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, launched a new website at americanarchive.org today, providing the public with access to a collection of American public radio and television content dating back to the 1950s. These audio and video materials, created by more than 120 public broadcasting organizations across the country, have now been digitized and preserved, and will be a resource for scholars, researchers, educators, filmmakers and the general public to delve into the rich history of public broadcasting across America.

The website will initially provide access to 2.5 million inventory records created during the American Archive Content Inventory Project. The records will provide information about which public media video and audio materials have been digitized and preserved in the AAPB, indicate which video and audio files are available for research on location at WGBH and the Library of Congress, and highlight the participating stations. Contributing stations’ histories, information about significant productions and resources for participating organizations will be available online.

Source: Library of Congress

Access Archive of Public Broadcasting

Farmworker Movement Documentation Project: Primary source accounts by the UFW volunteers who built the movement

The Farmworker Movement Documentation Project, founded in 2003 by LeRoy Chatfield, is a labor of love. The project seeks to compile and publish primary source accounts from the volunteers who worked with Cesar Chavez to build his farmworker movement during the period, 1962-1993.

The collection includes nine documentary films, about 13,000 photographs, several hundred hours of oral histories, essays and poems. It also features a short video of the historic 1966 march from Delano to Sacramento to draw attention to the plight of farmworkers.

Source: U.C. San Diego Library (via U.T. San Diego)

Explore the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project
Read U.T. San Diego article about the archive project