Over the summer, the Film and Media Studies Program moved their collection of movies and other media from the offices of the department itself, on the fourth floor of Rush Rhees Library, to the Multi-Media Center.
The media items are now being added to the Voyager library catalogue and will appear as part of the library’s collection, even though they are still owned and maintained by the Film and Media Studies Department.
“There are two reasons for this move,” Director of Film Studies Sharon Willis said. “First, it has to do with the logic of storing archived material. Academic departments and programs are not generally responsible for storing media. For example, you wouldn’t want the English Department storing rare books. We’re also finding lots of videos that have been damaged.”
The move was made partly because it became too much work for the Film and Media Studies Department to maintain their collection.
“Our archiving used to be the responsibility of one person, who also handled demands of faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students, plus an administrative job,” Willis said. The library has the resources to handle the additional volume, according to Willis.
The only foreseeable change for Film and Media Studies classes is that professors might need to go down to the Multi-Media Center to get the movies they are screening, instead of the department.
According to Willis, the relocation will not affect students
“They will just go to the Multi-Media Center instead of the library to watch movies on their own,” Willis said. “We will continue to use our own screening facilities in the library for classes.”
“You will begin to see [Film and Media Studies titles] appear there with the location of ‘Multi-Media Center Special FMS Collection -Restricted Loan,'” Head of the Multi-Media Center Stephanie Frontz said.
Restricted loan materials are available for faculty and graduate students to borrow for research or coursework. Those not eligible to check these titles out of the Multi-Media Center can remain in the Center to watch them.
Although the move went according to plan for the most part, there were several problems.
“The biggest problem is that the Multi-Media Center, especially the student volunteers, has to handle a lot more traffic,” Frontz said.
Despite this obstacle, Frontz thought the Multi-Media Center was handling the new work and materials well.
“We are constantly evaluating our procedures in an attempt to streamline them, to facilitate everyone’s access to materials and to make things run smoothly,” Frontz added.
The Film and Media Studies Collection represents more than 25 years of faculty collecting.
Levesque can be reached at clevesque@campustimes.org.
