Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

30 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 1 Northern Arizona Cooperative Film Library BY GRACE SEILER Arizona State College, Flagstaff, Arizona Audio-visual education took a step forward in northern Arizona when on May 5, 1945, representatives of ri elementary and high-school districts met at the Arizona State College at Flagstaff, Arizona, and organized the Northern Arizona Cooperative Film Library. The communities represented at this meeting were Camp Verde, Clarkdale, Cottonwood, F 1 a gstaff, Holbrook, Jerome, Kingman, Prescott, Seligman, Williams, and Winslow. In addition to the districts represented, the state college at Flagstaff and the College Elementary School each agreed to purchase several educational films at once for the film library. Arizona State College at Flagstaff will be the depository for all films purchased. The new film-library room, located in the basement of Gammage Library, is a tiny space. One wall is equipped with pigeon holes where films are classified according to the Dewey decimal system. The films are protected by stout poultry netting and a carefully padlocked door. Dr. Eldon Ardrey, Head of the Department of Music and Director of the Division of Public Service, is in charge of the project. Already films worth approximately $10,000 have been purchased by the member schools. The reels are all 16mm Encyclopaedia Britannica productions, 8 to 11 minutes in length, comprising a total of 151 classroom Grace Seiler films. Of these, 70 are on geography and industrial education, 31 on animal life, 11 on biology, 10 on history, 10 on plant life, 5 each on art and music, 4 on astronomy, 3 on home economics, and 2 on teacher training. These films are strictly instructional films. Several may be profitably used at all three levels : elementary, secondary, and college. Other films will, of course, be added to the library when there is a demand for them. In addition to the films owned by the Northern Arizona Cooperative Film Library, many free films have been I’eceived from commercial distributors. The library contains also a very valuable collection of 54 army films, a loan from the Office of War Information. Among these are several reels showing the training received by cadets in the Army Air Corps. Many of these films show contributions which industry and agriculture were making to the war effort. The OWI films may be borrowed by students for special programs or by service clubs. In order to put the new library into immediate circulation, a list of the films available for the first nine weeks of the fall term of school has been sent to each member. The schools select the films desired and submit their requests to the depository at Flagstaff. It is the director’s duty to chart these requests so that every school will get the films requested at some time during the nine-week period, although perhaps not on the exact date requested. However, all the bookings were arranged before the opening of school in September, thus enabling teachers to plan their work most efficiently. A service and insurance fee of five cents a reel is being charged. Although the Northern Arizona Cooperative Film Library is new to northern Arizona, the value of films as instructional aids has long been recognized in this section. For the past six years the Arizona State College at Flagstaff has used films regularly in the Department of Science and in the College Elementary School. Most films have been obtained from the Visual Aids Department of the University of California Extension Service.