TeleVISIONS (January/February 1975)

continued from preceding page In its first semester the program is producing four video tapes, two of which will be on pre-school child care and two on geriatric health problems. The child care tapes will be used in a class offered to mothers on Medicaid in Northeast Washington and the geriatric tapes will be used in a health course for Medicare clients in Reston Virginia. [ea Libraries & education Toledo offers degree mi Mi niversity of Toledo Department of Library and Information Services, is offering a special masters degree program aimed at training professionals to meet the information needs of communities. This Community Information Specialist Program has been going now for three years and has met wide acceptance in the Toledo area where the students learn through work in the community. In the first quarter of the program students do a case study of a particular community information problem and then produce a handbook for citizens providing the information found to be unavailable. One student team researched problems relating to public access on cable TV and then produced a public access guidebook. During the second quarter, students spend from 18-20 hours a week working with a community organization as a volunteer. In the third quarter students work fulltime as an intern for an organization or government agency which’ ~ must pay them a stipend of $750 plus their tuition for that quarter. Miles Martin, director of the program states that the fact that the students are paid makes them respected staff members of the agency, making their work more valuable both to the organization and the student. During the fourth quarter the students write a thesis which is based on notebooks they keep throughout the program. The students are also required to write a report to the agency they worked for making recommendations on how the agency could better disseminate information to the public. Miles Martin is now hoping to get students more involved in using video and other media in the dissemination of information and students have just begun using porta-pacs for such purposes. Open stacks The Monroe County Public Library in Bloomington, Ind., has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant of $20,950 to produce 10 to 12 programs on traditional southern Indiana crafts and craftsmen at work. In addition to cablecasting over the library’s leased channel other libraries may obtain copies.. Danbury, Conn. Public Library has been designated as the city’s official information center for television as well as traditional print, following the award of a one-year $25,145 federal grant from the Library Services and Construction Act. Library officials will begin by purchasing a portapak, editing and cartridge decks, in order to produce in-service training tapes. Next phase will be used to introduce the library’s facilities to the public va the TelePromTer cable system in Danbury. The library hopes to house videotapes produced by community groups as well as city producers, and. to begin cablecasting schedules of governmental and _ civic meetings, activities and services, as well as working with other city institutions to establish 2-way links within the city. Contact: Stuart Porter, Danbury Public Library. Tri-County Regional Library in Rome, Ga., has begun cable TV programming on a shoestring, according to Jim Dary, the library’s resource and program coordinator. With the basic equipment and self-training from the available literature, Tri-County is now producing a daily children’s story hour, plus tapes of business services in the area, kids’ music and drama classes, video workshops, local cultural and social events, and documentaries on local agencies. . . Another library using LSCA Title I money is the Framingham, Mass., Public Library, which is developing a community video access center in the city’s Spanish neighborhood, with bi-lingual ‘survival information” tapes, news, cultural events for the Puerto Rican neighborhood, and 2quipment workshops. Closed-circuit TV is the primary means of dissemination. . . Lynne Bachleda, Media Coordinator of the Leon County [Florida] Public Library, reports that a recent purchase of half-inch hardware will allow them to begin making in-service training tapes, with long-range plans for public workshops. Tallahassee, where the library is located, is in the cable franchising process. (See Video section for another Tallahassee group.) Write: 127 N. Monroe Street, Tallahassee, Fla. 32302. (904)488-8716. The Twin Cities area of Minn. is adding another video facility, with the addition of the Communications Media Center at the Lexington branch of the St. Paul Public Library. They have used a $17,000 grant from the Perrie Jones Fund to buy half-inch and cassette hardware, to amass a library of print and video materials, and begin to tape ongoing library programs like the puppet shows. For more information: Annette C. Salo, Extension Services, 1080 University Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104. The Fort Wayne, Ind. Public Library has been operating a video project since Dec. 1973, to ‘‘produce tapes of local cultural and historical items and events and to pave the way for the Library’s entrance into cable television as it becomes available in Ft. Wayne.”” They have _ trained some 45 people in video, as well as shown to the public some of the tapes made on the Civil War. They are also recording the facades of buildings in older portions of downtown Ft. Wayne for future historical use. First year’s budget was $7,067 from Library operating funds, with an additional $1,000 for a used switcher/SEG, and $660 from the Indiana Arts Commission for a synch generator. (--Midwest Video News) AIA planning for new library concepts AIA-Research, a division of the American Institute of Architects is now completing work on a report to be released this spring entitled, ‘“‘Performance Criteria for the Planning of Community Resource Centers’’. The report, which will culminate a year of research into the useses of libraries for the meeting of community needs is funded by the H.E.W. Office of Education. While the original intent of the research project was to focus on libraries, the investigators later found the development of independent community resource centers springing up independently of libraries. Thus their report will deal with both concepts. In describing the need for such centers the staff writes, ‘In recent years, rapidly growing community needs and the economic pressures associated with them have caused many members of the library community to consider additional ways in which they could serve their communities. As a result there is a new emphasis on action-oriented programs that include social counseling and referral services, and on the library as a neighborhood center for alternative education and as a local resource for a range of cultural and recreational services identified as necessary by the community that is served.”’ AIA with the assistance of the subcontrators on this project, Researchitects, and Educational Facilities Laboratories, will establish model design requirments for the implementation of the community re sources center concept. To establish these requirements they have been holding workshops with a variety of resource people on specific aspects of community needs and means to meet them. Sessions have included architects, librarians, video and consultents, and community resource people. Following the release of the report, the research team plans to hold regional conferences on the resource center concepts, for community leaders. They will also Be giving one-to-one assistence to organizations wishing to begin implementation of the CRC concepts. For more information Write: Irma Striner, Project Manager, AIA Researche Corp., 1735 New York Ave N.W., Wash D.C. 20006 Women’s Media Feminists media conferences around U.S. eminists gathered in New York in early February for a conference on women involved in film and video. And the issues discussed couldn’t have been more basic: survival of women’s media work in the face of a deepening recession. The conference attendees included members of film and video groups from the East and Midwest and was coordinated by the Women’s Interart Center, the New York Women’s Video Project and Women Make Movies Inc. . Official support came from the First National City Bank, but its sponsorsihp comprised only the salary of one chair woman. There was, though, encourage ‘ment from a male representative of First National City that more extensive support for future women’s conferences might be forthcoming. Stili, there was precious little news of other successful quests for funding from the business sector. One piont that was painfully clear, emerging from the conference dialogue, was that women need to push harder for other opportunities to work. For New York area video artists particularly, the WNET Experimental Television Lab seemed one specially promising possibility. The experimental lab is currently running a series of 26 weekly half-hours on the New York educational station. Still a pressing problem, the bulk of the support for such women’s media group is in the form of service grants—training and public service oriented—rather than for production projects. And this type of support emanates mainly from foundations, which are hard-pressed for funds in a depressed stock market. In fact, most of the women attending the conference had not means whatsoever to support their media work. Funding hassles aside, the conference came to agreement in two key areas: —An “on-going manifesto”: this for the purpose of defining feminist-oriented media including such points as the altering of the image of women and minorities in the mass media and the need for individuals and groups involved in program production to retain some control over distribution and use. —A video-exchange pilot project: During a six-month trial period, six women’s video groups in as many cities plan to trade tapes on a monthly basis. Informal screenings of the tapes are planned for each city. Dubbing and mailing costs are to be covered by the organizations involved. The project is being called the International Video Letter and includes Video-women in Cleveland, Washington, New York City, Alberta, Canada, upstate New York and Sydney, Australia. When the trial period ends, the project may be extended to other groups and cities. For summaries of specific workshops and information on other new projects, contact Women Make Movies Inc., 257 West 19th St., New York, N.W. 10011. “page 9/Telé VISIONS ex tim & video COn,. %, <e Women of the Future Four other conclaves of note for women in video and film are scheduled for spring. The trail begins in New York and heads south and west as the summer sun approaches. —The Women’s Interart Center of New York plans a two-week conference, beginning April 15. Nine hours of women’s video will be shown. Contact: WIC, 549 West 52nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10019 (212-246-6570). —In Philadelphia, the Public Interest Media Project is soliciting video tapes on women’s issues for it’s May conference. Contact: Robert Moskowitz, 165 Harvey Sts Philadelphia, Pa. 19144 (215-842-3252). A spring conference is planned for Los Angeles, similar to the WIC event in New York, called the “Sister Feminist Film and Video Conference.” Contact: Woman's Building. 743 South Grandview, Los Angeles, Calif. 90057. —A genuine fantasy trip is planned for Mexico City, June 23-July 4, in conjunction with the United Nation’s Women’s Year Conference. For information and an application to show tapes, contact: Ann Haller, Room 404 BR, 605 Third Ave., New YOrk, N.Y. 10017. works in Albany, N.Y. The bloom is fast fading from the rose of a women’s cable channel in Memphis, but resources are falling into place for a similar project in upstate New York. Financial pressures on TCI-Athena Cable of Memphis has kept that franchise in limbo for more than a year, and has held up plans for what was to be the first leased channel in the country dedicated exclusively for the use of women’s programming. Though a women’s group in Memphis has completed contract negotiations for the channel (see Community Video Report, vol. 1, no. 4) their efforts to get programming on women’s needs on Memphis TV sets have been stalled indefinitely. Instead, the Memphis women are now directing their energies toward training other women in video production and the formation of a National Women’s Network, The women’s network is envisioned as a clearing-house operation for ideas and softwear, as well as to drum-up participation by local and national women’s organizations (contact: National Women’s Network, 4241 Park Ave., Memphis, Tenn.) But there is heartening news from Albany. Stephanie Stewart, director of the public access programming for Schnectedy Cablevision and consultant to Capital Women in Cable, reports that fundraising and organizing techniques developed in Memphis may soon bring women’s programming via cable to the tri-city area of Albany, ‘Schnectedy and Troy. Area women’s groups she says are being organized around both nonand for-profit corporate entities, with some financial help from the New York Council of the Arts, for program production. Cablecasting is scheduled to begin over the women’s channel in April. Production for the channel will utilize %-inch portapaks, without time-base correction. No matter, Ms. Stewart believes programming will reach its viewers ‘with just a few tears and wiggles at the top of the picture.”’ Eo