The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

September, 1923 381 Suggestions for a National Exchange for Lanternslides* Dr. Carlos E. Cummings Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences THE following suggestions are offered in the line of a contribution directed toward the definite meeting of a condition which, in the opinion of the writer, presents the greatest obstacle to the general and universal use of lantern slides in education. Our trouble may be very briefly summarized as a lack of suitable material. We may neglect at this time all considerations of type of subject or method of presentation and accept as our theme the statement that good work is impossible without proper tools. In the beginning, the building up of a lantern slide library does not offer very serious difficulties. I5p to say 20,000 slides we may depend on the commercial houses and similar sources, but as we begin to bring our lists into systematic shape, we find a vast field which either is not covered by the dealers or requires hours of careful search to locate such subjects as we wish to present. Commercial prices must also be considered, and while we do not wish to accuse our friends, the dealers, of profiteering, it must be admitted that $100.00 for a single set of slides very rapidly exhausts the ordinary budget, and no single dealer has as yet offered anything more than a very limited list of subjects, with the possible exception of foreign travel But we must recognize that dealers cannot deliberately extend their lists of titles, with the accompanying expense for negatives, beyond the possibility of a reasonable return, and undoubtedly cannot reduce prices without financial loss. * Address delivered at February meeting, at Cleveland, of the National Academy of Visual Instruction. I, therefore, admitting the enormous initial cost and the difficulty in assembling the personnel of such an institution as I am proposing, see the solution to our problems in a central lantern slide foundation whose purpose shall be to extend the use of photography in popular education throughout the United States, through a central clearing house of lantern slides. Without further preamble we may outline some of the functions which such a foundation couW properly perform, and while I have arranged them more or less in the order of what I assume to be their relative importance, experience would very quickly establish a field of action and undoubtedly require more attention along lines which at the present time may appear more insignificant. 1. Primarily, and first of all, it should collect and maintain a library of negatives for the preparation of slides suitable for, educational purposes. This is being done in a small way by practically every institution that uses slides, but the use of such negatives is restricted to the individual institution and accomplishes very little good outside of that institution. For example, in Buffalo we have many thousand negatives which I have collected in the last twenty years, many, if not all of which could be made into slides suitable for use in every city in the country. The slides are on our shelves, but are of course unavailable for the departments in other cities. Many of you have in your possession negatives which we would be very glad to make use of, and there are many private collections of negatives which are not doing anybody any good. Hie advantage of this central library is so