The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

3» National Lantern Slide Exchange The Educational Screen obvious that we may dismiss its further consideration. 2. There should be maintained a laboratory for the preparation of slides from these negatives. While many institutions are fortunate in being equipped with suitable facilities for technical work, there are others who are obliged to depend upon commercial houses where the making of lantern slides is purely incidental and the work is done by men who are not specialists. From a technical standpoint, the making of slides is just as much a specialized branch of photographic art as portraiture or pictorial work, and requires just as careful training. By manufacturing slides in quantities and selling at cost, the price to the consumer could be very materially reduced. 3. The laboratory should be available further to provide slides of proper technical quality from negatives supplied by subscribers for their particular purposes. Where permission is grafted, a copy of the negative should be taken to be added to the negative library. This would guarantee a careful and honorable handling of negatives, which is a rather important matter. Any of us who have suffered the unpleasant experience of having valuable plates accidentally broken by careless handling in commercial houses or had our most cherished pictures pirated to appear subsequently on some dealer's list, realize that the more responsible the institution, the more readily do we commit our negatives to it. I do not mean to say that all commercial houses are pirates, but it is surprising how frequently the same picture appears in lots of slides ordered from different dealers, and it is, of course, absolutely impossible that two or more dealers should possess the original negative. 4. The Foundation would serve a further and very valuable purpose by establishing and maintaining standards of technical quality and suitable subjects for educational purposes. It is certainly appalling to note some of the material which is sent out by reputable firms today, when viewed from a purely technical standpoint. The writer does not grant that any legitimate dealer has the right to copy half-tones and sell them as slides without making the fact perfectly plain in the catalog, and particularly when such copy is of so degraded a type as to be nothing more than a smear on being projected. I do not mean to claim that a decent slide and one of educational value cannot be made from a half-tone cut, but I do not think that we should be permitted to order such slides without knowing they were not from original negatives. 5. The service of this Foundation must be based on a purely non-commercial, educational use of all materials, and subscribers should agree not to traffic in any materials secured from the Foundation. In other words, the slides could not be re-sold except by permission of the management of the Foundation. 6. The service should be offered to subscribers only. Such subscribers may be museums, educational bodies, religious institutions, or individual educators in school work or in a private capacity, on registration, with or without the payment of a fee. 7. The scope of material to be as comprehensive as possible along educational lines and should include among other things travel, Americanization, science, industry, history, art, Bible and literature. 8. A very valuable field which could be covered by this Foundation would be the assuming of the capacity of a central clearing house and bureau of exchange among its subscribers for duplicate lantern slide material. Nearly every educational institution has a surplus along certain lines which they would be willing to exchange for desirable material from some other institu , tion. The writer has attempted such ex