The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

by PATRICIA BLAIR Film Advisor, American Library Association The project ends, the program lives and grows EDUCATIONAL SCREEN reported the launching of the Annerican Library Association Film Project in the September, 1947 issue. In June, 1948 we published a resume of Patricia Blair's first year's activity as ALA Film Advisor, and in subsequent issues we have reported many of the library audio-visual conferences and accomplishments. And now as the project comes to a close, we take great pride in publishing this summary article by Mrs. Blair. Thanks in no small measure to the notable fouryear project, film use has expanded and will continue to expand. In scores of communities people now look to their public libraries for information on film as well as in books. It is clear that the implications of what has been accomplished by the ALA Film Project will reach far into the future. The project ends, but the program lives and grows. — ED. ALA'S FOUR-YEAR FILM PROJECT WHEN the American Library Association Film Project, financed by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, began June 15, 1947, there were 12 public libraries in the United States circulating films. Today there are 114^ with new ones reporting in at about the rate of two or three a month. When the "Monthly Report", forerunner of the ALA Film Newsletter, began in September, 1947, it was sent to about a dozen interested people. Today the Film Newsletter goes to over 700. When the first sample cards, rules, catalogs, and programs were gathered together to send to inquirers, they could be counted in the dozens. During this last year of the project, mailings have grown to about 6,000 pieces per month from the ALA Film Office. This tangible progress and the jissurance of future growth are in themselves adequate justification for the project. They are the statistical measures of achievement but should not be considered as ends in themselves. The Carnegie Corporation grant was requested by the ALA to help it to demonstrate that public libraries as community agencies of education can contribute substantially to the local availability of films as well as books, records, maps and other more traditionally accepted educational materials. The widespread current acceptance of this philosophy is the most startling development of the past four years for which the promotional work of the ALA Film Office can claim at least partial credit. Looking back over the work of the project, one can see a natural division between the work done during the first grant (1947-49) and that done during the second grant (1949-51). The first period was largely occupied with work with individual, single library units. Those were the years when the Enoch Pratt Free Library, in Baltimore, established its Audio-Visual Department, and when a whole group of cities in the size range of Rochester (New York), Toledo, Louisville, Peoria, and Knoxville started their film operations. Field trips were iMarch 1, 1951. made to many of these individual units where there was' inevitably concern about the quarters — their size and location, the personnel, budget, minimum equipment, and what films to buy first. Public Library Film Circuits In the second year of the initial Film Project (194849), the Carnegie Corporation of New York again made grants for public library film work, which were to alter completely the nature of film work in the national office. With the assistance of the ALA Film Office, two agencies, the Cleveland Public Library and the Missouri State Library ( after making necessary adaptations to local situations), submitted requests for funds to do demonstrations which would endeavor to prove that a considerable degree of decentralization of film collections was possible by cooperation among small communities. The now well-known Northern Ohio Regional Film Circuit and Missouri Film Circuit proved workable from a fiscal and administrative point of view, and the film material was eagerly accepted and was used in the participating medium-sized and small cities and towns and in the rural and farming communities served by the roving bookmobiles. These film circuits provided ALA with two fine examples of cooperative planning to achieve the broader financial base needed to finance a special service and yet leave the local library independent and free to plan for its own film programs and utilization. They also provided ALA with concrete examples of legal contracts, together with booking and reporting forms, and procedures necessary to make the traveling film packets run on schedule and arrive on time. During the late summer and fall of 1949, which marked the beginning of the second grant to finance the Film Project, the American Library Association held seven regional meetings from the Far West to the Southeast and New England. At every one of the regional conferences the success story of the film circuits was told 222 Educational Screen