UC Santa Barbara Library Preserves Local History Using Family Films
Families Are Invited to Drop Off Home Movies in Exchange for Free Digitization
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) Library has partnered with the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society (SBCGS) to offer Santa Barbara families free preservation-level digitization of local home movies as part of its History in Motion: Home Movie Collection and Digitization program. Digitized materials will be preserved in the UCSB Library’s Local History Collections.
As film deteriorates, viewing it poses an increasing risk of damage, creating the need to preserve files digitally. “UCSB Library works with leading digitization service providers to carefully inspect and scan each frame of the films so that the highest quality transfer can be achieved for long-term preservation,” said Johannes Steffens, communications and marketing manager at the UCSB Library.
UCSB will accept film contributions from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Thursday, October 24, and 1-4 p.m. on Sunday, October 27, at SBCGS’s Sahyun Library (316 Castillo St.). Families can simply drop off eligible film (8mm, Super 8, 16mm) and will receive a digital copy of the film as well as the original film, at no cost.
Part of UCSB’s broader “Santa Barbara Community Archives Project,” the program seeks to reconstruct a multidimensional view of Santa Barbara’s history using diverse local perspectives. “Home movies present a unique opportunity for us to look at history through the community’s perspective,” said Laura Treat Liebhaber, UCSB Library’s local history curator, in a press release. “Sharing them with each other is an important way to broaden how we see Santa Barbara and our own place in its history.”
For Steffens, the most meaningful part of the project for him “is viewing several films from a single family taken over time and seeing that family expand as children grow up and get married and have their own children,” he said. “It’s also interesting to see how the environment they live in changes over time.”
More information is available at UCSB Library’s History in Motion page here.
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