History in Motion: Home Movie Digitization

History in Motion: Home Movie Collection and Digitization

In celebration of Family History Month and international Home Movie Day, the UCSB Library’s Santa Barbara Community Archives Project is partnering with the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society (SBCGS) to promote the importance of home movie collections and to provide free digitization services for Santa Barbara community members. Digitized materials will be preserved for future generations in the Library’s Local History Collections.

Current and former residents of Santa Barbara County are invited to bring their eligible films (8mm, Super 8, 16mm) to the SBCGS’s Sahyun Library (316 Castillo St) on October 24, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., and October 27, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., for free off-site digitization. Original materials and digital files will be returned to participants at no cost. UCSB Library will then provide long-term preservation for the digital copies.

To learn more about the event and the services we will provide to you as well as other local history resources available at the SBCGS Library, please check the Events FAQ on the UCSB Library’s Website or stop by SBCGS’s Family History Month Open House on Sunday, October 6, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., at Sahyun Library, or at SBCGS’s monthly membership meeting on Saturday, October 19, 9:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., at First Presbyterian Church of Santa Barbara (21 E Constance Ave). Both events are free and open to the public; a SBCGS membership is not required to attend.

Host Bio

Laura Jean Treat Liebhaber is a Curator at UCSB Library Special Research Collections where she oversees the Film & Television, Santa Barbara & Local History, and Oral History Collections.  Laura was born and raised in California’s Central Valley to a family of local history enthusiasts and has called Santa Barbara home since joining UCSB Library in 2020. Along with her colleague Angel Diaz, Laura launched the Santa Barbara Community Archives Project, a UCSB Library initiative to document the rich and diverse communities that make up Santa Barbara by digitizing, preserving, and sharing family histories. For more than a decade, Laura has dedicated her professional work to preserving home movies. While at the University of North Texas, Laura ran two successful home movie digitization projects and local film events under the name Spotlight: North Texas with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She also participated in the Texas Archive of the Moving Image’s award winning Texas Film Round Up Program. Laura holds an M.S.I.S. from the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information. She is Member of the Board of the Association of Moving Image Archivists and Co-Chair of the AMIA Local Television Task Force.