Throwing a Hail Mary! The University of Maryland Football Film Project
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Date
2015-09Author
Turkos, Anne S.K.
Speck, Jason G.
Hawk, Amanda K.
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Show full item recordAbstract
Documentation of the planning, preparation, and implementation of moving image
preservation and digitization projects is difficult to find in scholarly sources, despite the large
numbers of deteriorating films housed in archival repositories and the increasing demand
to access and utilize audio-visual materials. “Throwing a Hail Mary!” chronicles one such
project, undertaken over the last seven years at the University of Maryland (UMD). Since
2008, the University of Maryland Archives has raised over $100,000 to preserve and make
accessible its collection of historical football film footage. This project faced long odds,
representing the Archives’ first venture into serious preservation work on its athletics-related
holdings and its first major digitization project with funds raised privately, rather than
through grant allocations. In this case study, the UMD Archives staff traces the progress of
the entire digitization project from start to finish, recounts challenges faced along the way,
celebrates successes, and outlines plans for the future, to serve as a guidepost for libraries and
archives interested in starting similar projects at their own institutions.