ARC and Stuff

Hi again-

I trust you had a wonderful holidays.

Before I go much farther, I guess I should clarify my intent. One of the purposes of this blog is to generate interest in what I consider an untapped resource of film footage that is owned by the American people. The problem is that most Americans don't seem to know it exists. Therefore, this blog is designed to provide information and assist writers, researchers, historians, film and video makers, content producers, genealogists, and many others in locating the historically rich, celluloid-based, moving images preserved in the motion picture film holdings of the U.S. National Archives. To do this I plan to provide a synopsis of each RG held in the National Archives that contains films and annotate a few example titles. My hope is that this will be enough information for those interested to dig more deeply either on line via ARC or in person at Archives II.

Now, a few words about ARC. The Archival Research Catalog is NARA’s latest computer based research tool to provide access to the content and physical descriptions of all their archival holdings. The stated goal is to have 95 percent of all records input into ARC by 2016. As this book goes to press, over 63 percent have been cataloged. Obviously, ARC is still far from complete. In fact, the current NARA mantra appears to be, “just because it’s not in ARC doesn’t mean that it’s not in our holdings.” As such, some of the information presented in this book is subject to change without notice. Unfortunately, ARC is not the most user friendly computer database program in the world to use. It drives more than one professional researcher I know crazy when they try to use its search functions. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll want to use ARC to review the latest catalog updates and to fully explore the RGs and their individual series listed in the following pages. The ARC main web page is located at: www.archives.gov/research/arc and has much more detailed information for your review.

'Till next time.
Phil
http://www.pwstewart.com/

Information Layout

As we delve into the different RGs and Series that contain motion pictures in the NARA, I will try to provide you with the following information...

- The official RG title followed by its corresponding RG number.
- The content date of the films (representing the time period of the film’s subject and not necessarily the dates they were created).
- The approximate number of reels of film within the RG.
- The official Series Title and the number of film titles within the series.
- Representative examples (arranged chronologically) of individual film titles within the Series, along with a short description and the year of release. Please note that the originating agency, the contracted production company, or the NARA staff, created these titles. The actual number of listed titles varies, but generally ten percent (up to a maximum of ten titles per series) are listed. The accompanying film descriptions are mostly summary in nature, sometimes a bit cryptic, and were derived from one or more sources. Occasionally, you’ll see the notation NFDA and n.d. These are abbreviations for “No Further Data Available” and “no date,” and are used whenever a description or production date couldn’t be determined.

'Till next time.
Phil
www.pwstewart.com