Women in Public Media: A Digital Exhibit from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

This digital poster is an exhibition of materials from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB). This exhibit showcases materials held by the AAPB related to women’s and gender history, and aims to demonstrate the usefulness of the AAPB to historians for research and teaching.

The AAPB is a joint project between the Library of Congress and WGBH in Boston that aims to preserve and make accessible significant public television and radio content. To date, the AAPB has digitized 40,000 hours of programming from public television and radio stations and has made thousands of hours available to the public in the Online Reading Room of their website, in addition to providing on-site access to all digitized resources in both Boston and Washington D.C.

The AAPB is a rich source for historians in several ways. It offers access to primary sources for 20th century historians doing research on a wide variety of subjects. The AAPB contains programs from over 100 stations across the US and covers more than 60 years of programming. There are interviews, news broadcasts, talk shows and many other programs that can be used as sources for events of local and national significance. It provides compelling materials that educators can show their students to bring history alive. In addition to the recordings of 20th century events the AAPB has historical pieces on earlier events.

This poster presentation will also demonstrate the Open Vault site, which provides online access specifically to WGBH programs, and has been useful to researchers who cannot make it to the station in person to conduct research.