 |
| Ruta Abolins has actively involved
the Brown Media Archives in annual observances on campus,
including Black History Month and Women’s History
Month, offering related screenings of previous Peabody
winners. (Photo by Peter Frey) |
|
‘Major’ change in college led archivist to different
career choice |
By Jean Cleveland
jclevela@uga.edu |
Ruta Abolins is the daughter of Latvian parents
who immigrated to America as children from a displaced persons
camp in Germany after World War II. The only one of five children
to pursue
|
| FACTS |
| RUTA ABOLINS |
Director, Brown Media Archives
and Peabody Awards Collection |
M.A., Library
and Information Studies,
May 1998, University of Wisconsin, Madison
M.A.,
Popular Culture, August 1989, Bowling Green State
University
B.F.A., Film, May
1986, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee |
|
higher education, Abolins was encouraged to enter a profitable
field, and so she majored in business and marketing at the University
of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
“I hated it,” she laughs. “I gave myself a
film course as a treat and that was it. I changed my major.”
A dozen years later, Abolins is leading the third largest public
archives for broadcasting in the United States. The Walter J.
Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection together
hold more than 90,000 titles and five million feet of newsfilm,
comprising moving image and sound collections that focus on
American television and radio broadcasting, and the music, folklore
and history of Georgia.
After she graduated from college, Abolins went to work at the
Milwaukee Art Museum, where she coordinated lectures, film screenings
and classes until she entered a graduate program in popular
culture at Bowling Green State University. A subsequent internship
at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago introduced
her to the archival world.
“I began to think about the questions, ‘What do
you take and what do you leave behind?’ I realized: No.
1, moving images; and No. 2, that was the question of a lifetime,”
she says.
Then she discovered the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater
Research in Madison, 30 minutes away.
“I volunteered and two months later, got a job,”
she says. “I was there eight years.”
Abolins was involved in all aspects of collection development,
provided reference service and assisted researchers with access
to the film, television and theater collections at the center.
Her years at the center gave her a breadth of experience in
an archival environment.
When an archival position in the media department at the UGA
Libraries came open in 1998, Abolins remembered a 1996 visit
to Atlanta for a conference, with a sidetrip to Athens. After
two years, Abolins became director. During her tenure, the department’s
efforts have focused on organizing the collections and increasing
accessibility.
“I really want to make the collection more accessible
for the university community as well as school children and
the public,” Abolins says. “The next move we make
will be digitizing parts of the collection and continuing our
preservation efforts. ”
Abolins has actively involved the Brown Media Archives in annual
observances on campus, including Black History Month and Women’s
History Month, offering related screenings of previous Peabody
winners. The planned special collections building will allow
her to expand that outreach, offering screenings of Peabody
nominees and winners each year, along with a museum dedicated
to the history of moving images and broadcasting.
“I
don’t think any other archive can do that, other than
the Library of Congress,” she says. “And, it’s
important for the state—all of our collections are so
related to the state of Georgia. As far as I know no one else
is doing it like this. Plus, I want to move into the new building
and have storage. Archives are all about storage—good
temperature- and humidity-controlled storage. That’s how
goofy we are.” |
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