This week, my main priority was making sure I finished digitizing the first batch of tapes from Sunset Elementary School. These were the shortest tapes to work with and I figured would be good practice before digitizing some of the older, larger tapes. I came into the library more often than usual this week to make sure I finished. Also, the research department staff don’t even need to ask what I need when I approach the desk, they just start setting up the digitizer now. I digitized four more tapes this week. Some were completely new videos. One was a video of gym class where kids were doing a gymnastics/tumbling unit. Other videos were just continuations of other videos I had already digitized. I got more footage of a Halloween parade and more footage of the band class from my very first tape. Emily and I have discussed the possibility of using the newly digitized footage in a social media post. All in all, I successfully digitized all the tapes from the Sunset collection and can now move on to some of the larger tapes. These ones belong to a mysterious ‘Fred Rogers’ and are from the 1930s. Some of them are degrading and we’re probably going to send them out, but there are a few that should be stable enough
I also delved a little deeper into the roller derby rabbit hole, diving more into the gender dynamics of the sport, especially since it was a sport where men and women competed on equal footing. I found an oral history project with interviews from some of the female skaters, some of who had been teammates with the main subject of my research, Sammy Skobel. They spoke about the relationship they had with the male skaters, usually something akin to a sibling dynamic. One huge part of this research project has been combing fan sites as that is a huge part of how roller derby history has been preserved. On some of these sites, I found interviews with skaters and short online memoirs. One of these sites was run by Loretta Behrens, one of the female skater. Sammy had been one of her favorite skaters and she eventually found herself on the same team as him. They had a both a rivalry and respect for each other. Loretta also explained how a lot of the male skaters would look out for their female teammates, which also goes along with what Sammy has said in interviews. Even though the main focus of the exhibit is Sammy Skobel, I still plan on finding ways to highlight the experiences of the female skaters, and this angle may be something worth including.
In terms of planning for my exhibit, I have a pretty solid outline for what I’d like to include in the exhibit. I plan to start writing the text but not before I turn my attention to a potential exhibit space.
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