Documentaries in the Library

We are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor an accumulated body of information, but of a conversation…It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves…And it is this conversation which, in the end, gives place and character to every human activity and utterance. – Michael Oakeshott

Introduction and Rationale

There has been a tremendous increase in the production of documentary films in the last three decades, particularly those that are independently produced. The increasing availability of high-quality production equipment has made it possible for a large number of independent film-makers to utilize the documentary form to expose, understand, challenge, articulate, resist, and explain the cluster of issues, controversies, triumphs, experiences, tragedies and technologies that constitute modernity.

Documentaries in the Library supports and improves the teaching and learning communities in a culturally relevant fashion. Documentaries visualize our world and in turn have succeeded in promoting an understanding of it. Consequently, there has been an increase in the interdisciplinary use of documentary films to support and enhance traditional teaching. Today’s students expect visual experiences in the classroom, and teachers are responding with increased use of the library’s media collection. This presents an exciting opportunity for the University of Tennessee Libraries. By leveraging the Libraries’ documentary collection, their staff and faculty expertise, and their rich tradition of instruction and service, this program implements organizational values and the land-grant mission of the University of Tennessee to translate knowledge to the citizens of Tennessee.

Public Programming and Documentary Films: The Intersection of Library Collections, Conversation, Local Communities and Public Space

Documentaries in the Library will be, in its simplest description, a film-viewing and discussion series. On a practical level it will involve showing documentary films in the Libraries followed by a discussion led by a University or community scholar. As a public programming initiative it will demonstrate an institutional acknowledgement of and creative response to the cultural shift toward the “audio-visualization” of knowledge. Documentaries in the Library is ultimately a collection-centered approach to instruction and community outreach that emphasizes the library’s role as providing a public (and civil) space. It will offer the University Libraries a unique opportunity to communicate and collaborate with teaching faculty.

An entire “eminence of worth” that constitutes the University Libraries’ contribution, support, and improvement of the University’s teaching and learning community can be brought to bear on the critical contextualization of the issues raised by the films: this worth includes the productive energy of library faculty and staff, refined subject expertise, innovative information literacy and instruction initiatives. Documentaries in the Library films are not shown in a way that might duplicate the often passive experiences of visual forms, but rather as “texts” in their own right. These films serve as introductions to important dialogues that open up the entire bibliographic universe, inside the library and out, through bibliographies, pathfinders, and the diverse expertise of our audiences.

Oakeshott, Michael. (1962) "The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind." Rationalism in Politics. New York: Basic Books, p. 199.

Respectfully,

Troy Davis, Media Services Librarian
Sandra Leach, Head, Pendergrass Library
James Staub, SIS Graduate Student
Pamela Martin, SIS Graduate Student