I chose to look at Walt Disney Productions Ephemera. This collection includes the different printed materials and photographs related to Walt Disney Productions films. The collection includes paraphernalia associated with 150 distinct films and is organized in alphabetical order based off of film title. The materials included in the collection are press books, press kits, publicity stills, lobby cards, and publicity biographies.
The container list provided gives very little information about the digitized items. Other than the box number, folder number, title of piece, and date, nothing else of value is provided. Additionally, since the titles are listed in alphabetical order, it is very difficult to piece together information about time period and any relevant trends regarding dates.
There are, however, a few narratives that can be gleaned from the collection list. Since the list is ordered alphabetically by film title, all the ephemera surrounding a given film is grouped together. This makes it easy to see which films were publicized heavily and which films were not as heavily or prominently publicized. Of course, these conclusions could be heavily biased given that the selection of digitized items available may not be a random sample. Another thing which can be understood from this finding aid, after a little organization of the data, is what publishing techniques were used during what years. If one were to sort the listings based on date, one could also examine the tendencies of film subjects across the time period.
If my narrative was to be entirely based off of the container list, there would be several aspects left out of it. First of all, the list provides no context on why a particular film title was used or what the methodology in choosing advertising material was . There is no data about the public reception of movies and the effectiveness of the different printed materials. It would also be helpful to know what kind of marketing techniques were used in which geographical regions and what demographics the techniques had as their target audiences. The fact that the even a few sample materials cannot be viewed online further frustrates researchers who are trying to get an understanding of this collection for their narrative.
There are several ways of remedying this missing information. One thing that can immediately be done is that there can be a option added that would allow people to view the listings sorted by date. Additionally, a small description can be added to each listing to provide some context. Outside of the collection itself, researches can look at other sources of information on Walt Disney Productions. This could be done by taking interviews of people who were involved with the films and by looking through other documented transcripts. Additionally, there may be records of film attendance in theaters, which would provide some insight into public reception of different films.
Overall, Walt Disney Productions is a very interesting topic and is something that played a part in so many kids’ childhoods. This collection list provides some details to create a narrative. But by supplementing this collection with other records, a really powerful and meaningful revelation could result.
Wow, I loved this! I too was extremely interested in looking at this finding aid for the obvious reason of Disney having a special place in my heart.. However, I was also very disappointed to find out that there was not much of an overt narrative present. The sorting was extremely frustrating like you said, and it left the Finding Aid devoid of any real trends that the researcher could be interested in exploring. Overall, more options should be added to this finding aid so that a sort of cause and effect relationship can be uncovered.