Angela Schmidt with UAF’s Alaska Film Archives
All week long, I’ll be sharing stories from KUAC’s television history as we celebrate National Library Week.
This National Library Week, we invite you to take a look back into KUAC’s archives.
Whose stories get remembered? And how do we see—or hear them again—years later?
Across Alaska, KUAC Public Television has spent decades recording conversations with the people who’ve shaped our communities—elders, leaders, neighbors, artists, and storytellers sharing their lives in their own words.
Many of these recordings were created on videotape, and for years, they were difficult to access—tucked away, and at risk of being forgotten over time.
Through a partnership between KUAC and the Alaska Film Archives at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Rasmuson Library, these programs have been digitized and preserved. More than 1,300 KUAC programs are now available for viewing online.
You might experience historians discussing the legacy of one of Alaska’s first senators, Bob Bartlett, during a program made in the 2000s. You might watch as a young artist reflects on his craft in Alaskan Profiles from 1999. Or you might listen to an Alaskan farmer talk about his life’s work in the 1970s from a program called Homegrown.
Each voice offers a different perspective as they comment on Alaska’s people and communities, past and present.
This project is part of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a national effort supported by the Mellon Foundation, GBH in Boston, and the Library of Congress.
To start exploring, visit americanarchive.org and search for “KUAC Alaska.” Or visit KUAC.org for links.