Michael Huntsberger, Linfield College associate professor of mass communication, was invited to join the Radio Preservation Task Force of the Library of Congress.
In the role, he will survey libraries and other collections of historic radio materials in Oregon, including program transcriptions and artifacts from radio history.
Growing out of the National Recording Preservation Plan of the National Recording Preservation Board, the Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF) is the Library of Congress’s first national radio history project. The Radio Preservation Task Force is directed by eminent broadcast historian Christopher Sterling, associate dean at George Washington University. Comprised of 100 media history faculty and the staff at the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland-College Park, the RPTF is currently aggregating participation from Affiliate Archives and assessing their collections.
Next year, the RPTF will analyze processed and unprocessed collections to create a national finding aid. Surveying the landscape of extant radio materials will require the application of metadata analytics to sound history, as well as the development of research caucuses comprised of faculty specialists and state university archivists. This work will culminate in an autumn radio history conference at the Library of Congress.
Huntsberger, at Linfield since 2009, holds a bachelor’s degree from Evergreen State College and a Ph.D. in communication and society from the University of Oregon. His research focuses on public service media policy, history, and electronic media technology. He has worked as a producer, engineer and consultant in commercial and noncommercial broadcasting, and is active in the global RIPE Initiative (Revisionary Interpretations of the Public Enterprise) and the Broadcast Education Association. Huntsberger oversees Linfield’s student radio station, KSLC 90.3 FM, and Linfield’s student video club, Wildcat Productions.
