Parks Library has received an $18,000 grant from the State Historical Society of Iowa to help preserve paper records and 16mm WOI-TV films, said Tyler Walters, university archivist.

The library acquired the records and films in the early part of 1995, but did not have the funds to begin identifying them until October, when officials learned of the grant.

“There are about 2,000 reels,” Walters said. “We don’t know what that means yet, but with the grant, we can begin to identify what we really have.”

The collection includes productions of The Magic Window, This is Iowa Talking, Farm Facts, The Whole Town’s Talking, TV Schooltime and other titles.

Walters said the two-year project will begin in January and will mostly use student workers and volunteers.

“They will be stored in the basement of the library in the film vault,” he said. “We will be using as good as housing as possible. At the end, we should have a catalog of the films, and a card for every film we have. We should have them all identified.”

Walters said when the films were taken from the basement of WOI, there were some indications of decay. “[But] overall the collection is fairly stable,” he added.

Walters said many people feel the WOI films are valuable to researchers interested in educational television, children’s television, early television history, the farm economy and the impact of television on rural life.

“We got about one call a month from people wanting to find out what was going to happen to the records now that the station was sold,” he said. “These films were produced for farmers, homemakers and children, among other audiences. WOI-TV truly was a pioneer in educational programming and it took to heart the extension philosophy.”