Introducing Time Frames Online

by Lea Worcester

Time Frames, a weekly feature for five years in the Sunday edition of the Arlington Star-Telegram, is now available online as a “Time Frames Online” (TFO) video. This new service gives Special Collections an opportunity to share the contents of the popular newspaper feature with a national and international audience in an exciting, new format.

A wide-ranging selection of subjects from past "Time Frames" publications have been used to create the growing collection of TFO videos. In the past, "Time Frames" has highlighted photographs of Arlington citizens, buildings, businesses, schools, street scenes and events from the J. W. Dunlop Photograph Collection along with many Fort Worth and early Texas images from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and other collections. The project team chose several photographs from the Basil Clemons Collection, originally published in the Arlington Star-Telegram, to be among the first photographs used in TFO. Clemons’ expert photographs of life during the oil-boom era are now eye-catching videos. The stoic faces of the Gentry Brothers circus clowns and workers, photographed in 1921, calmly gaze from the frame of one of the most viewed episodes in the small, online collection.

The TFO Project selects photographs, documents, and images from other collections featured in "Time Frames". The wedding picture of future Dallas Mayor, John Jay Good, and his bride; the illustration “The Saloonkeeper and His Victims” from the Purity Journal; 1839 Republic of Texas currency; and a poem titled “The Infantry” with ink drawings of army life by Barnard Elliott Bee are available online. Whenever possible, TFO episodes are tied to a historic or current event. As an example, the Labor Day episode featured a picture of a mule-drawn float, decorated with flags and banners, sponsored by Thurber Bartenders Local 717 from the Thurber Collection.

The TFO project team creates two new episodes a month. In the videos, the camera pans across the photos, maps, or documents animating the still images while a narrator describes the scene. Throughout, close-ups show important details, adding drama and interest to the story. Producing the videos is a team effort with Brenda McClurkin serving as editor, Erin O’Malley designing and maintaining the web pages, Lea Worcester producing videos, and Sarah Jones (of Digital Library Services) uploading images and text. A variety of staff and student volunteers help with the voice-over narration.

TFO is available as a link from the UT Arlington Library’s “News & Events” webpage and is on YouTube, a free video sharing website. The TFO YouTube Channel hosts the videos and provides contact features that facilitate communication with viewers. After watching “The Infantry,” one researcher exclaimed, “Wow, this is great! Bee is a very distant ancestor of mine and I am writing a paper and a thesis on him!” Others have contacted Special Collections after viewing an episode to seek more information on the topic. Each episode has a video as well as original images and text to increase web accessibility. Visitors are encouraged to take a quick, three-question user survey to help make the videos a better experience for all.

"Time Frames", and now “Time Frames Online,” continues to be a way for Special Collections to highlight subjects selected from its extensive collections of the history of Arlington, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Texas, Mexico and the greater Southwest. To view “Time Frames Online” episodes, direct your browser to http://library.uta.edu/spco/timeframes/main.html or go to the TFO YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/SPCOUTA and experience history in a new way.

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