From the hardwood to Pasadena and the asphalt track to wrestling mats, now you have an opportunity to help preserve Hawkeye sports history, including the 1959 Rose Bowl, and make it accessible to all through a film digitization project.

The University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections and Archives and Conservation and Collections Care have an initiative to digitize about 530 films of football, men’s and women’s basketball, wrestling, and track films that date back to the 1930s and go through at least 1989. 

The films’ state of degradation is dramatic, especially for the older material, and many of these films don’t have much life left in them. Due to the nature of film, degradation products induce further deterioration. It affects the plastic support, causing it to become acidic, to shrink, and to give off an acetic acid producing a vinegary odor, otherwise known as vinegar syndrome.

Projecting an original 16mm film can be risky and ultimately, we will no longer be able to view the originals, so digitization is critical. The digitization process helps create an exact and high-quality duplicate of the original, which can then be accessed online via the Iowa Digital Library.

The initiative is one way for past, present, and future Hawkeye fans to easily re-live memories such as watching the full game of the Hawkeyes prevailing over the California Golden Bears in the 1959 Rose Bowl. Currently, you can only watch highlights of the game thanks to the UI Sportsfilm production “The Evy Era of Iowa Football.”

You can donate to the UI Libraries Special Collections Fund, which will assist with the film digitization project, as part of One Day for Iowa here https://1dayforiowa.org/fa-libraries23.

You can also check out the many wonderful collections already digitized at the UI Libraries here.