Amid leaf blowers and the remnants left by some raccoons, a treasure trove of UW athletics history sat gathering dust for years in a storage room in Husky Stadium.
The collection of 3,100 film reels and 4,200 videotapes, featuring games and training and recruitment films dating back to 1928, was brought to the attention of Hannah Palin, Film Archives Specialist in Libraries Special Collections, in 2009.
Since then, Palin, along with Visual Materials Curator Nicolette Bromberg and a team of student volunteers, has been painstakingly assessing and organizing the material. Many of the films are badly damaged and some are in obscure formats that require special equipment to view.
An estimated five years of restoration still lies ahead before the collection will be accessible to the public, though. A generous donation has funded the early work on the films. That same donor will match all gifts, up to $250,000, until Dec. 15, 2012.
Give to the Husky Reels fund: www.bit.ly/LFt4sV