Legacy Library is a new initiative of the PSDF Archive focused on preserving and curating audio and video from the 1920’s through the 1950’s and beyond. In collaboration with Nick Williams, our first effort focuses on digitizing and preserving Nick’s extensive personal collection of video clips collected over decades.
Legacy Library is a new initiative of the PSDF Archive specifically focused on preserving and curating audio and video from the 1920’s through the 1950’s and beyond, and includes dances such as Lindy Hop, Balboa, Charleston, Swing, Collegiate Shag, and Vernacular Jazz. The video collection draws from films, soundies, home videos, dance events, and rare private lesson footage. In collaboration with Nick Williams, our first effort focuses on digitizing and preserving Nick’s extensive personal collection of video clips collected over decades.
The Legacy Library is dedicated to preserving the history of our beloved swing dances and honoring the legends of those individuals who shaped them. It is also intended to serve as an educational resource for the historical and ongoing cultural impact of both the swing dances and the dancers who brought them to life.
Best of all, the PSDF Legacy Library will be accessible to all!
We have ambitious goals and need the financial support of the community to realize them. Donated funds will be used to secure the expertise of archivists, historians, editors, and film transfer specialists to create and curate the Library. Wherever possible PSDF intends to contract with professionals from within the greater swing dance community in order to continue investing in our collective future.
We also need your help to boost the signal. Please share this everywhere you can!
Thank you for supporting the Legacy Library!
Sponsor a Tape!
Supporters at or above the $500 level will have the option to choose a specific tape to sponsor from among Nick Williams’ collection and to join Legacy Clip Geeks — a group for nerds who like to geek out about clips.
- Sponsors at or above $500 will have the option to choose a tape to sponsor. Sponsoring a tape helps pay for that tape to be digitized, catalogued, and curated.
- Sponsors will be given their choice of tape on a first-come, first-served basis.
- Tape sponsors will receive sponsorship credit for the clips contained on “their” tape and in the Pacific Swing Dance Archive.
Thank you very much for taking on this giant project. The preservation of this historic information is very valuable to the future of the Swing dance community and an important step to document the roots and development of the dance. Merci!
My partner Peter, and I, are contributing to this project as a thank you for the effort it will take to bring it all together. We are Bal/Lindy devotees from Australia and come to as many events as we can in the USA…the birthplace of our beloved Swing. We always come home energised and inspired.
Love this initiative! Can’t wait to see it all!
And please consider making the library available for different languages.
This is important work that is years overdue. Thank you Nick Williams and Pacific Swing Dance Foundation for making this a possibility. We have to preserve the history of, not only the dance, but the dancers who brought it to us.
I’ve been wanting to support this effort for a very long time—ever since Nick mentioned how many tapes he had in storage as we were talking after a meal following a CalBal weekend. I think getting this information into the public domain will, hopefully, help younger generations of dancers be inspired and maintain the links to the original dancers, feeling, and music of this hobby-obsession we have and keep the spirit alive as well as recognize the original source of the dance and Jazz for its African American roots.
Great idea! Looking forward to seeing it!
Thank you for your efforts! It’s very much appreciated 🎊 greets from Norway 🫶
We’re lucky to have both these recordings and people willing & able to preserve them in this library!
I would like to donate more than 10 USD but due to my economical situation, this is what I can do at the moment… I feel it is my duty to mae a donation so because I have learned so much from video that are available online and I also hope to keep learning more with this important project. I take the occasion to tank you for this vital initiative.
Thank you for the initiative – great project! Good luck and greetings from Vienna, Austria <3
Can’t wait to see it all
So grateful for this valuable work! Thanks for Wales, UK
Barnett Jennifer
Hello, thank you so much for doing this job. Very exicted for the results !
Over the years, we’ve benefitted enormously from SO many dancers like Nick who have collected, organized, and shared original dance clips. The knowledge and history contained in these clip collections is enormously important to understanding swing dance. Thank you Legacy Clip Geeks rule!