Lawrence W. Lichty papers
Collection
0594-MMC
Lawrence W. Lichty is a media scholar, historian, and educator of journalism and broadcasting history, particularly media coverage of war. Lichty’s scholarship covers the years 1950-2021 and includes broadcast history, journalism, research and writings on the War in Vietnam, and audience rating and analysis.
This collection is minimally processed. This means that materials are in the same state we received them and have not been fully reviewed for content or condition. The collection may need to be screened prior to use. Please contact us before visiting the Special Collections reading room to view this collection. A preliminary box inventory is available under the Inventories/Additional Information section.
Photocopies or digital surrogates may be provided in accordance with Special Collections and University Archives duplication policy. Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs unless otherwise specified. It is the researcher's responsibility to secure permission to publish materials from the appropriate copyright holder. Archival materials may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws or other regulations. While we make a good faith effort to identify and remove such materials, some may be missed during our processing. If a researcher finds sensitive personal information in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the reading room staff.
1290 Linear Feet
5070 Videocassettes
650 Photographs
1500 Sound Discs : CDs
2000 Videodiscs : DVDs
300 Film Reels
1200 Tape Reels : Audio reels
11 Items : Wax cylinders
3 microfilms
124 Photographic Slides
0.5 Linear Feet : Negatives (photographs)
150 Sound Discs : Vinyl records
4300 Sound Cassettes : Audiocassettes
English
This collection is comprised of materials related to the research and work of Lawrence W. Lichty, spanning from 1950-2021. Lichty is a scholar of journalism and broadcasting history, with primary research interests including media coverage of war, documentaries, and audience ratings and analysis. Many of the records in this collection relate to the PBS documentary "The Vietnam War: A Television History," for which he was the Director of Media Research. This collection includes textual documents, photographs, CDs, DVDs, film reels, audio reels, wax cylinders, microfilms, photographic slides, negatives, vinyl records, audiocassettes, and videocassettes. The material also includes born-digital materials.
A native of Pasadena, California, Lichty was an honor graduate of the University of Southern California, majoring in telecommunications and minoring in cinema, journalism, and international ralations. He has a master’s in radio and television programming from Ohio State University. He completed work on his Ph.D. in Speech from Ohio State with minors in sociology, mass communications, and collective behavior. His dissertation is titled “The Nation’s Station” and is a history of radio station WLW in Cincinnati.
Lichty’s significant fields of study have been commercial and public broadcasting history, broadcast programming, audience research, and federal regulation. He has worked in radio and television, including directing and producing.
Starting in 1961, he taught media-related classes, including the history of broadcasting, documentary film and television, and various other courses and seminars at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Maryland, UCLA, and Northwestern. He worked as a staff member or consultant on documentaries and other historical media projects.
Lichty was Director of Media Research for "Vietnam: A Television History" (PBS 1983), a consultant to CBS News for "The Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite" (A&E and home video) and two CBS Reports documentaries, and a Historical Consultant to "Making Sense of the Sixties" (PBS 1991). In various roles, he advised several other documentary projects for such networks as CBS, PBS, CNN, Discovery Channel, and independent producers.
He wrote and/or edited numerous books, articles, and chapters on the history of broadcasting, documentaries, and related topics.
This collection contains audiovisual materials. Items that cannot be used in the Special Collections reading room or are too fragile for researchers require that a digital copy be made prior to use. If you would like to access these materials, please contact us prior to your visit.
This collection contains born-digital materials. If you would like to access these materials, please contact us prior to your visit as items may require specialized software for access.
This collection was donated to the University of Maryland Libraries by Lawrence W. Lichty on July 31, 2021.
Sorting and inventorying of the collection began in 2021. In 2023, seven boxes were identified as showing evidence of mold. The Preservation Department reviewed the materials, and it was determined that they needed to be treated for mold by an external vendor. The materials were freeze-blasted to kill any active mold and pests and then cleaned by the vendor between July and October 2023.
James Baxter and Jasper Nash minimally processed this collection in 2024 by creating a box inventory. Aside from some rough groupings of similar material, the collection came to the Libraries in no particular order. In most cases, materials have not been arranged chronologically or grouped by format, although the audiovisual materials are generally housed separately from the textual materials. In the box inventory, missing box numbers in the sequence represent boxes removed from the collection during reappraisal because they were out of scope.
Due to the large collection size, additional reviewing and inventorying are planned with the eventual creation of a complete finding aid.
Part of the Special Collections and University Archives