I’m the Member Services Manager for NOBLE, the North of Boston Library Exchange, a consortium of twenty-eight Massachusetts public and academic libraries.
Before joining NOBLE twenty years ago, I worked for the public libraries of Salem, Revere, Wakefield and Hamilton, Massachusetts, in a variety of positions including Children’s Librarian, Young Adults’ Librarian, and Technical Services Librarian. I’m the author of two books on librarianship, including Rethinking Reference: A Reference Librarian’s Practical Guide to Surviving Constant Change.
In addition to my library work, I served as a volunteer Playspace Activity Leader with Horizons for Homeless Children for five years, and I taught English for Future School in Dalian, China, in the summers of 2002, 2004 and 2006.
This is my professional blog — my personal blog is Pursuits.
I see you maintain a web page for “The Great Gildersleeve” radio program. I have heard a few episodes on WHAV in Haverhill, and plan to listen to more in the future as well as to those of “The Jack Benny Program.”
But I, like you wrote about yourself, am more a child of the television age. In fact, I recall one summer when a local, independent UHF-TV station ran classic TV episodes (“Our Miss Brooks,” “My Little Margie,” “The People’s Choice” [with Jackie Cooper, who I first knew from "Hennessey"], and “The Great Gildersleeve”) in the same block where it was already airing nightly episodes of Groucho Marx’s “You Bet Your Life.” I had always been a fan of TV sitcoms (“I Love Lucy,” “Pete & Gladys,” “December Bride,” “The Danny Thomas Show”/”Make Room For Daddy,” and “My Three Sons,” among so many others), but that summer of shows from TV’s “Golden Age” aroused an interest in shows from before my time.
Then Nick At-Nite came along and then TV Land, but now both have all but abandoned their original missions to “preserve our television heritage.” More recently I have had opportunities to watch a few old shows on broadcast TV sub-channels (with this new digital conversion), Channel 7-2 in Boston and 10-2 in Rhode Island, which are airing “The Patty Duke Show,” “Mister ED,” “Bachelor Father” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” among others.
But to the point of my contact, which is–I have discovered a half dozen or so episodes of the TV “Gildersleeve” on the Web, because they are categorized (perhaps inaccurately, as the term is often misapplied to protected properties) as “public domain.” I have found a few of them have inaccurate titles, and I am trying to find the correct titles for them. Would you know or know of where I could find the correct episode information for the Gildy TV series? Is there a definitive book, etc.? I normally consult IMDB.com for such info., but they also have incorrect or missing info.
Thank you.