William K. Everson Papers Available Online

William K. Everson (1929-1996) was an extremely important film scholar, archivist, and professor whose name is familiar to most folks with an interest in film history. Among his many contributions was his practice of writing detailed scholarly program notes for screenings he helped curate for the Theodore Huff Film Society, which he co-founded in 1951. These free handouts became world famous, and the practice emulated by many other film societies, museums, and universities.

Now a huge number of these program notes, along with a number of original press kits he collected, are available online at the William K. Everson Collection web site offered by New York University, where he taught for more than 20 years.  Included in the online collection are program notes for screenings by the 300 Film Club (1949-1950) and the Huff society (1953-1982), as well as for classes and series he led at the New School (1966-1990) and Marymount Manhattan College (1970-1972).

The program notes are in a variety of formats, usually (but not always) more than one:  HTML, PDF, and/or scanned Jpegs.  The HTML versions are all cross-linked with other related notes.  The entire collection is searchable, or you can browse by series (then year of screening), director, title, or country of origin.

New York University is to be praised for providing free global access to these wonderful documents that are so central to the history of film preservation and appreciation.