This past September we had a very interesting conversation in Burbank, California, with David R. Smith who is in charge of the Walt Disney Archives. After you have read his comments about the type of material they contain, we invite you to send CARTOONIST PROfiles any questions you may have pertaining to Walt Disney, the company, its product, and on subjects which you think the Archives can answer. We'll send these along to David Smith who has graciously consented to try and answer them. If we receive enough inquiries, we hope to include his answers in a regular column in our magazine.
Hurd: Id be interested to have you explain what the archives consist of.
Smith: Well, the Disney Company started thinking about what to do with preserving its history after Walt Disney died in 1966, and after a few years of gestation, in 1970 they decided to set up an archives program and it was our duty to collect and preserve everything to do with the history of Walt Disney and the entire Disney organization and to make it available for research by people within the company mainly — but also for students and scholars and others on the outside that were working on serious research projects that required material that we had in our collection. […]
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