David Shepard has had a major influence on the archival movement in the United States for the past 40 years. His impact on the field and substantial accomplishments over the last 35 years make him a worthy recipient of the AMIA Silver Light Award.* For those who he has worked with, assisted or mentored, David has been a ready resource and an inspiration. He is always willing to share information or advice, with a calm and friendly manner. Throughout his career, David has mentored and inspired the archivists of the future. One head of a FIAF member archive said, “we are all the children of David Shepard,” and it is difficult to find someone in the field who he hasn’t helped in one way or another.

David taught cinema for thirty-four years at such institutions as the University of Southern California (where he was also Director of the Louis B. Mayer Film & Television Study Center), UCLA (where he was honored in 1983 as “the outstanding teacher in performing and integrated arts”), Claremont Mens College, the University of Iowa, The Pennsylvania State University and California State University, Chico. David’s work restoring over 150 early cinema classic films for laserdisc, VHS and DVD release reestablished the canon of cinema classics for today’s students. Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires was named as the best video release of 1998 by The New York Times among many others, while The Art of Buster Keaton was “almost universally regarded as the best video release of 1995” (USA Today).

* AMIA, The Association of Moving Images Archivists. The AMIA web site (http://www.amianet.org/) was the source for this biographical information.