Ted Koppel, a Syracuse University alumnus and the original anchor of ABC’s ‘Nightline,’ will be donating a collection of videotapes, photographs and awards to SU’s Library.

The Koppel Colllection will be housed in the library’s Special Collection Research Center, and consists of videotapes, correspondences, cartoons, awards, photographs and notebooks from Koppel’s career. Koppel, who received a bachelor’s degree in speech in 1960, has worked a number of broadcasting jobs since he graduated from SU, including ‘Nightline’ from it’s debut in 1980 until late 2005. He is currently a senior news analyst for National Public Radio.

The collection will be received sometime during the summer break, said Pamela McLaughlin, director of communication and external relations at E.S. Bird Library. Once the collection is received, it will be organized and archived by the library. It will then be accessible to students through the reading room in Bird.

Certain videotapes, including the ‘Nightline’ segments, must be digitized before it can be accessible, she said. McLaughlin said it is hard to estimate how long organizing the collection will take, since the library does not have it yet.

McLaughlin said the library assured Koppel his work and materials would be well taken care of and used by students, which she said was part of why he donated his collection to SU, instead of anywhere else.

‘Syracuse also gave him his start and enabled him to find his life’s work and that’s really important to him,’ she said.

Any number of disciplines at SU will find Koppel’s collection useful, including broadcast journalism, international relations and history, McLaughlin said.

‘From the work he has done and the people he has spoken to,’ she said, ‘his work speaks across many disciplines.’

medelane@syr.edu

Published on June 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Meghin: medelane@syr.edu | @meghinwithani