Woman's 140K tapes of TV news to be digitized, by Bay Area nonprofit

A woman who faithfully taped 35 years of TV news with the hope that one day it would prove to be valuable, searchable historical material did not live to see her dream realized. But the vision of Philadelphia resident Marion Stokes, who died last year at 83, will become a reality now that her 140,000 video cassettes are being archived in an online library.

The trove, which totals about a million hours of newscasts, is expected to arrive in the Bay Area at the Internet Archive in Richmond where it will be digitized and made available to the public. The massive collection include local news shows from Philadelphia between 1986 and 2012, and broadcasts from Boston, where she once lived, from 1977 to 1986. All the while, she also recorded national news and cable channels, leading to her to run several VCRs simultaneously 24 hours a day. Her son, Michael Metelits, described Stokes as "searingly intelligent" and said her passion was rooted in the belief that a well-informed public was essential to good governance.