Karen Jones (1937-2024)
Karen Jones with Eileen Bowser in 2011
It is with great sadness that we have learned the passing of FIAF Honorary Member and former P.I.P. Editor Karen Jones at the age of 86.
In the early 1970s, Karen Jones, then Head of Documentation at the Danish Film Museum and Vice-President of the FIAF Documentation Commission, played a key role in the development of a central periodicals indexing system which became the Periodicals Indexing Project (P.I.P.) in January 1972. She acted as the first P.I.P. Editor in 1972 (working from Copenhagen) and was reinstated in May 1974 (while taking a one-year of leave of absence from the Danish Film Museum) to set up a new central office in London. In May 1975 she returned to Copenhagen but she remained active in the FIAF Documentation Commission until 1989. In 1977, she organized and hosted the third FIAF Summer School in Copenhagen, on the theme of documentation. In 1982, she received the BFI Special Award (with Michael Moulds) for the International Index to Film Periodicals on behalf of the Documentation Commission, and conducted the first P.I.P. indexing workshop (together with Michael Moulds and Frances Thorpe) at the BFI. She also co-edited with Moulds the second edition of the FIAF Classification Scheme for Film & Television Literature. In 2006 she retired from the Danish Film Institute (with which the Danish Film Museum had merged in 1997).
Karen Jones was very actively involved in the preparation of the P.I.P. celebration book which was published in 2022 on the occasion of the project’s 50th anniversary. She was elected FIAF Honorary Member by the FIAF General Assembly in April 2022.
Read More about Karen Jones
Eileen Bowser, "Karen Jones and the FIAF Documentation Commission", Journal of Film Preservation, Issue 86, April 2012, pp.58-71.
Karen Jones, "Report on the 3rd FIAF Summer School Copenhagen, August 15-27, 1977", FIAF Information Bulletin, Issue 14, April 1978, pp.1-13.
Rutger Penne (ed), FIAF's Periodicals Indexing Project: Celebrating the P.I.P.'s First 50 Years, 1972-2022, Brussels: FIAF, 2022
