Posted on 02/25/2006 9:40:41 PM PST by Comstock1
In a joint press release today, Google and the United States National Archives announced the immediate availability of 104 films (well, they announced 103, but forgot about one WWII clip) from the Archives on Google Video. This collection of movies constitutes a pilot program for what is anticipated to become a much wider cooperation, and future expansions could also include Google helping the archivists make portions of their massive collection of texts available online. The partnership is non-exclusive, so the archive is free to find more channels through which to distribute its materials.
"This is an important step for the National Archives to achieve its goal of becoming an archives without walls," said Professor Weinstein. "Our new strategic plan emphasizes the importance of providing access to records anytime, anywhere. This is one of many initiatives that we are launching to make our goal a reality. For the first time, the public will be able to view this collection of rare and unusual films on the Internet."
"Today, we've begun to make the extraordinary historic films of the National Archives available to the world for the first time online," said Sergey Brin, co-founder and president of technology at Google. "Students and researchers whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh can watch remarkable video such as World War II newsreels and the story of Apollo 11 - the historic first landing on the Moon."
The pilot program undertaken by the National Archives and Google features 103 films from the audiovisual collections preserved at the Archives.
But don't ya know, however much they put online, NARA will always overlook the one thing I'm looking for at that particular moment . . .
I hope this wont be managed by the same DC PC clique that tried to put up the exhibit in the Smithsonian a few years ago about how the racist Americans tried to destroy the peaceful Japanese with their atomic bombs.
I just checked it out. I downloaded the Google Video Player and installed it - no problems. Then grabbed a few of the files and downloaded them. Turns out that what is being downloaded is links, not actual files. That's ok, though. The video quality is high (not like RealPlayer junk). I am on DSL. Watching a Orson Wells video on full screen right now (via GVP, which is kind of like Windows Media Player). Getting back to it, actually. It is quite interesting.
Lots of WWII newsreels, NASA stuff, etc. Thank you SO much for finding something for me to waste my time on. ;-)
Pretty cool...Thanks for posting this.
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