Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Digital news archive follow-up: The video side Our discussion of digital news archiving projects and the pitfalls of footnoting online publications didn't even try to approach the issues of archiving video or controversies surrounding Google's book-scanning project. This post by Jeff Ubois at Berkeley links to a larger ongoing discussion of both those topics. Television Archiving? Blog Archive? Google "Showtimes" the UC Library System: "Digitizing the world[base ']s books, films, video, sound recordings, maps, and other cultural artifacts could, to quote Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, provide "universal access to all human knowledge, within our lifetime." So it[base ']s troubling to see public institutions transfer cultural assets, accumulated with public funds, into private hands without disclosing the terms of the transaction. The American Library Association, Library & Information Technology Association, and the Open Content Alliance are among the groups he mentions as being on the case. Elsewhere on the archival.tv site, I saw this quote from Lawrence Lessig, similar to things he said about "read-only culture" at the AEJMC convention: "Why is it that the part of our culture that is recorded in the newspapers remains perpetually accessible, while the part that is recorded on videotape is not? How is it that we have created a world where researchers trying to understand the effect of media on nineteenth-century America will have an easier time than researchers trying to understand the effect of media on twentieth-century America?" - Larry Lessig, Free Culture (As is true of many things, a Scripting News item led me into this series of links. Thanks, Dave.) 2:42:23 PM    comment [] Singing those sepia-toned downhome retro news blues This may be a first for video blogging, and not just the sepia-tone video of Joanne Colan at Rocketboom... I'm sure she is the first "news anchor" I've seen attempting to sing her headlines while lip-syncing (lip-and-thumb-syncing?)  accompaniment on what British musicians apparently call a "gewgaw." Some missing facts are intriguing, if you follow the links to the videoclip sources: The recording she's twanging along with was made by a Grand Ol' Opry virtuoso 77 years ago. The virtuoso demonstrating the Yo-yo was 77 years old when the film was made. The wire-puppet circus creator is the late Alexander Calder (better known for his huge ironwork stabiles)... who performed with his miniature circus about 77 years ago. Coincidence? Lucky number to play on the lottery? I don't know. I also don't know of a 77-years-ago connection to make with the clip of couples in New York recreating the well-known photo of a sailor kissing a nurse on V-J Day in 1945, which had nothing to do with Joanne's past experience on MTV -- but the juxtaposition of that film with the others is certainly a quirky post-modern moment. It also started a sideline debate about Japan, Hiroshima and war in the Rocketboom comments. ... and then, shifting all the way into "serious" gear the next day, Rocketboom presented one of its correspondent (a Dutch video journalist) for covering a press conference in Africa with the man whose name leads the International Criminal Court's most wanted list. The shift in the readers comments makes fascinating reading. 2:26:50 PM    comment []

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