Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Google Co-Founder and President of Technology Sergey Brin announced the launch of a pilot program to make holdings of the National Archives available for free online.
A marching band begins to play. The United Newsreel logo, an eagle in a martial pose, flickers onto the black-and-white screen. Bold letters proclaim: "Nazi War Plants Blasted by R.A.F. in Night Raids."
This is a World War II era newsreel; one of 100 historic videos retrieved from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and posted recently on Google Video. The content represents the first fruits of a joint project aimed at putting as much of the National Archives’ video content as possible online.
This non-exclusive agreement will enable researchers and the general public to access a diverse collection of historic movies, documentaries and other films from the National Archives via Google Video at: http://video.google.com/nara.html as well as the National Archives website http://www.archives.gov.
Google Video product manager Peter Chane said the company is working in stages to put as many as possible of the National Archives’ 114,000 film reels and 37,000 videos online.
This is a tremendous resource of history and knowledge, and we want to expose that to viewers worldwide, Chane said.
The digitization of long-unseen archival footage has been under way for years, but Google’s nonexclusive deal with the National Archives will likely provide a vast, new swath of material for history buffs, educators and filmmakers.
This is an important step for the National Archives to achieve its goal of becoming an archive 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 have 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.
In this first batch are dozens of newsreels, films on the early 1930s park service, and National Air and Space Administration documentaries on space travel. A must-see includes Orson Welles reading from H.G. Wells’ "War of the Worlds," before discussing the likelihood of extraterrestrial life "beyond the petty surface of our own minute sphere."
The pilot program undertaken by the National Archives and Google features 103 films from the audiovisual collections preserved at the Archives. Highlights of the pilot project include:
- The earliest film preserved in the National Archives holdings by Thomas Armat, "Carmencita — Spanish Dance," featuring the famous Spanish Gypsy dancer, 1894.
- A representative selection of U.S. government newsreels, documenting World War II, 1941-45.
- A sampling of documentaries produced by NASA on the history of the spaceflight program.
- Motion picture films, primarily from the 1930s, that document the history and establishment of a nationwide system of national and state parks. Included is early footage of modern Native American activities, Boulder Dam, documentation of water and wind erosion, Civilian Conservation Corps workers, and the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority. A 1970 film documents the expansion of recreational programs for inner city youth across the nation.
All of the material is in the public domain, Chane said. That means it can be used or shown elsewhere without paying copyright holders.
Other video services online, including most notably the Internet Archive, also offer a wide range of newsreels and video content ranging across the last 100 years.
The National Archives and Google are exploring the possibilities of expanding the online film collection and making the Archives extensive textual holdings available via the Internet.