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NARA.google.com

That’s not the real url, but, through a partnership with google, NARA has made accessible 101 historic digitized videos. NARA selected films on three topics that bring in high numbers of questions from researchers and the public. The videos include:

  • 60 World War II Newsreels (1942-1946)
  • 23 National and state parks features (1933-circa 1970)
  • 17 Space flight history films by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1962-1981)

The videos are accessible via google video and also through NARA’s Archival Research Catalog (ARC).

See Google puts National Archives video online by John Borland, CNET News.com (February 24, 2006) for the rest of the story. I’m glad CNET mentioned the Internet Archive’s Moving Image Archive, including their collection of WWII propoganda films called Cinemocracy. It’s very exciting that researchers, educators, history buffs, filmmakers and the public will be able to access this growing list of films easily and without worrying about copyright.

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.

All of the material is in the public domain, Chane said. That means it can be used or shown elsewhere without paying copyright holders.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


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