MetaFilter posts tagged with History and archive

The Sinister End-of-the-World Homerun

Miko — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:50:03 -0800

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved" .... and mad enough to play fantasy baseball. In the new book Kerouac at Bat: Fantasy Sports and the King of the Beats, a NY Public Library archivist considers documents revealing the author's detailed obsession with the imaginary exploits of players like Pictorial Review Jackson and teams like the "Pontiacs, Nashes, and cellar-dwelling LaSalles" in his finely grained, fictional Summer League.

Harder Better Faster Further.

loquacious — Sun, 10 May 2009 18:07:38 -0800

Daft Punk revealed in bootleg video at the 1996 Even Further festival. Though it's impossible to see what gear-manipulating is going on, this is an excellent example of a "live PA" of electronic dance music as opposed to DJing.

For Ourselves and Our Posterity

Miko — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:54:38 -0800

Inauguration 2009 Sermons and Orations Project The Library of Congress invites you to submit digital audio or video recordings of speeches made between January 16 and january 25, 2009 on the occasion of Barack Obama's inauguration. The speeches will be archived in a collection for future scholarship, much like the Day of Infamyand other collections capturing signifcant American moments.

The Archive of American Television

not_on_display — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:32:49 -0800

The Archive of American Television "produces extensive video oral history interviews with television legends of all professions and makes them available online. To date, the Archive has completed over 2000 hours of videotaped conversations with over 570 Actors, Producers, Writers, Newscasters, Executives, Directors, Craftspersons, and more. ... The interviews are conducted by reviewing the subject's life and career chronologically. They discuss their childhood, early influences, how their career began, and thoroughly cover their television careers, ending with their thoughts on the industry and legacy."*

We will remember

Abiezer — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:11:37 -0800

The Great War Archive goes live today (November 11), the 90th anniversary of the Armistice. Launched by the University of Oxford in March 2008, the initiative invited members of the general public to submit digital photographs, audio, film, documents, and stories that originated from the Great War. Although the dealine for submissions is past, photos can still be added to the project's Flickr group.

Times Archive,

languagehat — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:50:55 -0800

Every issue of The Times published between 1785-1985, digitally scanned and fully searchable. (Via Wordorigins.org.)

"The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor..."

dersins — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:23:45 -0800

The Willa Cather Archive is an incredible resource provided by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, including biographies, letters, photos, and even full (often annotated) text of much of her writing, including scholarly editions of two of her greatest (and most famous) works, My Antonia and O Pioneers. About the archive.

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.

miss lynnster — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:51:53 -0800

Changing Times: Los An gel es in Pho togr aphs, 1920-1990

History Archives: Online.

flibbertigibbet — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:34:59 -0800

Want to study some history and have hundreds of hours on your hands? Don't worry now. We already exhaustive know about the Valley of the Shadow project. But what about Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History, a bilingual English-French archive? If neither of these (vast) subjects tickle your pickle, don't worry... Would a Raid on Deerfield capture your fancy? Stories of midwifery? Matthew Brady's Civil War Photographs? General American (and Missourian?) history? The papers of the Adams family? Exploration of the North American continent? The Quakers? California in the latter half of the 1800s? I really suggest starting with Valley of the Shadow and Canadian Mysteries (also available in French!)--specifically, Klatsassin or William Robinson. Both have been designed to guide people into the beginnings of exploration (notably, look at the Valley's suggested lesson plans. They will also steal your soul if you are not careful.

"We realised what a fascinating archive of images we were sitting on."

amyms — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:23:50 -0800

The London Zoo's historic photographic archive went online today. According to news reports, the pictures will be offered for sale to fund conservation programs. Via.

Telephone Central Office / Exchange Name Histories

loquacious — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 13:03:56 -0800

Telephone Central Office Histories - A fascinating collection of personal anecdotes and histories about telephony from the US and around the world, from The Telephone Exchange Name Project. Coral Cache links -1- -2- (via)

The Red Hill Guide to Computer Hardware

loquacious — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 23:01:36 -0800

The Red Hill Guide is an amazingly detailed and well-written compendium of desktop hardware old and new, with a focus on PC and x86 compatibles. Look for your first CPU, hard drive or mainboard.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill Toward Men

Miko — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 11:51:14 -0800

A Nazi Christmas Since its most ancient days, the Christmas holiday has been continually reshaped to serve commercial, social, and political ends. These Nazi-era Christmas materials, including an Advent calendar and an essay on how to turn Christian holidays into National Socialist ones, come from the German Propaganda Archive of the Calvin College library. Of course, the Allies also enlisted Christmas in both pop culture and propaganda with cards, V-Mails, and posters.

Schaffer Library of Drug Policy

daksya — Sat, 20 May 2006 10:06:13 -0800

Schaffer Library of Drug Policy - read the transcripts of hearings held on the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, or the text of court decisions regarding drug policy, or the well-researched Consumer Unions report on licit and illicit drugs, or the differences between beer and drugs, according to Anheuser-Busch. A huge archive of materials, admittedly compiled from a pro-reform perspective.

Flash, bang, wallop.

tellurian — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 20:52:27 -0800

Sechtl-Vosecek. A collection of photographs taken over the last 150 years are in the process of being digitized. Check out the Sokol costume ball Šibřinky or take a trip from Bechyně to Tábor. Also available is a selection concentrating on Bukhara from the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection. And much, much, more.

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank

Miko — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 09:44:46 -0800

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank A developing online resource for the collection and interpretation of photos, stories, maps, audio files, and other information related to the hurricanes of 2005. The project was created as a partnership between the University of New Orleans, the Smithsonian/American History and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the same people who created the September 11 Digital Archive.

Design Journal Online

tpl1212 — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:16:23 -0800

Design Online - a team from the London College of Communication have scanned and indexed all the issues of Design from 1965 - 1974 (via the Design Weblog, which says: "I believe you really need to see and understand the past in order to blaze a new trail").

The Union Makes Us Strong

plep — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 08:26:48 -0800

The Union Makes Us Strong. Articles on British trade union history.

Das Kapital (of economic texts)

Gyan — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 18:36:14 -0800

Archive for the History of Economic Thought

Scotsman Newspaper Digital Archive 1817-1950

ClanvidHorse — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 13:20:13 -0800

Edinburgh's Scotsman newspaper has launched a digital archive covering all editions from 1817-1950. There are several stories with an American slant which may be something that interests you. There is coverage on such things as the hanging of the notorious bodysnatchers Burke and Hare. Unfortunately, after viewing the free archives it is a paysite, but I still think it's worth a look as there is easily a couple of hours of interesting reading on the free articles that are included. The set-up and look of this site is brilliant as well.

The dear green place?

Len — Tue, 17 May 2005 17:03:33 -0800

Best laid schemes? Back in 1945 the Bruce Plan [click on images for video footage] was a radical proposal to knock down, and then rebuild, the Victorian centre of the city of Glasgow. The city’s slums* would be cleared; new towns* would be established; Glasgow would rise again, triumphant, once again the second city of the Empire*. In 1971*, there were grand visions of the Glasgow of the future; the Glasgow of tomorrow would be a bright, shining new city, and the Clyde* would once again be something to be proud of. A fascinating film archive of the Glasgow of the 20th century. *All links contain embedded video goodness.

Broadsword calling Danny Boy

nthdegx — Tue, 17 May 2005 06:53:25 -0800

Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Films as voted for by their (generally more clued-up than average) viewership has plenty for you to disagree with, but much to recommend. Filmsite.org has a history of war films (as does Berkeley) for the completists among you. There are more war films from and about Vietnam and Indochina than you can shake a bayonet at (see also the 1999 NYT article, Apocalypse Then: Vietnam Marketing War Films to learn a little about the Vietnamese government's 1960s and 70s archive of war film). The [British] national archives have archived film from pre-WWI to the Cold War.

An enduring and beautiful People

breezeway — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 10:52:10 -0800

Faces young and old, mothers and children, dolls; hunting rabbit, making fire, dancing: Archived photographs of Arizona's Indians from the turn-of-the-twentieth. Plus reference materials.

Tufa — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 11:26:16 -0800

"It has ever been my study and ever shall be, to render you as happy as possible. But I have been obliged in many instances to sacrifice the present pleasures to our future hopes." From a Camp Croton bivouac of 1778 to a bunker in Afghanistan, a collection of wartime love letters in their original hands, movingly read aloud. Chapter 3 in The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History's online exhibit Battle Lines: Letters from America's Wars. [Flash, but quite worth it]

An online history of jurisprudence, and lack thereof

foxy_hedgehog — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 06:57:11 -0800

Sacco and Vanzetti et al. The amazing Famous Trials website, compiled as a labor of love by University of Missouri law professor Douglas Linder, is a motherlode of information on historically significant trails, ranging from Galileo to the Amistad to Lenny Bruce. It features not only official transcripts, but also equally intriguing details such as a map of the railroad cars in the Scottsboro Boys trial, Klan documents from the Mississippi Burning case, and opinion polls related to the My Lai courts martial.