"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.
posted by Miko on May 21, 2009 - 22 comments

Daft Punk revealed in bootleg video at the 1996 Even Further festival. [more inside]
posted by loquacious on May 10, 2009 - 31 comments

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.
posted by Miko on Dec 24, 2008 - 4 comments

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."*
posted by not_on_display on Nov 11, 2008 - 9 comments

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.
posted by Abiezer on Nov 10, 2008 - 19 comments

Every issue of The Times published between 1785-1985, digitally scanned and fully searchable. (Via Wordorigins.org.)
posted by languagehat on Jun 23, 2008 - 45 comments

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.
posted by dersins on May 22, 2008 - 8 comments

Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990
posted by miss lynnster on Jan 13, 2008 - 15 comments

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... [more inside]
posted by flibbertigibbet on Dec 27, 2007 - 6 comments

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.
posted by amyms on Oct 2, 2007 - 8 comments

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)
posted by loquacious on Jun 9, 2007 - 8 comments

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.
posted by loquacious on Jan 6, 2007 - 40 comments

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.
posted by Miko on Nov 29, 2006 - 21 comments

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.
posted by daksya on May 20, 2006 - 27 comments

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.
posted by tellurian on Apr 17, 2006 - 7 comments

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.
posted by Miko on Jan 16, 2006 - 3 comments

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").
posted by tpl1212 on Nov 17, 2005 - 13 comments

The Union Makes Us Strong. Articles on British trade union history.
posted by plep on Aug 5, 2005 - 3 comments

Archive for the History of Economic Thought
posted by Gyan on Jul 20, 2005 - 7 comments

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.
posted by ClanvidHorse on Jun 4, 2005 - 9 comments

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.
posted by Len on May 17, 2005 - 13 comments

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.
posted by nthdegx on May 17, 2005 - 74 comments

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.
posted by breezeway on Apr 7, 2005 - 8 comments

"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]
posted by Tufa on Feb 14, 2005 - 6 comments

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.
posted by foxy_hedgehog on Nov 30, 2004 - 8 comments

The Lewis Walpole Library has digitized 10,000 images from its superb collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century satirical prints -- not the only collection of its kind on the Internet, but certainly one of the largest and best. Search under "Gillray", "Rowlandson" or "Cruikshank" and browse a selection of images from the golden age of English caricature. Everyone will have their own favourites, but here are a few of mine: Rowlandson's Author and Bookseller, Cruikshank's The Headache and Gillray's Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses.
posted by verstegan on Jul 31, 2004 - 4 comments

Online collection of children's literature circa 1850 and up. Primarily American and British, from thrilling stories of the ocean to a peep at the beasts. Every page (and even the spine) digitized in both JPEG and PDF format, and in some cases color-corrected. (Similar collections have been posted here previously)
posted by schoolgirl report on Apr 4, 2004 - 10 comments

Top 100 April Fools Hoaxes of all time. Also, April Fools on the Net - a history of newsgroup April Fools posts.
posted by badstone on Apr 1, 2004 - 3 comments

Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web. Many links to interesting sites - African liberation movement posters, Charles Babbage, Braniff Airways history, daily life in Sierra Leone 1936-37, the photography of Eamon Melaugh, Frank & Marshall College from the air, all the way through to ZYX: a selection of ABC books. Via thinking while typing.
posted by plep on Mar 10, 2004 - 2 comments

A Short, Illustrated History Of The First Toasters
Suitable for those with short attention sp--- Huh?
posted by armoured-ant on Jan 20, 2004 - 9 comments

Voices from the Days of Slavery. A collection of audio recordings made between 1932 and 1975 of African Americans known to have once been slaves. Hear Isom Moseley describe how he used to make soap, and express his opinion of the "white folks" who owned and ran the plantation where he was held. Wallace Quarterman describes his experience as a freed man in Georgia, and recounts the violent atmosphere of the Reconstruction South. Aunt Phoebe Boyd describes the demands of agricultural work. Even more narratives are available as transcripts from the companion exhibit, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 (linked to previously on Metafilter here), though some of these were unfortunately edited selectively.
posted by profwhat on Jan 19, 2004 - 15 comments

The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive from the University of St. Andrews' School of Mathematics and Statistics.
posted by wobh on Dec 30, 2003 - 3 comments

American Social Hygiene Posters from the University of Minnesota. Remember boys, You may think she's just your gal, but she may be everyone's pal.
posted by JoanArkham on Sep 10, 2003 - 32 comments

Obsolete computers 1975-89. There's my first baby.
posted by MintSauce on Aug 22, 2003 - 51 comments

The Scopitone was a French video jukebox that made its debut in 1960 and was imported into the US in 1964. Although they usually featured high production values, catchy melodies, and lots of gratuitous cheesecake, the singers were often relative unknowns and the music was square even by the standards of the day. Consequently, they never caught on in a big way outside of Europe, and many of the original Scopitone jukeboxes and films were destroyed. Fortunately for us, a few Scopitone enthusiasts have catalogued the songs, scanned the advertisements, and even preserved a few Quicktime clips of the original French and American Scopitone films.
posted by MrBaliHai on May 4, 2003 - 9 comments

The Wayback Machine. Explore Metafilter and Blogger from October 1999. Search Google in 1998 or read Salon in 1997. Visit Word, Yahoo, c|net, Feed, Crashsite, Cool Site of the Day, Village Voice, and NYTimes from 1996. Congratulate Mathowie on his new job in 1997, see Kottke's redesign from October 1999, Glassdog's 3-D logos from 1997, and Zeldman's pages optimized for Netscape 3.0. (Unsurprisingly, Jakob's site hasn't changed much since 1996.) Surf the past and share your greatest nostalgic finds.
posted by waxpancake on Oct 15, 2001 - 34 comments

In the spirit of the American Memory Digital Library or Duke's Digital Scriptorium, the American Museum of the Moving Image has a new exhibit called The Living Room Candidate- a comprehensive collection of presidential campaign ads since the 1950's.
posted by kidsplateusa on Oct 23, 2000 - 6 comments