A decade after the death of renowned folklorist Alan Lomax, his vision of a "global jukebox" is being realized: his vast archive — some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts, much of it tucked away in forgotten or inaccessible corners — is being digitized so that the collection can be accessed online. About 17,000 music tracks will be available for free streaming by the end of February. NYT article
here.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jan 30, 2012 -
39 comments
Medicine in the Americas is a digital library project that makes freely available original works demonstrating the evolution of American medicine from colonial frontier outposts of the 17th century to research hospitals of the 20th century. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on May 31, 2011 -
9 comments
Trash cans, landfills, and incinerators. Erasure, deletion, and obsolescence. These words could describe what has happened to the various building blocks of the video game industry in countries around the world. These building blocks consist of video game source code, the actual computer hardware used to create a particular video game, level layout diagrams, character designs, production documents, marketing material, and more.
These are just some elements of game creation that are gone -- never to be seen again. These elements make up the home console, handheld, PC and arcade games we've played. The only remnant of a particular game may be its name, or its final published version, since the possibility exists that no other physical copy of its creation remains.
As a community of video game developers, publishers, and players, we must begin asking ourselves some difficult but inevitable questions. Some believe there is no point in preserving a video game, arguing that games are short-term entertainment, while others disagree with this statement entirely, believing the industry is in a preservation crisis.
Where Games Go To Sleep: The Game Preservation Crisis [more inside]
posted by timshel
on Feb 9, 2011 -
44 comments
A mining town in Kentucky hoping to build a different kind of future. One of the last three Negro League stadiums. A 34-acre ranch owned and run one of California's earliest entreprenuers and rare early female landowners. The "cathedral of African Methodism" which saw the funerals of Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks. Otherwordly sand dunes in Michigan, mysterious freshwater caves in Guam, the Wilderness Battlefield...and the Merritt Parkway. These and more sites are on the (US) NAtional Trust's 2010 roster of the
11 Most Endangered Places.
posted by Miko
on May 19, 2010 -
14 comments
On ham, with a fascinating (well, unless you're kosher) history of colonial curing methods.
posted by digaman
on Oct 19, 2007 -
46 comments
Digital Funnies: Comics Preservation by Jonathan Barli. Welcome to Digital Funnies, dedicated to preserving the history of this most neglected of art forms and reintroducing it to scholars and new readers alike. While several well-known titles such as Krazy Kat, Gasoline Alley, and Peanuts are being given their proper due in published form, there is still much of the rich history of comics and cartooning that will more than likely never see print again and worse, fade away with time. [Via Drawn!. And involved in this project is our very own Adam Kempa.]
posted by soundofsuburbia
on Mar 23, 2006 -
9 comments
Smithsonian's latest exhibit includes catastrophic leaks that are damaging
priceless treasures. Many items have been destroyed beyond repair and the problem seems to be getting worse. Will certain history be wiped out for good because officials lacked foresight?
posted by Guerilla
on Aug 25, 2005 -
17 comments
Getting Bored is Not Allowed at the
Plaza Hotel, at least not according to its famous fictional resident, the exhausting, spoiled and infectiously ebullient
Eloise. Sadly, though,
today's news is anything but boring: the Plaza's new owners announced plans to close the iconic hotel for 18 months, and renovate it to create private condos -- throwing hundreds of employees out of work.
It's been said that nothing unimportant ever happens at the Plaza: from its
1907 opening to Truman Capote's 1966
Black and White Ball, the Plaza has hosted literati, glitterati, rock stars, and royalty. It has graced the screen in movies such as
Breakfast at Tiffany's and
The Great Gatsby, making Hollywood history when it became the first fully on-location film shoot for
North by Northwest. Ernest Hemingway told F. Scott Fitzgerald to give his liver to Princeton and his heart to the Plaza;
Dorothy Parker got her pink slip from Vanity Fair there. Residents, at various times, included Frank Lloyd Wright, Cary Grant, and Judy Garland. Every President since Taft has stepped through its giant engraved revolving doors.
Chef Boyardee of canned-spaghetti fame got his start in its kitchens. No
New York tourist's rounds are complete without a bloody mary and some bluepoints at the Oyster Bar, a martini in the
Oak Room bar, or
tea in the Palm Court, and its French-chateau facade is
a Central Park centerpiece.
An
employees' group and a
supporting 'Friends of the Plaza' group have begun working to save the gracious place, with the goal of preserving not only the building and their jobs, but the very idea of the quintessential New York luxury hotel. Almost enough to make folks want the Donald back.
posted by Miko
on Mar 14, 2005 -
15 comments
Ship shape? Welcome aboard the
SS United States. Her maiden voyage was July 7, 1952, where she set a trans-Atlantic
record which still stands.
Her
passenger list included such luminaries as Marlon Brando, Salvador Dali and Harry Truman. Several
sites document the effort to save her from being sold for scrap or sunk.
Far from her former glory, she
now lies at anchor in the Delaware River in Philadelphia, a
sad counterpart to her
former self.
posted by fixedgear
on Jan 14, 2005 -
25 comments
Help is needed to save the Imprimerie Nationale, one of the greatest repositories of typographic material in the world. (If you have ever used a Garamond revival, or a Didot or a Fournier, you are indebted to the Imprimerie.) Their collection, which spans four centuries, is scheduled to be dissolved in the next twelve months.
quoted from Jonathan Hoefler's email that posted by benson
to the typophile forums
posted by sixtwenty3dc
on Oct 21, 2004 -
5 comments
"
Home of the Underdogs is a non-profit site dedicated to the preservation and promotion of underrated PC games (and a few non-PC games) of all ages:
good games that deserve a second chance after dismal sales or critical reviews that we feel are unwarranted."
posted by Hildago
on Apr 4, 2004 -
27 comments
Yin Yu Tang is a late Qing dynasty merchants' home that was transported from its original site in southeastern China and rebuilt at the Peabody Essex Museum It offers a glimpse into the daily life of the Huang family, residents for more than two centuries. The story of the dismantling, transport and reassembly is a fine example of an international preservation project.
(flash alert)
posted by madamjujujive
on Dec 10, 2003 -
4 comments
Save Thousands Of Years And Preserve Graffiti Now: Bijan Omrani playfully argues for the preservation of contemporary graffiti in Oxford's august Bodleian Library. Perhaps they're the modern equivalent of the
Lascaux cave paintings. "Kilroy was here" notwithstanding,
witty graffiti can be found on walls all around the world. Shouldn't some sort of repository be created to safeguard this undeniably pure - and unfairly overlooked - form of popular expression? I'm sorry to say I couldn't find
one single good written graffiti site on the Web. Does anyone know of one - or at least have a memorable graffito to share with the rest of us?
posted by MiguelCardoso
on May 4, 2002 -
25 comments
Save the papers? Nicholson Baker, in his new book
Double Fold, tries to convince libraries and anyone else who will listen that we need to keep original newspapers to preserve the historical record. He's even started the nonprofit American Newspaper Repository so that libraries would sell their old papers to him.
posted by amyscoop
on Apr 23, 2001 -
7 comments
Animals thought extinct found in remote Cambodian jungle: British scientists have found a wilderness in the Cardamom region of Cambodia where exotic species, some though to be
extinct, have been found. These include the Siamese
crocodile, the wolf snake (a new species so named because of
its dog-like fangs), large populations of tigers and Asian
elephants, and the gower, a forest cow. Ironically, the habitat was protected from significant human
intrusion because it was a longtime Khmer Rouge stronghold
and also because routes lead to and from it are landmined.
posted by jhiggy
on Oct 5, 2000 -
6 comments
