Movin' right along

Thing 16: Video Sharing

I have used YouTube before (who with a computer hasn't at this point? at the very least you've seen kitten on the keys or some such silliness). And I've uploaded videos on a home account (most videos are my husband's) so that I could embed them in one of my other blogs (careful about watching that video if you are prone to motion sickness). However, for thing 16 I set up a separate account, searched, subscribed to a couple of channels, and favorited a couple of videos.

Figuring out how to find those digitized historical videos is a project. I tried using keywords historical and archival with some sort of subject such as physics or Oak Ridge or whaling and got plenty of hits, but not what I was looking for. So I decided to approach the search from a different tack. I thought "What archives is most likely to have posted digitized film from their collection?" and immediately thought of the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California. They're cool and hip and have a huge volunteer base (they have to with their professional staff waxing and waning over the years because of funding). So I searched for GLBTHS and behold, they have a whole channel which includes tours of the archives, digitized historical material, and events. I was particularly taken with the series of videos about the archives based on a tour given by the director to a group of school kids. He covers so much ground, interspersed with examples of what they hold. The segment here is How the Archives Works and he covers issues of preservation and respect des fonds with the school children (not sure what type of class they are from: diversity? history?). The next segment goes into aspects of historical research and why to collect and what is so cool about original material. Be sure to go to YouTube and check out the whole series.



I looked but didn't see a way to favorite a whole channel so I subscribed to it. I am guessing that subscribing means that when I log in I will get notification of new videos from my subscribed channels. I then wanted to find a video to favorite so I searched for "archivist" and found a video from a visual resources archivist at the Beinecke about how he became an archivist (love that he includes the image credits at the end), but it was part of the Yale Archives channel so I subscribed to that too. Hmm, finding I keep wishing to favorite whole channels rather than just individual videos.

And I haven't really seen a lot of digitized historical films and I'd like to include one in this blog post. Finally, somehow (and now I can't reconstruct how, grr!), I hit upon a bunch of 'em and noticed that they are from the usnationalarchives. D'oh! of course NARA would be a goldmine of historic films. So I skimmed through the listing and hit on one about TVA. I grew up in TVA country so I take a look. I notice that NARA provides quite a bit more info about their videos than the average user of YouTube. It is clearly from their catalog and I appreciate it. I wonder if it improves their traffic. And in the related videos I spot another from NARA about the Smokies so I watch that. Pretty cool reminder of the good that came out of the Depression like the WPA state histories and the FSA photography.