No. 7, 15 February 2013

Thanks!

We’re grateful to everyone who helped with our end of the year campaign to get four new Petaboxes; that’s four thousand terabytes of storage. We look forward to filling the fifteen hundred plus hard drives with all sorts of interesting material. Stay tuned!

From the Archive’s Mailbox

I just want to thank you for existing. I suffered a concussion three weeks ago, and your audio books have been a huge blessing as I’m not allowed to do whole lot while I recover, but listening to audio books like Harry Potter is one of the few things I am allowed to do, and those things are so expensive to buy that I could only afford to buy one, fortunately after I finished that one I found you. Anyway being able to listen has kept me sane over these last few weeks and I want to thank you for that.

— Karren

You’re welcome; here’s the entire collection:

http://archive.org/details/librivoxaudio

Picks from the Archive

More Dangerous Than Dynamite

We’ve all had this experience: we’re tired, or just trying to save a few dollars, so we decide to skip a trip to the dry cleaners and clean our clothes with gasoline in the kitchen. Well, it turns out this practice can be dangerous, as this film from the Prelinger Archives demonstrates.

And the special effects are, well, really special.

http://archive.org/details/more_dangerous_then_dynamite

http://archive.org/details/prelinger

 —recommended by Gareth Hughes

Back Forty Live at Founders on January 19, 2013

The band’s Internet site claims that their music combines, “funk, bluegrass, rock, folk, reggae, Irish, jazz, experimentation, blues, and swing elements.” Have a listen and see if you don’t agree.

http://archive.org/details/bk402013-01-19

 —recommended by Sally McDermitt

The English Dance of Death, from the Designs of Thomas Rowlandson; 1903

This book is split into two volumes and was originally published in twenty-four monthly parts (1814-16). The subject beautifully portrays the “necessary end” of us all using superstition, highly artistic engravings and skillfully written poetry: “… but frolic nature will undo, the works of art and genius too …”, “… justice slept, while reason saw the deed and wept …” This is a literary gem that lets any curious reader contemplate their journey to the grave.

http://archive.org/details/englishdanceofde00comb

http://archive.org/details/englishdanceofde01comb

 —recommended by Atlas D. McLamb III

What are your Archive favorites? Please suggest a link or two and a few words about why you appreciate your recommendation to:

bestof@archive.org

—David Glenn Rinehart

/ / / / /

To subscribe to this list, please visit:

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If you don’t already have a free Internet Archive library card, you may get yours here:

http://archive.org/account/login.createaccount.php

There, enter your password into the “Change Your Account Settings” Option, then click on the “Verify” button. That will bring you to your accounts setting page, where you may change your subscription status in the “Change Announcement Settings” section.

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David Glenn Rinehart is an artist in residence at the Internet Archive as well as a cartoonist, composer, filmmaker, musician, and writer. His work is at http://stare.com/ and elsewhere.

No. 6, 14 December 2012

One down, three to go!

With help from a generous, anonymous donor who’s matching other donations three to one through the end of the year, we now have enough funding to buy a new Petabox! We now have only seventeen days left to get the three more we’ll need in 2013.

These massive servers are the backbone of the Archive, and critical to our continued growth. To all of you who’ve contributed to our fundraising drive, thanks from all of us here at the Internet Archive. If you can help us reach our goal by making a tax-deductible donation, we’d be grateful.

https://archive.org/donate/

Thanks for your support!

Books in Browsers presentations now online

In October, the Internet Archive hosted the Books in Browsers conference, which covered achievements in moving books to the web, vending and lending, the design and effective deployment of ebooks and reading experiences for web environments, the portability of books and bookshelves, reader application interoperability, storage and transmission security (including encryption and caching), the legal and user consequences of book licensing versus purchase, and ramifications for user privacy and data protection.

Peter Brantley, director of Bookserver at the Internet Archive, provided an insightful summary of the two-day event: the new publishing doesn’t care about formats, it cares about story-telling. It is neutral about content-types, because all content-types can be manipulated on the web. That may seem prosaic, but it is actually revolutionary. We’re used to seeing tools that add video to textual narratives, or synchronize audio-based playback. But when you invent tools for the web, you can manipulate a vast array of content within the browser, and an author’s ability to integrate the reader into the experience of the story has few constraints. Indeed, one can expect those constraints to continue to yield under the pressure of increasingly flexible representations. Once technology liberates vision, it is only a matter of imagination becoming real.

If you’d like to learn more, the presentations are online:

http://archive.org/details/BooksInBrowsers2012Videos

From the Archive’s Mailbox

I have been watching the Pathé films with tears in my eyes, and here is why. You don’t show the film credits, but if you look at them you’ll see the film editor in chief is Leonard C. Hein, my dad. I believe he was president of his local union #707 in New York City. He worked for Pathé news for over 25 years, right up until the bankruptcy auction which he attended. Thank you for preserving this work!
http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Pathe%20News%22

—Donald Hein

Picks from the Archive

Decoded: An essay towards the reconciling of differences among Christians

A while back, I scanned a book with a ton of shorthand notes, thought to be written by Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island.

http://archive.org/stream/essaytowardsreco00will#page/n13/mode/2up

It has since been confirmed that the handwriting is his, a discovery made possible through the availability of our high-quality online version. The book itself is pretty fragile, and would not stand up to constant reading, as well as the digital images are easy to zoom in on for further study. Most of the code is quite small. Still, the Internet Archive’s scan of the book provided researchers the raw data needed to examine and ultimately decipher Williams’ code.

http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/12/04/brown-university-students-crack-roger-williams-code/6n1B9sLy812OyfOwWdIHvM/story.html

I find it so very cool to have been the one to put this book online and help in some small part to a better understanding of my state, and indeed nation’s history. A hurrah for the studious use of a book’s digital version.

— recommended by Xephyr Inkpen

Balloons

This unimaginatively titled, low-quality film documents Joseph Kittinger’s parachute jump from space in 1959.

https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.li.111-dd-301-59

The record held for decades until Felix Baumgartner recently broke it. Wow.

— recommended by Jilly Dybka

What are your Archive favorites? Please suggest a link or two and a few words about why you appreciate your recommendation to:

bestof@archive.org

—David Glenn Rinehart

/ / / / /

To subscribe to this list, please visit:

http://archive.org/account/login.changepw.php

If you don’t already have a free Internet Archive library card, you may get yours here:

http://archive.org/account/login.createaccount.php

There, enter your password into the “Change Your Account Settings” Option, then click on the “Verify” button. That will bring you to your accounts setting page, where you may change your subscription status in the “Change Announcement Settings” section.

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL, breaking the link.

If you’re still having trouble, please contact the list owner at:

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David Glenn Rinehart is an artist in residence at the Internet Archive as well as a cartoonist, composer, filmmaker, musician, and writer. His work is at http://stare.com/ and elsewhere.

No. 5, 31 October 2012

A BBC film crew visited the Internet Archive; here’s their story.

In addition, the San Francisco Chronicle did a nice profile of our work:

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Brewster-Kahle-s-Internet-Archive-3946898.php

From the Archive’s Mailbox

I’ve just downloaded an image file (various galaxies in their vast array) from your NASA Images pages to use on the jacket of my new SF novel for preteens, The Calling.

http://archive.org/details/nasa

I appreciate your open policy of not copyrighting these images but allowing people to use them with a simple acknowledgement (which I have added).

—John Peace

We’re glad to help, but the availability of NASA imagery is determined by the space agency.

http://nasaimages.org/Terms.html

Selected Collection: Crap from the Past

This is a pop music radio show for people who already know plenty about pop music. Hosted by Ron “Boogiemonster” Gerber, it’s broadcast Friday nights from 10:30 to midnight on KFAI, Minneapolis. This collection of over twelve-hundred recordings goes back two decades, a millennium, or “since the days of DOS,” depending on how you slice it.

http://archive.org/details/crapfromthepast

Other Picks from the Archive

Rocketship X-M (1950)

Rocketship X-M landed on the red planet over sixty years before NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover touched down there recently. Hollywood years, that is. Rocketship X-M is the story of five astronauts (played by Lloyd Bridges, Osa Massen, John Emery, Noah Beery, Jr., and Hugh O’Brien) who blast off to explore the moon but end up on Mars instead. Stay tuned for the ending …

http://archive.org/details/RocketshipXM 

— recommended by Emilio Conseco

Through The Looking-Glass (and what Alice found there), Lewis Carroll

This is a first edition “Presentation Copy” of the followup to Alice In Wonderland. Not only is this a personal favorite that blew my mind when I first read it some years ago, but this is a first edition copy in excellent condition with fifty of the original illustrations by John Tenniel. I don’t need to describe the impact this book had on literature, but what makes this copy so fascinating to me is that inside the front cover is a note in the authors own hand, “Emma Vine, with the author’s kind regards. Christmas 1871.” There is also a penciled-in note saying that Emma Vine was Lewis Carroll’s nursemaid. This was very exciting for me to discover and I can’t believe I was able to see something like this with my own eyes, a real literary treasure.

http://archive.org/details/throughlookinggl01carr

— recommended by Gemma Waterston

Music That’s Better Than It Sounds

This collection of thirty-four pieces (songs?) by Forty0ne really is better than it sounds.

And the liner notes aren’t bad either!

http://archive.org/details/csr041

— recommended by Helen Temnesen

What are your Archive favorites? Please suggest a link or two and a few words about why you appreciate your recommendation to:

bestof@archive.org

—David Glenn Rinehart

/ / / / /

To subscribe to this list, please visit:

http://archive.org/account/login.changepw.php

If you don’t already have a free Internet Archive library card, you may get yours here:

http://archive.org/account/login.createaccount.php

There, enter your password into the “Change Your Account Settings” Option, then click on the “Verify” button. That will bring you to your accounts setting page, where you may change your subscription status in the “Change Announcement Settings” section.

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL, breaking the link.

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David Glenn Rinehart is an artist in residence at the Internet Archive as well as a cartoonist, composer, filmmaker, musician, and writer. His work is at http://stare.com/ and elsewhere.

No. 3, 7 August 2012

Brewster’s Report

The Internet Archive is now offering over 1,000,000 torrents including our live music concerts, the Prelinger movie collection, the librivox audio book collection, feature films, old time radio, lots and lots of books, and all new uploads from our patrons into Community collections (with more to follow).

BitTorrent is the now fastest way to download items from the Archive, because the BitTorrent client downloads simultaneously from two different Archive servers located in two different datacenters, and from other Archive users who have downloaded these Torrents already. The distributed nature of BitTorrent swarms and their ability to retrieve Torrents from local peers may be of particular value to patrons with slower access to the Archive, for example those outside the United States or inside institutions with slow connections.

For more information, read the full story.

—Brewster Kahle, Founder and Digital Librarian

From the Archive’s Mailbox

I really appreciate the work that you’re doing, most notably, in the approach that you’re taking to digitizing historic books. The high quality reproductions of the illustrations in these titles are incredibly valuable for the research and writing that I’m doing. There’s a lot of material  I wouldn’t have if not for the Internet Archive. Further, there’s quite a bit more where I’d have something, but of much lower quality, if not for your work.

—Christopher Busta-Peck
http://www.clevelandareahistory.com

Selected Collection: Global Lives Project

The Global Lives Project is collaboratively building a video library of human life experience that reshapes how we as both producers and viewers conceive of cultures, nations, and people outside of our own communities.

For example, this recording documents one day in Edith Kaphuka’s life. We see the thirteen-year-old student from Ngwale Village, Malawi fetching water, cleaning the dishes, and gardening. For those of us who don’t understand Chichewa, Malawi’s national language, many details are lost. In a way, the mystery is part of the charm of this glimpse into what for most of us is a very different way of life. And because of the work’s Creative Commons license, there’s nothing to prevent anyone from adding subtitles in another language.

Other Picks from the Archive

The Atom Strikes! (1945)

This film by the US Army Signal Corps Pictorial Service was filmed months after the first atomic bomb was used in warfare sixty-seven years ago yesterday.

For the most part, The Atom Strikes! looks like an engineering film examining the effects of the bomb on different types of structures. It’s almost surreal in that there are very few references to any human injuries. A German Jesuit in Hiroshima at the time was interrogated to find out how the Japanese people reacted to the attack(!). He explains, ” … we began to admire the skill of the Americans, and especially since the majestic B29s appeared over Tokyo, practically every Japanese admired the technical skill of the Americans.” The film contains actual footage of the nuclear explosion  over Nagasaki, apparently filmed from the B29 that dropped the bomb.

Of course, no one would expect dispassionate objectivity from military filmmakers months after the end of WWII. Similarly, you’ll find equally heavy-handed propagandizing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: What People Experienced. Fast-forward through the first twenty minutes of punditry from 1985 and you’ll discover deeply disturbing imagery (you were warned) of radiation poisoning and worse from 1945.

— recommended by Roger Petersen

Half Hours in the Far North, Life Amid Snow and Ice

Dodd, Mead and Company published Half Hours in the Far North, Life Amid Snow and Ice in 1870. With arctic wildlife chock full of industrial pollutants and Greenland’s ice sheet melting at the fastest rate in recorded history, this book is even more distant than the chronological years would suggest. It also features great engravings from the days before photographic reproduction was commercially viable.

— recommended by Kathleen Hansen

Radiators Live at Parrish Room on 21 April 2006.

If there’s such a thing as the New Orleans sound, it might be described as a mashup of the hear blues, jazz, Zydeco, soul, swamp rock, swing, with perhaps s splash of gospel. That’s also a fairly accurate description of what the New Orleans band the Radiators played for a third of a century. The group disbanded last year, but this 2006 recording captures them in fine fettle.

http://archive.org/details/Rad2006-04-21.sbd.flac

— recommended by Sarah Jefferson

What are your Archive favorites? Please suggest a link or two and a few words about why you appreciate your recommendation to:

bestof@archive.org

—David Glenn Rinehart

/ / / / /

To subscribe to this list, please visit:

http://archive.org/account/login.changepw.php

If you don’t already have a free Internet Archive library card, you may get yours here:

http://archive.org/account/login.createaccount.php

There, enter your password into the “Change Your Account Settings” option, then click on the ”Verify” button. That will bring you to your accounts setting page, where you may change your subscription status in the  Change Announcement Settings section.

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL, breaking the link.

If you’re still having trouble, please contact the list owner at:

info@archive.org

/ / / / / / /

David Glenn Rinehart is an artist in residence at the Internet Archive as well as a cartoonist, composer, filmmaker, musician, and writer. His work is at http://stare.com/ and elsewhere.

News from the Internet Archive
No. 2, 24 July 2012

Which Came First?

Anyone visiting the Internet Archive’s Internet site has seen our logo: an abstract rendering of a classical building with four columns. And anyone visiting our San Francisco headquarters in recent years has seen a similar edifice.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg? (Or, as our Russian friends say, the sturgeon or the caviar?) In fact, the logo was designed and adopted when the Internet Archive was created in 1996. At the time, no one dreamed we’d buy a building that looked like the logo in 2009. Life imitates art?

Brewster’s report

With the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we are trying to stop a bad Internet law in Washington State, which got a hearing this week. On a cheerier note, the Internet Archive uploaders hit a few milestones recently:

Medicine in the Americas passed 6,000 books.

Court cases documents uploaded by volunteers using the Pacer system passed 700,000 cases. (Thanks to the Recap team at Princeton.)

U.S. Public Safety Codes passed 1,000. (Go, Carl Malamud!)

Obituary collection from Utah passed 4,000.

It is great fun to watch these things roll in. (Thank you Hank Bromley for the stats.) Onward!

—Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian

Selected Recent Collections:

The Georges Méliès Collection

Georges Méliès was a French illusionist and filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. A prolific innovator in the use of special effects, he was one of the first  filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his work. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the first “Cinemagician.”

http://archive.org/details/georgesmelies

The Segundo de Chomón Collection

Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz was a pioneering Spanish film director. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères and has been compared to Georges Méliès  because of his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions. He became involved in film through his wife, who was an actress in Pathé films. In 1902 he became a concessionary for Pathé in Barcelona, distributing its product in Spanish-speaking countries, and managing a factory for the colouring of Pathé films. He began shooting actuality films of Spanish locations for the company, then 1905 moved to Paris where he became a trick film specialist.

http://archive.org/details/segundodechomon

Other Picks from the Archive

Drive-In Intermission

This five-minute piece from the Drive-In Movies Ads collection presents a fascinating look at a relatively short-lived cultural phenomenon: the drive-in movie theatre.

http://archive.org/details/DriveInIntermission13

Drive-in theatres have almost vanished from the American landscape. Once upon a time, though, they provided for an inexpensive family outing and a place for dating couples couples to enjoy recreation that may or may not have involved watching a film. That led theatre managers to issue this warning:

HELLO YOUNG LOVERS—WHOEVER YOU ARE—We’re Glad The LOVE BUG Caught Up With You!

But … We Must Insist That You Do Not Allow His Bite To Effect [sic] You Conduct While In This Theatre.

Public Demonstration Of Affection } Will Not Be Tolerated Here.

And in case there was any doubt about taking an unambiguous moral stance, the audience was admonished to, “Attend Your Place of Worship Regularly.”

— recommended by Joan Kadish

The Slip

Nine Inch Nails’ seventh album:

http://archive.org/details/nine_inch_nails_the_slip

— recommended by Herbert Jones

Japanese Fairy Tales, Compiled by Yei Theodora Ozaki

Are you or your kids tires of the Brothers Grimm? If so, these stories from long ago in another culture may be just what you’re looking for:

http://archive.org/details/japanesefairytal00ozak

— recommended by Sarah Levscheko

What are your Archive favorites? Please suggest a link or two and a few words about why you appreciate your recommendation to:

bestof@archive.org

—David Glenn Rinehart

/ / / / /

To subscribe to this list, please visit:

http://archive.org/account/login.changepw.php

If you don t already have a free Internet Archive library card, you may get yours here:

http://archive.org/account/login.createaccount.php

There, enter your password into the “Change Your Account Settings” option, then click on the ”Verify” button. That will bring you to your accounts setting page, where you may change your subscription status in the  Change Announcement Settings  section.

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL, breaking the link.

If you re still having trouble, please contact the list owner at:

info@archive.org

/ / / / / / /

David Glenn Rinehart is an artist in residence at the Internet Archive as well as a cartoonist, composer, filmmaker, musician, and writer. His work is at http://stare.com/ and elsewhere.

News from the Internet Archive
No. 1, 18 June 2012

In this issue, Archive-It’s two hundredth partner, picks from our collection, Brewster Kahle talks about Internet Archive news, and more.

Internet Archive Sues to Stop New Washington State Law
The Internet Archive has filed a federal challenge to a new Washington State law that intends to make online service providers criminally liable for providing access to third parties’ offensive materials.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing the Internet Archive in order to block the enforcement of SB 6251, a law aimed at combatting advertisements for underage sex workers but with vague and overbroad language that is squarely in conflict with federal law.

“The Internet Archive, as an online library, archives the World Wide Web and other digital materials for researchers, historians, and the general public,” said Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian and founder of the Internet Archive. “We strongly support law enforcement efforts to combat child sex trafficking, but this new law could endanger libraries and other entities that bring access to websites and user-generated content.”

Read the entire press release:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/internet-archive-sues-stop-new-washington-state-law

From the Digital Librarian and Founder
I was honored to be inducted into the first group of Internet Hall of Fame-ers. We take this as a positive community support for the Internet Archive and my earlier role in helping bring publishing to the Internet. You may read more here: http://blog.archive.org/2012/04/24/internet-hall-of-fame/

In other news, IPv6 is a new Internet protocol that will bring more addresses and other features to the Internet. Adoption has been slow, so the Internet Society declared June 6th IPv6 day and getting websites and Internet service providers to support it. We put up a page at http://ipv6.archive.org for those intrepid souls with a modified logo, does any IPv6 user get the joke? (Note: this link won’t work unless your computer network is configured for IPv6.) For more information, please see http://blog.archive.org/2012/06/06/our-first-step-into-ipv6-world/

—Brewster Kahle

Archive-It’s Two Hundredth Partner
The Archive-It subscription web archiving service recently signed our two-hundredth partner. We are very excited to have reached this milestone and thank all our partners for their support.

Archive-It was first launched in early 2006 and is represented in 43 US states and 15 countries around the globe. The access portal is available at http://www.archive-it.org/. Content can also be indexed into the General Archive at regular intervals.

Partner organizations collect, catalog, and manage their collections of archived content with full text search available for their use as well as their patrons. Content is hosted and stored at the our Internet Archive data centers.

—Lori Donovan

Picks from the Archive

The animal kingdom, arranged according to its organization, serving as a foundation for the natural history of animals : and an introduction to comparative anatomy (1834)

Once upon a time, a time before learned scientists talked about string theory and living in eleven dimensions, there was an age in which we knew about our world with certainty. And in the case of this book, we could list and illustrate those things, even though the oldest photograph in the world wasn’t even a decade old. The book promises “with pictures designed after nature,” and delivers.

http://www.archive.org/details/animalkingdomarr03cuvi

— recommended by Stefano Olieri

The Conet Project—Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations

If you thought advances in telecommunication, encrypted email, and other new technologies obviated the need for short wave radio, then it’s time to think again. Here are a few lines from the introduction to this remarkable collection.

For more than 30 years, the shortwave radio spectrum has been used by the world’s intelligence agencies to transmit secret messages. These messages are transmitted by hundreds of Numbers Stations. Why has the phenomenon of Numbers Stations gone almost totally unreported? What are the agencies behind the Numbers Stations, and why are the eastern European stations still on the air? Why does the Czech republic operate a Numbers Station 24 hours a day? How is it that Numbers Stations are allowed to interfere with essential radio services like air traffic control and shipping without having to answer to anybody? Why does the Swedish Rhapsody Numbers Station use a small girl’s voice?

http://www.archive.org/details/ird059

— recommended by Sarah Dillman

Mission Mind Control (July 10, 1979)

“This is the story of a thirty-year search by U.S. intelligence agencies to perfect mind control.” That’s how this 1970 ABC News documentary begins, after an unmistakably seventies musical introduction.

The film, part of the Archive’s FedFlix collection, hasn’t aged well, which is part of its appeal. With no pun intended, what a trip!

http://www.archive.org/details/FedFlix

— recommended by Alexis Rossi

What are your Archive favorites? Please suggest a link or two and a few words about why you appreciate your recommendation to:

mailto:bestof@archive.org

—David Glenn Rinehart

/ / / / /

To subscribe to this list, please visit:

http://archive.org/account/login.changepw.php

If you don’t already have a free Internet Archive library card, you may get yours here:

http://archive.org/account/login.createaccount.php

There, enter your password into the “Change Your Account Settings” option, then click on the “Verify” button. That will bring you to your accounts setting page, where you may change your subscription status in the “Change Announcement Settings” section.

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL, breaking the link.

If you’re still having trouble, please contact the list owner at:

mailto:info@archive.org

/ / / / / / /

David Glenn Rinehart is an artist in residence at the Internet Archive as well as a cartoonist, composer, filmmaker, musician, and writer. His work’s at http://stare.com/ and elsewhere.