Superbowl and New Orleans

OK, I confess I was more interested in seeing if Pete Townshend would do some windmill leaps and trash his guitar at the end of their halftime show.

Still I thought I’d check up on some stuff about New Orleans at the archive.org

I first took a look at the space view of the Crescent City from NASAimages: http://www.archive.org/details/VE-IMG-17299

Then to set the mood put on a little music from The Radiators: http://www.archive.org/details/rads2010-01-02

And read a little of this old text from 1914: New Orleans Old and New: http://www.archive.org/details/neworleansoldnew00alle

From it I learned that Carnival season started in 1827. Here’s a slightly more recent view of Mardi Gras from 1941: http://www.archive.org/details/Paradeof1941

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints and all the people in the Crescent City.

-Jeff Kaplan

The Daily Athenaeum – HaveYouSeen? ‘The Driller Killer’

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via The Daily Athenaeum – HaveYouSeen? ‘The Driller Killer’.

Unemployment Rate Jitters

With the unemployment rate so high, cafes here in
San Francisco are extra busy with folks killing time, camping out at the tables nursing their one cup of coffee while online. Here’s a good old one for them to check out: http://www.archive.org/details/ThisisCo1961

Of course a little coffee overindulgence might lead to: http://www.archive.org/details/Brian_Wyrick_Sleep

That ending reminded me of Luis Bunuel’s Andalusian Dog. Youch! Speaking of surreal…if you should fall asleep: http://www.archive.org/details/TribuneA1924

So combine stimulants with driving and you get the Grateful Dead with  “Casey Jones”: http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-08-30.fm.jupile.12762.sbeok.shnf

Time for a cup o’ joe! Excuse me while I go get a lo-fo-half-caf-half-decaf-mochachino or better yet maybe just a good cup of drip! -Jeff Kaplan

Celestial Marbles and Floating Sombreros

Take a break from a hectic day and enjoy the peaceful awe of our universe. “Things That Float” by Stephen Nowlin is the first monthly Guest Showcase in Internet Archive’s collaboration with NASA images. http://words.nasaimages.org/2010/01/11/guest-showcase1/

Mr. Nowlin wrote: “We’re charmed by heavy things that float in thin air, because we’re products of a gravity environment where weight is pinned to the planet’s surface.  When something does otherwise, it arouses the pleasure of our curiosity – it’s a spectacle, and inspiring. ”

All the images are spectacular. I think we often forget the remarkable work that goes into the NASA programs that allows us to see such vivid images of space. It is a wonderful presentation of carefully selected images accompanied by the music of Claude Debussy.

Check out the floating astronaut with jet pack at 2:34, the streaked and speckled moons that look like marbles at 3:57, and at 5:40 all I could say about the celestial sombrero was “what is that?!”

Awesome indeed.

-Jeff Kaplan

Black History Month and Famous Banjos

I found this radio interview with Rosa Parks just 4 months after she refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, AL. Her interview goes from 12:39-18:50. http://www.archive.org/details/dn2005-1025_vid

And here is an interview from the 1957 with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. http://www.archive.org/details/openmind_ep727.

Which naturally caused me to search for Dr. Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech from the rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. Here is the audio recording of that speech: http://www.archive.org/details/MLKDream

I remembered that Pete Seeger performed at that rally. So I discovered this short video of Pete Seeger discussing how Dr. King and Rosa Parks inspired him. http://www.archive.org/details/HowDr.KingAndRosaParksInspiredFolkLegendPeteSeeger.

Notice the skin head on his banjo. It was on his banjo for over 35 years and is famous among banjo players and folk enthusiasts. On it are written these words “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender”.  Seeger recently put it up for auction on eBay to donate the funds for earthquake relief for Haiti. With the bid over $6,000, and expected to go much higher, he reluctantly withdrew it at the insistence of his family in order to donate it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Instead he is raising funds for Haiti through donations.  -Jeff Kaplan

Hula Dancing and other Risky Behavior

So I was listening to a music in the Live Music Archives section of a local surf band, Mermen http://www.archive.org/details/mermen2009-07-31.m300.flac16. I was really liking “Big Day At The Bay”.

Which got me to thinking about surfing. A search got me to “This is your life Duke Kahanamoku (1957)”, http://www.archive.org/details/this_is_your_life_duke_kahanamoku. Kowabunga! The Hula dance! Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller)! Five Olympic games and world records! Rescue hero!

Which put me in the mind of skateboarding in the 60’s whereupon I happened across this gem: “Skateboard Sense” by Sid Davis, http://www.archive.org/details/skateboard_sense. The skating is kind of laughable but I was mostly looking at the cars and bellbottoms. Bug! Vega! Duster!

So I searched Sid Davis which took me to “Keep Off The Grass” http://www.archive.org/details/keep_off_the_grass. The three panel presentation of drugs  at about 11 minutes in is identical to the one that was used in my school in that same era. Ah, the nostalgia! Ah the flashback!  - Jeff Kaplan

Before, After and the writing quill

Being a graphic designer I take a keen interest in typography. I came across a book explaining the origins of roman, serif and cursive letterforms: http://www.archive.org/details/freehandletterin00wils

I noticed it was copyright 1906. So, being from San Francisco it got me thinking about the 1906 earthquake and I came across two amazing films.

The first traveling by trolley down the length of Market Street to the Ferry Building in 1905, the year before the quake: http://www.archive.org/details/TripDown1905. The second is the same route in 1906 after the earthquake: http://www.archive.org/details/tmp_50168

By the style I assume it is the same photographer. Before…After.

Here’s one more :http://www.archive.org/details/SanFranc1906_3.  I really enjoyed see this moment in time when there was the transition from Horse and Carriage to Auto. In this film they share the  road with bicycles, horses and the occasional rifle carrying citizen.

-Jeff Kaplan

From SOTU to Mad Men

I decided to dovetail the comment from the SOTU address last night about the best of Kennedy and Reagan with my love of the series Mad Men and ended up looking at some old campaign commercials:

In one episode the staff at the advertising agency of Sterling Cooper is asked to work for the Nixon campaign. They spend some time reviewing the competition’, meaning Kennedy’s, commercials. In an “AHA!” moment I realized that in all likelihood the producers of Mad Men got the footage from the Internet Archive from this compilation:

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

In it there is a commercial with Harry Belafonte. I just finished reading David Bianculli’s book about the Smothers Brother and Harry Belafonte’s appearances there. An Internet Archive search of the Smothers Brothers yielded a top result of “Tales of the Rat Fink: Trailer“.

Gotta check that one out.

-Jeff Kaplan

Here Comes the SUN!

It’s been raining for 4 days in San Francisco (home of archive.org), and I’ve been wishing for sun all day so I figured a sunny little tour of the archive was in order.

First off, if you’d like to learn a little more about the importance of our shiniest star, you can watch an entertaining educational film by Frank Capra called Our Mr. Sun, part of the A/V Geeks Film Archive.

To see some pretty pictures of what the sun gives us, check out this 1946 film from Del Monte, Gifts of the Sun from the Prelinger Archive.  If your tastes run more to the psychadelic, try Hymn To The Sun God.

If you prefer to get your information from NASA, check out these brief segments from the NASA LaRC Office of Education: The Sun, Sun Basics, Solar Flares and Other Sun Activity, Sun-Earth Connection, and Importance of Studying the Sun (which I really wish I could do right now).

Feeling a little wound up?  Try doing a Sun Salutation (or this significantly less serious version featuring “frisky dolls”).

If  you want to watch a cheesy horror movie that doesn’t really have anything to do with the sun, check out Terror in the Midnight Sun — according to IMDB, the movie’s tagline is “Monsters walk the earth in ravishing rampage of clawing fury!” so I don’t see how you can go wrong with this one.

Prefer westerns?  Try By the Sun’s Rays from 1914.

I’m sure you can find many more sun-related items in the archive, but I need to go sit under my full spectrum light therapy lamp.  Enjoy!

–Alexis

NASA Images iPhone app

From the NASA Images blog at http://nasaimages.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/nasa-images-iphone-app/

“Check out the free NASA Images iPhone App, a window to the content available on nasaimages.org. With the app you can access the entire NASA Images library from your iPhone along with the metadata for each image, video, and animation.

“The NASA Images app delivers the following features:

-Search and browse media from nasaimages.org
-View images with interactive zoom (zoom images by double taps)
-Watch NASA programs and mission footage
-Bookmark Favorites
-Send email with URLs of favorites

“The NASA Images iPhone App was developed by Hajime Hirose from Tomute Software. Hirose has developed other iPhone Apps such as NASA Checker, and Whitehouse Checker. If you like the app make sure to rate it or write a review!”

Guest Blogger: Barbara Janis of the Presidio Trust

The Presidio Trust is a unique organization. It is a federal agency guiding the transformation of a former military post into a self-sufficient national park. The documents added to the Internet Archive record the steps in this evolution.

The main collection includes documents pertaining to building and landscape rehabilitation, planning, environmental and historic compliance, and efforts to convey the history of the Presidio of San Francisco. Among the reports are guidance documents such as the Presidio Trust Management Plan, the Vegetation Management Plan, and the Presidio Trails and Bikeways Master Plan. Environmental assessments and environmental impact statements are included, as well as year-end reports and financial statements.

The remediation collection documents the environmental cleanup of materials left at the Presidio by the U.S. Army. It includes the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) documents transferred by the U.S. Army to the Presidio Trust in August 1999, as well as reports created since that time.

Learn more by perusing the Presidio Trust collection here.

–Barbara Janis, MLIS
Library and Records Manager
Presidio Trust

Celebrate Banned Books Week 2009

If you wander into your local bookstore or library within the next week, it’s likely you will see a shrine of sorts to banned books. Those who ban books work to lock up particular controversial writing from readers, but an equally as strong and passionate force works to keep these books freely available. Enter: Banned Books Week.

Banned Books Week is held during the last week of September in order to bring light to banned and challenged books. This week serves to celebrate the freedom to read what you want and to continue in a forceful march to keep writing available to all of the public. So, from September 26 to October 3, there will be efforts all over the country to bring banned books to the forefront–to showcase them as worthy, safe, and accessible works.

Internet Archive offers a collection of banned books in this collection to get you ready for the week. Some of the most famous banned books are highlighted below:

The Fairy Tales of Brothers Grimm
The Jungle
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
O Pioneers!
Black Beauty
The War of the Worlds

Read through these classics and crack your Ginsberg, Rowling, Nabakov, or Steinbeck this week. Celebrate your freedom to read, because unfortunately some of our best writers have been sanctioned to book prison.

–Cara Binder

Travels with the FWP

“To support writers, editors, researchers, and historians during the Great Depression, the United States government created a program called The Federal Writers’ Project as part of the Works Project Administration, under FDR’s New Deal. The most famous works coming out of this project include the state travel guides, which have been archived within the Prelinger Library.”

Thumb through some of these guides to see how much is still relevant, and hit the road with the FWP in your pocket.

Here’s New England: A Guide to Vacationland
New Orleans City Guide
California: A Guide to the Golden State
Kentucky: A Guide to the Bluegrass State
A South Dakota Guide
Philiadelphia: A Guide to the Nation’s Birthplace
Mississippi: A guide to the Magnolia State

–Cara Binder

GeoCities, Preserved!

There’s a chance that in the 1990s, you were more familiar with neighborhoods on GeoCities than with the neighborhoods in your own town. As one of the most popular and oldest (nearly 15 years running) sites for self expression on the web, GeoCities paved the way for other sites which would offer a sense of community and networking capabilities. Because it was one of the first ways for people to freely and openly become engaged with the internet, GeoCities will always be an important part of web history.

Yahoo! announced that it will close the site on October 26, 2009, steering users towards their paid service instead. We have been archiving GeoCities sites for years in our crawls, but, as goes with the territory of being web archivists, we want to make sure to gather as many of the pages as possible before the looming end of an era, 10-26-2009. If you have a page with GeoCities or are a fan of a particular page, please use our special collections page to ensure its preservation. Additionally, please refer to another independent project, the Archive Team, who is working to save cultural information that may be lost with the site closing. Yahoo! is also offering valuable advice at their help center.

–Cara Binder

Relax, You’re at an Intermission in a Drive-In

These days, a good drive-in theater is a relatively rare gem to find. Although many have recently been resurrected and a DIY drive-in movement has even occurred, a drive-in is still often seen through nostalgic eyes rather than considered to be an everyday venue for movie screening. The collection of Drive-In movie ads that is on Internet Archive can bring you back to a time when you could watch a movie from the comfort of your car, visit the snack stand at intermission, and hang speakers from your car window.

Take a peek at some of the films shown during intermission:

“Step right this way, folks, for the most extravagant array of refreshment goodies ever assembled under one roof!”

“Public Demonstration of Affection } Will Not Be Tolerated Here (‘Nuff Said?)”

“If you like hot dogs, you’ll love corn dogs. Everybody does!”

The management urges you to go to church on Sunday

“Music to the ears of the hungry: the sizzle of a mouthwatering hamburger.”

Now go get yourself a snack, refrain from PDA, and visit your place of worship on Sunday.

–Cara Binder