Internet Archive News Programs, MusOpen Project Mark 2

From Slashdot, the Internet Archive is storing up TV news programs from twenty channels going back to 2009 and making them available through a service called "TV News Search and Borrow." You can search for a story using keywords and year; the Archive uses the subtitles to find the relevant stories. Here's the page of the Internet Archive Blog that announces the service.

Here is a little more information from technorati.com.

The new service allows you to search and view the clips online or to "borrow" the clips for up to thirty days. The current price is pretty outrageous - $50 per clip, not including shipping and handling etc. But that might come down if the service gets more use. Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, says the service is based on the Vanderbilt Television News archive, which has been making television news broadcasts available since 1968.

This service is not only good for journalists and news junkies, but for researchers that are interested in analyzing trends in news reports and speeches by government officials. Public information like this made available for future generations is an important step forward in democracy, transparency, and accountability.

The plan is to include earlier news broadcasts, back to the beginning of television, if possible. This would make a nice companion to the availability of newsreels of the same event. (We cannot forget the British newsreels, like these, though). The Archive awes me sometimes.

Also, I received an e-mail from Aaron Dunn at Musopen that reads, in part,

We have some exciting news to share. We recently completed a Kickstarter project which has added a tremendous amount of music to our library. ... In a few weeks we will be annoucing a second project which we hope will add even more great music. In the meantime, the engineers behind Musopen are raising funds to open-source a great bug tracking app we use to work on Musopen.org called: BugKick.

 I've enjoyed the symphony and chamber music recordings that resulted from the Kickstarter project and have wondered if Aaron had the energy to try for a second round. Apparently so!