These are historic political times. C-SPAN has long been the definitive chronicler of that history. Last week C-SPAN opened up its historical chronicle to the world. The full C-SPAN archive is now available at C-SpanVideo.org and — bloggers take note — you can search, clip, excerpt and embed it. That’s 23 years of history through five presidential administrations; 160,000 hours of video (and some audio). The NYTimes:
C-Span has been uploading its history for several years, working its way to 1987, when its archives were established at Purdue University, [C-Span founder, Brian] Lamb’s alma mater.
The archive staff now operates from an office park in West Lafayette, Ind., where two machines that can turn 16 hours of tapes into digital files each hour have been working around the clock to move C-Span’s programs online. They are now finishing the 1987 catalog.
Frances Martel of Mediaite says it will redefine social studies education in America:
It’s a landmark in government transparency and a godsend to anyone embarking on an American history research project. And even more importantly, the release of this raw data means that, at least for modern history, social studies textbooks are now rendered useless, making the current conservative-led debate to have parents monitor the content of said textbooks unnecessary.
For fun, Salon pulled together 5 must-see clips for political dorks. Andrew Sullivan’s find is Walker Percy’s National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities from 1989.