The Langsdale Library would like to officially introduce its newest Internet Archive presence. As is stated in its mission, the non-profit Internet Archive “is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public.”
In particular, Langsdale will be posting audiovisual content from its Special Collections Department (Level 4 of the library—please come visit!). The mission of the Internet Archive and Langsdale Library’s Special Collections Department matches up quite nicely, as the Department “collects, preserves, and provides access to archival, printed, and digital resources that support the research and instructional needs of students, faculty, scholars, and the general public.”
Along with oral histories, we are posting audiovisual content of Baltimore, Maryland-regional television-news footage and special programs from WMAR-TV (Channel 2) and WJZ-TV (Channel 13), ranging in date from 1948 to the year 2000. This footage is FREE to download and non-commercially re-mix and re-use in any way the world wants (as long as the world properly gives us a credit line* in their work). The Internet Archive has allowed Langsdale Library to do this by providing us with free and unlimited digital storage, for which we are extremely grateful. Having a large amount of storage is imperative for the much-larger-than-your-average-JPEG digital-video files (which you will encounter if you download one)—and we have hours of these treasures!
In addition to the Internet Archive site, we now have a presence on the social media site Tumblr, where we are posting shorter and more topical audiovisual highlights each and every week.
If you would like to use parts of our footage in a commercial endeavor or would like to find out more about what we have in our WMAR-TV and WJZ-TV Collections, please give our new Audiovisual Archivist, Siobhan (shi-VON) Hagan, a call at 410.837.4268, or email at shagan@ubalt.edu. Although certainly not required, if you re-purpose our footage, we would love it if you would please share your work with us as well!
*Credit line: Courtesy of the WMAR-TV and WJZ-TV Collections, University of Baltimore