Internet Prospector
January 1998
Internet Prospector
VANDERBILT TELEVISION NEWS ARCHIVE
Nixon defeats Humphrey in the presidential election, Apollo 8 astronauts
orbit the moon, John Lennon is arrested for marijuana possession and Christmas
shoppers spurn G.I. Joe war toys, as parents tire of the Vietnam war.
The year is 1968. And Vanderbilt University launches an ambitious project of recording television evening news from ABC, CBS and NBC. Now, nearly 30 years later, the videotapes are still rolling. The archive has grown to more than 23,000 news broadcasts from four networks and more than 8,000 hours of special news programming.
An index to the broadcasts first became available in 1972, according to archive director John Lynch. Indexing in those days meant transcribing handwritten broadcast descriptions to 3x5 note cards. The process created more than 3,000 cards a month. Lynch says that computer indexing replaced note cards in the mid-1980s, but indexing was still designed to produce a paper product.
Beginning in 1994, archivists started creating an online database from scanned pages of the publication and from word-processing files. Initially, Internet users accessed the database through a gopher or text-only application. Then the World Wide Web burst upon the scene, with the archive launching its official Web site in 1995.
But researchers can access more than the online database. Lynch says
"At any time we have tape loans to hundreds of people all over the
United States and to a handful around the world."
http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/
gopher://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/
CNN WORLD REPORT TELEVISION ARCHIVE
Find searchable World Report abstracts from October 25, 1987, to December
31, 1996.
http://129.118.45.35/SEARCH.htm
CNN TOP 10 VIDEOS OF 1997
View short video clips on your computer (requires plug-ins for your
browser).
http://cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/year.ender/video/frame.html
(From Randy Bunney)
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