ResearchBuzz

Oh, National Library of Scotland, you’re so cool. I want to be like you when I grow up. The latest offering from the NLS is the Scottish Screen Archive’s 1000 clips online, available at http://ssa.nls.uk/ .

Actually this site is a catalog of Scottish films, beyond the 1000 clips. You can browse the catalog by place, subject, biography, or decade (the clips go back to the 1890s, though most of the clips seem to be in the 1950s and 1960s) or you can search by several factors. You can also limit your search results to those film results which do have clips online, and/or those clips to which the Library has clear copyright or can clear copyright.

I did a full search for Highlanders and limited my results to those catalog listings which have clips available. I got eight results, ranging from a silent film in 1899 to a 1961 film about children in Scotland’s orphanages who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time bobbing for apples. (It was a very odd clip.)

The catalog pages for each film are extensive. In addition to the standard name, date, length, etc. There’s also an extensive shot listing with time markers. Clips are embedded on the right side of the page. There are descriptions for those clips as well. Most of the catalog pages I looked at had multiple clips available. Underneath the embedded clips are copyright notifications and suggestions — based on topic — for other film catalog pages which might prove interesting.

For more information about the Scottish Film Archive, check out the FAQs and the About Us page.

William F. Buckley died this week. I knew that he hosted Firing Line, but I did not know that Stanford University had a database of Firing Line TV shows. The show ran from 1966 to 1999, and there were just over 1504 episodes of the program.

The database, at http://hoohila.stanford.edu/firingline/programList.php, appears to list something over 1200 episodes (and a couple of related specials.) They’re presented in a table which includes episode number, name, and two columns that show whether the first five minutes are available as streaming media, and whether the whole show is available and in what format (the only available format I saw was VHS.)

If you click on the name of the program you’ll get other information including the list of guests, taping date, duration, a summary of the program, and whether a copy of it is available. If you want to look at the first five minutes of a show (I would say less than ten percent of the shows listed have the first five minutes available as streaming media) you’ll need to have the RealOne video player.

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, which hosts the site at Stanford, is asking for suggestions on what shows to digitize and make available online. You can get more information on the database at http://hoohila.stanford.edu/firingline/index.php .

I don’t mean to sound jaded — I’m just amazed at how many of these sites have popped up in the last few months. WonderHowTo, available at http://www.wonderhowto.com/ has already indexed over 90,000 video clips, so at least they’re starting with a pretty good collection.

And I must say, the front page grabbed me with several odd clips. The columns on the front page include the latest additions, hottest videos, and the hidden gems. I spotted “How To Make double cheddar horseradish mashed potatoes”, “How To Care for a child with autism”, and “How To Mod a slim PS2″.

It doesn’t appear that WonderHowTo.com hosts any videos. Instead when you click on a screenshot or title, you get a detail page that provides details on the video, rankings (A to F), a space for comments (I didn’t see any videos with comments) and related videos. Most importantly, you also get a link to the video on an external site (I saw YouTube, BrightCove, 5min.com, FAA.gov, and a lot more.)

If you don’t care to look at the hot/recent/hidden stuff on the front page, you also have the option of browsing an incredibly-detailed category index (DO NOT MISS the *5* macrame videos!) or searching by keyword. Searching for cheese found 340 videos, including instructions on selecting cheese for a platter, making raw vegan cheese from nuts, and several variations on mac n’ cheese.

Playing with this site, I found a number of nice design touches, including tracking of your recent searches, recent community searches, and popular community searches (as you imagine not all of these are family-friendly.) I was surprised that there didn’t appear to be RSS feeds available for search results.