NGI&PR: National Archives and Google Launch Pilot Project to Digitize and Offer Historic Films Online

Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Co-Founder and President of Technology Sergey Brin today announced the launch of a pilot program to make holdings of the National Archives available for free online. This non-exclusive agreement will enable researchers and the general public to access a diverse collection of historic movies, documentaries and other films from the National Archives via Google Video (http://video.google.com/nara.html) as well as the National Archives website (http://www.archives.gov).

"This is an important step for the National Archives to achieve its goal of becoming an archive without walls," said Professor Weinstein. "Our new strategic plan emphasizes the importance of providing access to records anytime, anywhere. This is one of many initiatives that we are launching to make our goal a reality. For the first time, the public will be able to view this collection of rare and unusual films on the Internet."

MY comment: Hmm... is Google Video growing up? More and more "intelligent" content, less "you-tube-stuff"

I write an (french) article about it :
http://www.zorgloob.com/2006/02/google-sassocie-aux-archives.asp

I invite you to watch this video realized in 1894 (!) :
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6020302018400450975