THE INTERNET MOVING IMAGES ARCHIVE
Rick Prelinger is known to many IAMHIST members. This initiative should be applauded. Rick writes...

The Internet Moving Images Archive site is up and running (though, I hasten to say, still under construction).

This resource contains high-quality digital video files representing ephemeral (advertising, educational, industrial, documentary, amateur and government) films relevant to the study of 20th-century American culture and society, media and media production, communication, technology, landscape, urban history, economics, political science, warfare, the New Deal, and many other subject areas.

At present it contains approximately 360 out of a planned total of 1001 titles, all from Prelinger Archives. All are available for free downloading and reuse, with no restrictions other than that the films cannot be resold or licensed by anyone in their entirety or as stock footage. Our intention is that these titles should circulate freely as "open-source" content.

I encourage you to download this material for your own use and for the use of your patrons. I hope that easy access to these films will assist scholars, teachers, students, exhibitors and members of the general public in coming to terms with the complex and diverse audiovisual history of the 20th century.

The digitized video files are in MPEG-2 format; see the site for information on playback. In the next few months they will also be available in MPEG-4 for lower-bandwidth users.

Please visit the site at http://www.archive.org/movies/movies.php.

An article on the background and rationale for this project may be found at http://eserver.org/bs/52/prelinger.html.

The Internet Moving Images Archive is a project of the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) in collaboration with Prelinger Archives.

With many thanks,

Rick Prelinger
Rick Prelinger Prelinger Archives