Brian Stelter at NYT:
Researchers, political satirists and partisan mudslingers, take note: C-Span has uploaded virtually every minute of its video archives to the Internet.
The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five presidential administrations and are sure to provide new fodder for pundits and politicians alike. The network will formally announce the completion of the C-Span Video Library on Wednesday.
Having free online access to the more than 160,000 hours of C-Span footage is “like being able to Google political history using the ‘I Feel Lucky’ button every time,” said Rachel Maddow, the liberal MSNBC host.
Ed Morrissey, a senior correspondent for the conservative blog Hot Air (hotair.com), said, “The geek in me wants to find an excuse to start digging.”
Michael Calderone at Politico:
Brian Lamb, the network’s chief executive, told the New York Times that “journalists can feast on it,” and now having the ability to more easily check what politicians said in the past versus now
Frances Martel at Mediaite:
The database is assembled by program, topics, date, and personalities in them, so if you vaguely remember watching something interesting on Book TV last month (you don’t, but bear with me here), you can simply browse last month’s episodes of Book TV. It is even more useful if you’re researching a certain American political personality and want to find when they were most active on C-SPAN over a span of time, or just watch the person in action if you’ve only had the chance to read up on them. For example, say you overheard something about Richard Nixon and it got you curious to watch some of the footage of his last years in office. Simply search his name and click on his profile page, and all his appearances in the archives (mostly television but some radio addresses) are neatly organized by year. It’s a researcher’s – and a political nerd’s – dream come true. There’s even a transcript library for those who need the text in print.
But the impact of having such a free online database goes well beyond political science research libraries and the home computers of all three of America’s Spiro Agnew enthusiasts. The fact that 23 years of video footage of America’s history is accessible online for free at an age where most Americans have access to the Internet renders the entire debate in Texas over the content of textbooks obsolete. Teachers now have access to a library of raw data with which they can enhance their lessons, and if they don’t, students don’t need their teachers’ permission to do a quick fact-check.
Plus, most students in the YouTube era prefer watching history to reading it, so the chances of them taking five seconds to find a video of Ronald Reagan joking around about invading the USSR are much higher than the chances of them taking an hour or two to read the Reagan chapter conservatives in Texas are so afraid of them happening upon. C-SPAN has provided students an avenue both of objective history and of instant academic gratification, and given this alternative, most will be hard-pressed to take a second look at the books their parents are currently warring over. As the pool of information widens and becomes more organized, there will come a time when textbooks will have little to no place in the classroom at all. The classification of facts will be so sophisticated that it will take such little effort to wade through enormous amounts of information there will no longer be the need for someone to do it for students by way of a book. So while a five-hour congressional session from 1967 may not be interesting in and of itself, the shift to film and digital media is fascinating.
Andrew Malcolm at The Los Angeles Times:
One of America’s greatest living treasures is about to turn 31.
It’s not a he. Nor a she. It’s an it. C-SPAN, which is short for something like Cripes, Some Politicians Are Numb. (See video samples below; these may take a moment to load.)
For the last 11,320 days, this public service of the cable TV industry has provided priceless outlets and insights (even sometimes on the Democratic line) for millions of Americans watching, processing, learning and judging their government and its political processes at work. Or at least talking a lot.
While the rest of Washington yadas on like a bunch of chugging crazies on spring break, C-SPAN provides a priceless sense of serenity amid the nation’s political storms.
Yes, C-SPAN can be annoyingly calm at times, as if its announcers took twice the recommended dose of meds and don’t realize that total political chaos reigns everywhere outside that studio. “Well, if Iran does launch nuclear Armageddon, do you think the evangelicals will still be a serious force in the 2012 Iowa caucuses?”
On Wednesday, in honor of its official birthday Friday, C-SPAN will announce the opening of …
… a free, searchable, online video archive of every C-SPAN program since 1987. More than 160,000 hours of digital video. Like home movies for D.C. denizens. Imagine being able to look up and watch a specific speaker at a specific committee hearing on a specific day in 1993.
Or imagine getting a life.
Joe Carter at First Things:
Some policy nerds may be nostalgic for Dee Dee Myers-era White House briefings or Congressional budget reconciliation meetings. But for the rest of us, the archive offers an abundance of fascinating interviews and lectures from non-politicos.
Check out some of the videos of First Things‘ editors Richard John Neuhaus, Joseph Bottum, James Nuechterlein; FT contributors Mary Eberstadt, Alan Jacobs, and Yuval Levin; and FT board members Hadley Arkes, James Burtchaell, Eric Cohen, David Dalin, Midge Decter, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Suzanne Garment, Robert George, Mary Ann Glendon, Russell Hittinger, Glenn Loury, George Marsden, Wilfred M. McClay, Gilbert Meilaender, David Novak, Michael Novak, George Weigel, William Burleigh, and Peter Thiel.
