Digital Junkyard: A Competitor To The Internet Archive?
from the more-archiving-is-good... dept
Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive project is really a great thing, but should there be only one such archive? It looks like they may be getting some competition in the form of the digital junkyard being built at the University of Waterloo. They claim it's the "world's largest" archive of digital content - but I wonder if they're really larger than the Internet Archive which is quite large and growing every day by leaps and bounds. It's going to contain all sorts of odd content, though, including "everything from movie outtakes to the sound bites left on the editing floor during the shooting of a music video." They say they plan to make it available to anyone who wants access, but don't say how they plan to do so. Right now, however, it's not easy to find at all, and after a quick search, I've given up until someone with more time/knowledge of this project points it out.
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Greetings, World's Angriest Tech Reporter!
Granted, if they were really going for "world's largest" with no thought to accessibility or searchability of content, they could probably start with just scanning everything in the U of Waterloo collection and go from there, trying to get their hands on anything audio, video, or text and throwing it on the pile. Of course, not even the Library of Congress does that.
I contest, as no doubt you also do, the veracity of claiming they will pick up every left-aside cutting-room-floor captured image; who wants that, and who would give that away? Certainly not filmmaking endeavors of any relevancy. If they really are expecting to acquire the discarded takes of the next Spider-man movie or stream out all known shows on the CBC, they're quite sadly mistaken.
It looks to me like they're going for another "project" center, and need to come up with a reason to justify the millions. I'll keep my membership with archive.org, thanks.
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what-for?
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