The Internet Arcade

For you gamers out there, the Library would like to introduce you to the recently launched Internet Arcade! The Internet Arcade is an Internet browser-based library of emulated video arcade games from the 1970s up through the 1990s. It has hundreds of games ranging across many different genres that you can play for fun, to study, or to test your eye-keyboard coordination! Before you start, though, I recommend reading this blog post by the Internet Arcade operator, Jason Scott, walking you step-by-step through instructions to have a better playing experience.

 The Langsdale Library also has its own Game Collection for students, researchers and faculty use. Video game conservation is an important part of preserving our cultural heritage, but can be extremely difficult due to copyright issues and software and hardware obsolescence. Read more about this endeavor in the Library of Congress' 2010 "Preserving Virtual Worlds Final Report". 

Of Ambient Music and Cyber Security

When I was thinking about what I would write about for today's blog post I had planned to do something about the Internet Archive, public domain and derivative works. I was inspired by a really interesting blog post by the actor / gamer Wil Wheaton, where he talks about getting public domain period music for a 1920's themed party; and using free open source tools to rework one of them into his own 90's-style ambient tune. All pretty interesting stuff.

But then, while eating breakfast this morning, I came across this tweet that made me reconsider my topic, and instead I'd like to bring up something a little more serious: National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Perhaps you've seen some of the flyers that OTS and the library have put up around campus and in our labs, warning about identity theft and cloud security. Maybe you haven't. But, regardless, you can find some great information from OTS here about how you can better protect yourself.

It may not be as fun, or exciting, as using free tools to publish your creative works online for the the world to see. But your privacy and identity online are pretty darn important as well.

And, if you use Verizon for the wireless connection on your phone or tablet, and are interested in seeing if they are tracking everything you do while on their network, you can go here. It will tell you if Verizon is adding the cookie to everything you do on the web. Just make sure you turn off WiFi beforehand, since this "feature" only applies to web browsing over their 3G and 4G networks.

The Problem with What a Library is?

The National Archives building (via Wikipedia)

Throughout my life, I’ve had a bizarre relationship with libraries. Bizarre because, as a child, I didn’t particularly like to read, though, for some reason, I still liked going to the library. I’m sure I didn’t intellectualize it back then, or even examine my reasons for enjoying a space designed and functioning as the dispensary of a product (books) that I didn’t much care for. Then it also dawned on me that the pleasant feeling I got from being in proximity to books, with the disdain I felt toward reading them, isn’t all that unusual. Libraries are not just a place where one might go to indulge in a particular recreation. There is, at once, both a simplistic and really complicated and convoluted metaphysics to Libraries, the idea of a library: what a library is. And it's bigger than the books they carry.

Archiving History in Special Collections

Our own audiovisual archivist Siobhan Hagan did a wonderful piece for Humanities Connection on WYPR last Thursday.

In it Hagan discusses the wealth of material found in Langsdale's WMAR and WJZ film and video collections. These two collections contains both raw footage and news and feature programming spanning the mid 1940's to 2000. WMAR was the first Baltimore news station and the 11th in the country, so our collection reflects the full run of local television broadcasting from the dawn of the medium through the end of the 20th century and can provide scholars of history, media studies, popular culture and many other humanistic disciplines a rich treasure of materials. Seeing and hearing this footage can bring history to life for many users in Baltimore and beyond.

See more from our AV archives at AV@UB and on the Internet Archive.

Partnering with the Internet Archive

The Langsdale Library would like to officially introduce its newest Internet Archive presence. As is stated in its mission, the non-profit Internet Archive “is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public.”

In particular, Langsdale will be posting audiovisual content from its Special Collections Department (Level 4 of the library—please come visit!). The mission of the Internet Archive and Langsdale Library’s Special Collections Department matches up quite nicely, as the Department “collects, preserves, and provides access to archival, printed, and digital resources that support the research and instructional needs of students, faculty, scholars, and the general public.”

Along with oral histories, we are posting audiovisual content of Baltimore, Maryland-regional television-news footage and special programs from WMAR-TV (Channel 2) and WJZ-TV (Channel 13), ranging in date from 1948 to the year 2000. This footage is FREE to download and non-commercially re-mix and re-use in any way the world wants (as long as the world properly gives us a credit line* in their work). The Internet Archive has allowed Langsdale Library to do this by providing us with free and unlimited digital storage, for which we are extremely grateful. Having a large amount of storage is imperative for the much-larger-than-your-average-JPEG digital-video files (which you will encounter if you download one)—and we have hours of these treasures!

In addition to the Internet Archive site, we now have a presence on the social media site Tumblr, where we are posting shorter and more topical audiovisual highlights each and every week.

If you would like to use parts of our footage in a commercial endeavor or would like to find out more about what we have in our WMAR-TV and WJZ-TV Collections, please give our new Audiovisual Archivist, Siobhan (shi-VON) Hagan, a call at 410.837.4268, or email at shagan@ubalt.edu. Although certainly not required, if you re-purpose our footage, we would love it if you would please share your work with us as well!


*Credit line: Courtesy of the WMAR-TV and WJZ-TV Collections, University of Baltimore