Thursday, October 2, 2008

Duck and cover! (Public Resource.org)


"An atomic bomb could knock you down, hard", says the narrator of the film "Duck and cover," a social guidance film produced in 1951 by the United States federal government's Civil Defense branch shortly after the Soviet Union began nuclear testing. The film is brought to us by FedFlix, a collaborative effort by Public.Resource.org and NTIS: "FedFlix is a joint venture with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). Each month they send us [ie.Public.Resource.org] government videotapes. We upload them to the Internet Archive and YouTube, then send the government back their videotapes and a digital copy for their files. No cost to them, more data for all of us." Thanks to Librarian in Black for alerting us to Public.Resource.org, which she describes as a non-profit company created by Carl Malamud that purchases expensive government reports or codes and publishes them for free on the open web. I was unable to find any concise "about this site" info at Public.Resource.org, but judging by this post at Justia,  Malamud is well known in the legal research community for his history of making public information freely available on the internet when providers of data sought to restrict access to the commercial market. Read all about him at OnTheCommons

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