The Internet Archive, one of the world's largest public digital libraries, has received $1 million in funding from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that will allow the organization to expand its research library and make hundreds of thousands of U.S. television news programs available.
The funding will expand the TV News Search & Borrow service, which now includes 400,000 broadcasts dating back to June 2009. It allows users to search through U.S. TV news programs and gain free access to searchable text and access short-streamed clips.
The funding will also help in the development of new features and website enhancements.
"TV stations capture some the most important news events in a format that is too often locked away," said Michael Maness, vice president for journalism and media innovation at Knight Foundation in a statement. "This project with the Internet Archive makes these important stories accessible to journalists, researchers and the public through a deep, user-friendly site."
Users can also view whole programs at the Internet Archive's library in San Francisco or borrow them on DVD-ROMs.
Over 3 million users a day access its digital collections-including music, books, moving images and more than 300 billion archived web pages.
"We are beginning to see important public benefits arising from this new capability to apply digital search and analysis to news from our most pervasive and persuasive medium- television," said Roger Macdonald, Internet Archive television news project director in a statement. "Documentarians are finding key news footage to license. Educators are showing their students how news stories are told and audiences are engaged. Researchers are using it to identify important trends across the media landscape."
