Plan to Digitize 32 Years of PBS NewsHour Programs (1975-2007) and Make Them Available Online Announced Today
Note From infoDOCKET Founder/Editor, Gary Price:
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) from the Library of Congress and WGBH (Boston) plays a big role in today’s announcement. This free searchable resource formally launched last year and it’s one resource we’ve been tracking for years.
If you’ve never visited/used the AAPB we encourage to stop by. Here’s an overview post we put togethr last October.
Already the AAPB makes thousands of clips and programs available to discover and view online with more to come including all 32 years of PBS NewsHour programs.
Now, to today’s news about the PBS Newshour.
More than three decades of PBS NewsHour broadcasts from 1975 to 2007 will be preserved and available online as part of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB).
Public media producer WGBH, the Library of Congress and WETA, Washington, DC will digitize, preserve and allow the public online access to PBS NewsHour’s predecessor programs from 1975 to 2007, made possible with funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).
The project will digitize nearly 10,000 programs comprising more than 8,000 recorded hours that chronicle American and foreign affairs, providing access to original source material, including interviews with presidents and other world leaders and reports on major issues and events. The content will be presented as a part of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a collaboration between WGBH and the Library of Congress.
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The programs feature interviews with leading newsmakers including presidents, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, every secretary of state since 1976 and with world leaders including the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Fidel Castro, Muammar Khadafy, Yasser Arafat, Menachem Begin, Boris Yeltsin, Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher. The collection includes extensive coverage of election campaigns, African-American history, global and domestic health care, poverty, technology, immigration debates, the end of the Cold War, terrorism, the economy, climate change, energy issues, religion, education issues, rural life, scientific exploration, poetry and the media.
The PBS NewsHour collection will be made available on the AAPB website, growing the online collection to more than 20,000 programs. The AAPB will ensure that this rich source for American political, social, and cultural history and creativity will be saved and made available once again to future generations.
Read the Complete Announcement
Direct to American Archive of Public Broadcasting
See Also: The Internet Archive’s New “Political TV Ad Archive” Now Live (January 21, 2016)
See Also: Audio/Video Search and Retrieval: News, Research, Demos and Tools (Roundup)
Filed under: Digital Collections, Funding, Interactive Tools, Interviews, Libraries, News, Reports, Roundup

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.