Late last month,
TVO -- Ontario's public broadcasting network -- launched a
digital public archive of its four decades of popular news and educational programming. The online portal offers searchable access to such popular favourites as
Polka Dot Door,
Today's Special,
Imprint,
Studio 2 and
Saturday Night at the Movies.
According to archive producer Craig Desson, the new initiative offers more than simply a nostalgia trip for people to smile at favourite programming from their childhood. "The nostalgia is fun -- people get a big kick out of it -- but to me so much of the value is the educational material within it. It's a kind of 'ideas archive' where you can access the smartest thinking from people who were involved in Ontario's history through the decades."
Desson points out that this "cultural history archive" includes news interviews that allow people to take the long view on particular issues, tracing an outline of how our public discussion and thinking has evolved. To that end, he'll be curating a podcast series called Think Again, which will compile thematic material from the archive to shed light on current debates -- a fitting task, since Desson says so much of the material feels surprisingly contemporary.
According to Desson -- the only full-time employee working on the project, although many others were involved in stages to set it up -- the project took just under six months to complete. The real labour behind it, he says, was converting all of the archival material into a digital format. That conversion work has been underway for years, as part of a larger mandate, which allowed the online access portion to be brought to market quickly.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Craig Desson, Producer, TVO Public Archive