Overview of the Video Archive Project

Although the written record of AI’s history is deposited in library collections—including books, journals, and conference proceedings, not to mention papers available on the Web—the video record needs attention. Many early demonstrations of AI programs and many of the pioneers’ lectures explaining basic AI concepts have been captured on videotape and film, but few of these have been preserved in archival form, and the historical record is thus threatened as time passes.

The main focus of the video archive project is creation of an archival video record for preserving the historical archive of the early days of the AI field, and on sharing the information for widespread pedagogical purposes. The result of the project will be a virtual archive—a central source of information about videotapes and films with information about AI that are in an archive somewhere, so scholars have a single starting place when searching for videos about AI.

There are three main goals for the archive:

1. Collect into a master catalogue URLs of AI-related videos already digitized,
2. Archive as many videos of historical importance as we can for posterity, and;
3. Make interesting clips available for pedagogical purposes now. Three audiences are envisaged for the short clips: individual students accessing the site via a variety of devices, including handhelds and cell phones; professors wishing to assemble video materials for lectures; and media crews looking for video material on short notice.

For (1) the media and formats need to ensure that the information is available for the longest time. In addition, we need to take account of the remaining half-life of the videotapes and films as well as the historical interest of the content. For (2), we can count on XML, MP2, MP3 (for audio) and maybe MP4, or something like those to make clips available now, and count on future browsers to be downward compatible for a while, and/or migrate the interesting content to newer formats. We may find that most people will access the video clips via the Web, using handheld devices or cell phones.

The AAAI Video Archive section of AITopics is intended to be a single starting place when searching for videos about Artificial Intelligence. It is constructed as a Wiki to encourage the AI community to add commentary and tags. It is integrated with AITopics so text, audio, and video are all organized and available from a single portal.