Re-Framing the Online Video Archive: A Prototype Interface for America’s Nuclear Test Films

FAIN: HD-51246-11

Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Champaign, IL 61801-3620)
Kevin Hamilton (Project Director: October 2010 to August 2013)

The development of a prototype platform for studying and exhibiting digitized historical films, using government films documenting the development of the United States nuclear weapons program.

This project will prototype a new way of accessing, studying, and showing digitized historical films using archives of U.S. government films about nuclear weaponry. Working with a sample set of 16 films, the interface will aggregate existing online and offline data in a way that brings together collection, historiography, and exhibition in a single virtual space. A Collections frame will allow users to trace the contemporary dissemination of the films and to see them and their traces in a variety of settings. A Histories frame will provide primary-source documentation and peer-reviewed scholarship on the films. An Exhibits frame will provide a space for sub-collections, data-visualization, and forums for public comment. With close to 100 of these films currently available online, and about 6500 more in the process of declassification, this project will prepare the way for more comprehensive video archives of this corpus of films and offer a dynamic working model for video archiving.