It was just a couple of weeks ago that I was watching a documentary on the life of Barack Hussain Obama, President of the United States, on a history channel. The ‘biography’ of the man presented a detailed account of how Obama has lived his life to date. The footages of the documentary were awesome. They must have sought help of some old library in order to gather so many historical movies and photos, I thought. However, when the credits were showing at the end of the documentary, www.archive.org was mentioned to have been consulted for movies besides names of different libraries and other institutes. Yup, I made a visit to it, then.
And, lo! What I got was a website packed all types of discourses related to ‘human knowledge’. Whether you wish to find an old tune related to Asian or African culture, want to cast an eye on how the technology evolved through centuries, seek to freshen up your soul, or crave for an important documentary, the site is for you! I could locate cartoon movies of my favourite characters, Casper and Popeye, as well. This is not all, though.
Media, being a strong moving force, has changed almost every aspect of our lives. Our outlook towards world politics, social issues, ancient cultures, etc has been changed exceedingly. Issues like feminist movements, eradication of caste-system and demand of equal rights for all human beings are product of awareness which media – in one form or the other – have been spreading. However, there remain certain ‘technical’ aspects of media and politics which need a careful study plus observation. Many quality videos related to such topics related to state, constitution, laws, forms of government and topics, such as, Faith in Exile: The Lesson of Tibet, and The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War are offered to you on the site. Going through News & Public Affairs section will improve your judgment of world media and politics.
Turmoil which our country has been going through for many years now has ‘compelled’ people to take interest in news and current affairs sections of media. Political analysis programs are in vogue now and, that’s why, news readers and analysts are more famous than film stars these days. I feel that the youth of the country is now trying to trace history back to the partition of the subcontinent. But, is there any connection between mishandlings of the past and the present situation of our country? Well, the answer is not at all simple. However, Internet Archive can help you by providing the documents of that time, or discourses about what had happened then. Talks between Gandhi-Jinnah Talks and Verdict on India will surely interest you.
Audio section puts forth valuable audios related to different fields like religion, music, (audio-)books, news, etc. There’s a special feature namely Way Back Machine which will give you timeline of any website you enter into the field available through which you can see what changes have been made to that particular site over time.
The site’s layout is quite simple which makes it easy to locate what you are looking for. But, what seemed to me a drawback of the site is that it seems to be more English language- and America focused, i.e., it needs more content to add related to different countries and languages. However, there are many other features of the site as well which will prove to be an asset for students of all ages. To see how it can help ‘you’, log on to www.archive.org .
