Political junkies, rejoice. C-Span has posted nearly its entire video archive online for the public to search and view. This is awesome.
Let’s say you’re researching the roots of the economic crisis, and you want to explore whether the deregulation of the banking industry played a role. The C-Span archive offers the full video of the 1999 bipartisan signing ceremony of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. And nearly a decade later, after the housing bubble burst, there’s a video on C-Span of former Sen. Phil Gramm defended his role in the legislation.
A New York Times article about the archives says:
The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five presidential administrations and are sure to provide new fodder for pundits and politicians alike. The network will formally announce the completion of the C-Span Video Library on Wednesday.
Having free online access to the more than 160,000 hours of C-Span footage is “like being able to Google political history using the ‘I Feel Lucky’ button every time,” said Rachel Maddow, the liberal MSNBC host.
Related: What’s Evernote for? How about making a vast, searchable archive of all your files
If you think C-Span is boring, did I mention that Chris Farley appeared in Congress in 1995 to impersonate Newt Gingrich? Watch the video in all its glory on C-Span.
