June 1, 2007 (Vol. 27, No. 11)
URL:
Rating:
Strong Points: Fascinating speakers
Weak Points: None
Summary:
I haven’t covered a history-related page here in some time, so it is with great pleasure that I present the Peoples Archive (the site is missing an apostrophe, so I’ve kept their convention). What the Peoples Archive contains is an amazing number (in the thousands) of stories presented in online videos of 35 famous newsmakers (mostly scientists). The list is impressive, ranging from Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner to Benoit Mandelbrot and Francois Jacob. One can listen to Francis Crick talk about the book that influenced him and Sydney Brenner discussing why he wanted to be a scientist. Most discussions are based in personal history and include discussions of the subjects/topics/discoveries for which each person is best known. Additionally, you can download transcripts of each story, and users can also define the quality of the video download corresponding to their bandwidth. Peoples Archive is a great activity for one of those days where you have some time to kill and you don’t want your brain to rot from viewing other web offerings.