Preservation Need: The Vanderbilt Television News Archive recorded over 4600 hours of television news coverage of the major combat operations in Iraq, March 19th to April 18th 2003. The VHS recorders ran non-stop for 31 days, recording five networks. The collection is available to view online for Vanderbilt students and faculty; however, the content is presented in 1-hour video streams with no way to research or interface with the collection beyond watching all 4600 hours.
For $6700 we can transcribe all 31 days of news coverage (4600 hours from five networks) opening it up for a variety of new research and education opportunities. With transcriptions the collection can be a resource for new innovative forms of research like language or semantic analysis. Users will be able to drill into topic, location and even named entities in the war.
The start of the Iraq war in 2003 offers a significant insight into a watershed time for US domestic and foreign policy as the country wrestled with the ramifications of the September 11th terrorist attack. Much can be learned from the initial 31 days of this now prolonged US engagement in the Middle East. From “Mission Accomplished” to ISIS, the impact of the decision to invade Iraq on March 19th, 2003 are still felt today.
How the donation would be spent
All funding would go directly to the transcription cost at $0.0004 per second, using the Amazon Web Services Transcribe tool.