Full text article may be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/technology/circuits/18diar.html
and visit The Open Video Project at http://www.open-video.org/

[...]

Vini, Vidi, Video

Will Internet users eventually integrate digital video into their online conversations as easily as they do text today?

That is one of the research questions underlying the Open Video Project (open-video.org). The site, run by the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, can lead you to nearly 2,000 short videos available for viewing at the site or downloading, from classic TV commercials and 1950's sex education films to Himalayan anthropological studies and vaudeville clips.

Gary Marchionini, a director of the project and a professor of information science, said the site had received financing from the National Science Foundation to study "how to make video understandable and accessible to Web users." The project's use of storyboards and fast forwarding make it one of the most pleasant places to view video online.

The site's rich lode of free video content, however, is what will attract the general user. This content is easy to browse by genre and keyword (a list of the most popular videos is also a good starting point). Dr. Marchionini said that teachers and artists have taken "chunks" of the videos and "repurposed" them for lessons and creative projects - an important step, he hopes, toward the routine use of online video to "help get ideas across."

It should be noted that while the site accepts submissions, Dr. Marchionini has had to reject more than a few home movies with titles like "Our Skateboarding Party."

[...] excerpt from "Shopping Games and Wild Rides"
by Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell, The New York Times. Dec. 18, 2003.