Imperial Japanese Dance, Edison Manufacturing Company, 1894, featuring the Sarashe Sisters

The Library of Congress has launched a YouTube channel. Starting with just seventy videos (but with more promised), the channel is divded into seven playlists: 2008 National Book Festival author presentations, the Books and Beyond author series, Journeys and Crossings (a series of curator discussions), Westinghouse industrial films from 1904, scholar discussions from the John W. Kluge Center, and early Edison films.

Those familiar with the LoC’s American Memory service will know that it has been serving the Westinghouse and Edison content since the late 1990s, but there are new digitisations, with High Quality option. The channel is part of a programme of new media initiatives recently announced by the LoC, which includes releasing content through Apple iTunes and its Flickr still image project. As said, more is promised – at present there are twenty-one videos of the Westinghouse industrial works in 1904, and twenty Edison films from 1891 to 1894.