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        Pete Atkin >> Words >> Archive Progress
        
(Message started by: S J Birkill on Today at 06:57)

Title: Archive Progress
Post by S J Birkill on Today at 06:57

https://www.peteatkin.com/images/videosectionscreenshot.jpg (https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerTITL.htm)

The Clive James website archive continues to grow. I've now completed six of the collections in the Video section:

https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerPA.htm (https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerPA.htm) contains a selection from Pete, as featured on our Home Page;
https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerLP.htm (https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerLP.htm) brings together the best of Clive's late-period video interviews;
https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerTITL.htm (https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerTITL.htm) encapsulates the Talking in the Library series, with excuses for video quality;
https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerPC.htm (https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerPC.htm) contains the 'Postcard from...' series of travel programmes;
https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerNP.htm (https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerNP.htm) collects Clive's other, non-'Postcard' travelogues; and
https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerFAME.htm (https://archive.clivejames.com/video/vplayerFAME.htm) is our best shot yet at re-assembling the mighty 'Fame in the 20th Century' series.

There's more video to come, including Clive's own 'video finds' and celebrity interviews from his mainstream TV years, with just a glimpse (I promise) of Margarita Pracatan!

If anyone has relevant audio or video material that they don't see in the Archive, please let me know so we can include it! The Archive's entry page is HERE (https://archive.clivejames.com) -- please note that for the time being we operate independently of the 'official' clivejames.com.

Steve

Title: Re: Archive Progress... Completion!
Post by S J Birkill on 03.08.21 at 02:47

Well, almost -- just a few bits and pieces to sort out, but...

Last night I completed a two-year 'labour of love', the task I set myself back in 2019 to rebuild Clive James's original website which was lost in 2018 with all files, and further, to add the volumes of Clive's works that he'd intended to include there, but ran out of time to complete.

The rebuilt and expanded site is styled "The Clive James Website Archive", and can be found on a subdomain of the new official 'clivejames.com', at the address:

https://archive.clivejames.com (https://archive.clivejames.com) (note there's no 'www' !)

Not that we aren't official: Clive and his daughter Claerwen gave us their blessing in October 2019, shortly before his death, to build this edifice (alongside Dawn Mancer's new, sleek version) to fulfill Clive's vision of a rich multimedia site to make his published work available without restriction on the Web. As websites go, it's pretty densely packed: we have some 2,300 Web pages in local files, encompassing about 9,600 book pages, plus another 430 or so remote Web pages directly linked from the Archive. Image files number about 3000, audio files 432 including 178 remote, video files 235, all remote. So it'll keep you busy for an hour or two...

Dive in at the Home page: https://archive.clivejames.com (https://archive.clivejames.com)
Read about the site's development: https://archive.clivejames.com/files/about.htm (https://archive.clivejames.com/files/about.htm[/url)
We have Help and a FAQ: https://archive.clivejames.com/files/help.htm (https://archive.clivejames.com/files/help.htm)

-- or just pick a category from the header bar and and surf the menus in the left column. Clive's writings are broader than most people realise: hit the 'Random' button at top right to be surprised by his wit and erudition.

Tell MV what you think, with a reply here.

-- Steve

Title: Re: Archive Progress
Post by Jan on 04.08.21 at 16:27

Thanks Steve!
That should keep us busy for a bit.
Jan

Title: Re: Archive Progress
Post by Andrew Long on 11.08.21 at 15:37

Wow!

Title: Re: Archive Progress
Post by Avner Greenberg on 10.09.21 at 20:06

Congratulations Steve on completing this mammoth project.
And thank you once again for making these gems available to us all.
I've been thinking about retiring soon, and this gives me the extra push :)

Title: Archive Progress: TV-Crit originals
Post by S J Birkill on 23.06.22 at 08:03

I'm very pleased to announce that my 'other' project, the Clive James Website Archive, has now obtained copies of all but a handful of Clive's writings for his hugely influential weekly 'Television' column in the Observer newspaper, published between 1972 and 1982.

Not to be confused with the edited selections published in book form by Cape/Picador ('Visions Before Midnight', The Crystal Bucket' and 'Glued To The Box' and the omnibus edition 'Clive James on Television'), these new acquisitions represent the original, uncut newspaper column, some 390 pieces at last count.

To present these properly on the website I need to perform optical character recognition to convert the newspaper articles, often low-grade photocopies, into electronic text, then spend a variable amount of time (according to copy quality) manually correcting the inevitably numerous OCR errors. The text I then reformat into HTML page form to match the Archive's house style, and where appropriate I locate, process and incorporate suitably illustrative images. All per issue, so this will take a little while!

So far I have built the Observer column entries for 1972 -- 15 articles -- he only started in August of that year, and the December 10th edition is missing. You can find them here:

https://archive.clivejames.com/essays/cjobs.htm

I'm about to start on 1973, so you'll see the menu listing grow week by week. Keep checking back, because even when the Observer is done I will be adding many more of Clive's early reviews from other publications.

Steve

Title: Another year, another 46 pages
Post by S J Birkill on 16.10.22 at 21:46

I've just completed another year of my illustrated 'Observer Originals' in the archive, with the Christmas week 1975 edition. Here's a mouse's-eye view -- click the image for the real thing:

https://www.peteatkin.com/images/Dec75-716x1711.jpg (https://archive.clivejames.com/essays/menace.htm)

Title: "The next link in the pipeline"
Post by S J Birkill on 25.08.23 at 09:03

Clive's ear for bad language and unintentional humour remains as sure as ever in 1978, his seventh year of television reviewing for The Observer.

https://archive.clivejames.com/img/pipeline350x256.jpg
I've just today completed the uploading of 1978's 45 issues of his weekly Observer TV criticism column to the 'Archive' section of the revived clivejames.com website. Each issue has its own page in the Archive, and is illustrated with screenshots of some of the broadcasts Clive selected for review. Where possible, as here, I've chosen a still representing the very scene, the very frame even, mentioned in the column. Some members will have more or less vague memories of these programmes, and I'm hoping the images will serve as an aide memoire.

A couple of points I should emphasise:

Firstly, most MV members will be in possession of the Picador collections of the Observer pieces, 'Visions Before Midnight', 'The Crystal Bucket' and 'Glued To The Box', or the omnibus edition 'Clive James on Television'. In fact these are far from complete, insofar as there are many gaps in the sequence, and most of the pieces have been edited for length or content, or both. Indeed there are a few gaps even in this Archive, where my source has lost an issue, or it exists only as an illegible photocopy. For this reason I hold tight to the hope that not everyone here discarded their stack of Observer cuttings way back when the books came out! If you can help fill our gaps, please PM me or reply to this message.

And secondly, I make no claim, nor do I accept any credit or blame for the content of the main site, www.clivejames.com. This is administered entirely by Clive's daughter Claerwen James, to whom I am most grateful for her acceptance of the Archive as a subdomain of her main site, in fulfillment of one of Clive's last wishes.

If you'd like to browse the Archive, the December 31st 1978 Observer column would be as good a place as any to start. The left menu will let you choose any other issue. For historical reasons these pieces are in the 'Essays' section; you can select any other ('Poetry', 'Books' etc.) from the top menu.

Click HERE (https://archive.clivejames.com/essays/soundof.htm) for the latest entry in the Observer column, or HERE (https://archive.clivejames.com/files/help.htm) for a 'Help' screen to assist with navigation. The site address is https://archive.clivejames.com (https://archive.clivejames.com).

Steve