Scientific Video Gems from 10 Years of the TIB AV-Portal – Discoveries and Recommendations

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Exactly 10 years ago, on 29 April 2014, the TIB AV-Portal went online. This has of course already been mentioned several times in the anniversary announcement and in this blog post series – collected under the keyword #10JahreTIB_AVPortal. Now the time has come: THE video platform from science for science is officially 10 years old!

The birthday should be used for a short joint “dive” into a few special video gems that TIB colleagues have discovered for themselves and are very happy to recommend. This has already become something of a tradition, as in previous years there was already a three-part recommendation post on the occasion of 30,000 videos in the AV-Portal in December 2020 and personal highlights from the Competence Centre for Non-Textual Materials (now Lab NTM), where the TIB AV-Portal is located, on the occasion of the publication of 10,000 videos in June 2017. Especially nice: there are always new discoveries.

We start with particularly entertaining computer science lectures on computer (history) in film and data analysis:

A “Hooray for Hollywood” – Learning from films

A journey through the world of computing, hacking and more as reflected in popular films in the talk “Everything I know about computers, I learned from the movies: Reloaded” from 2016:

Recommendation from Micky Lindlar (Team Digital Preservation):

As a Gen X nerd who loves movies, this one speaks to my heart. It’s a tounge-in-cheek recap of movie scenes featuring computers throughout the years. As the speaker, Mark Renle, says in the beginning: “Switch your brain off, it will be much funnier that way”.

About printing errors, railway delays and text productivity at “SPIEGEL”

The serious Xerox bug explained in the talk “Lies, damned lies and scans” from 2015:

Recommendation from myself, Matti Stöhr (Team TIB AV-Portal):

My all-time favourites: The data-analytical presentations by Bonn-based data scientist David Kriesel. They are as well-founded as they are informative and also extremely entertaining. David Kriesel became better known, also internationally, through the discovery and publication of the “Xerox Bug”. He tells its story in his presentation at FrOSCon 2015., originally helt at Chaos Communication Congress 2014. His talks on “Spiegel Mining” (2017) and “Bahn Mining” (2019) as well at the Chaos Communication Congresses are also absolutely impressive and highly recommended.

Let’s swim on to rediscovered treasures from the manifold film heritage of the former Institute for Scientific Film (IWF):

Life path(s) of a scientist

One of the most prolific geobotanists and ecosystem researchers in the moving IWF documentary: “Heinz Ellenberg – A Portrait” from 1996:

Recommendation from Sabine Ronge (Information team at the TIB Conti-Campus site):

The films of the IWF accompanied me through my school days. It’s great that the TIB has made the media holdings of the former IWF Wissen und Medien gGmbH available in the TIB AV-Portal. A few years ago, I was advising a geology student who quoted from the portrait of Heinz Ellenberg for a term paper. Ellenberg is regarded as a pioneer of a holistic view of ecosystems in Germany. A great journey through time.

Turtles under Sielmann’s observation

IWF short documentary “Chelonia mydas (Cheloniidae) – Leaving the Hotbed“ from 1967:

Recommendation from Petra Mensing (subject specialization Biology):

This silent film by Heinz Sielmann about the hatching of the green sea turtle is one of my favourites in the AV-Portal. Even though some of the cute little turtles don’t make it from the nesting site to the sea, there is a happy ending for many others.

Also due to current events – over to the “grotto” of physics lectures:

Theoretical physics demystified

Prof Leonard Susskind from Stanford University in in his lecture from 2012 on “Demystifying the Higgs Boson”:

Recommendation from Esther Tobschall (subject specialization Physics):

In the 2012 lecture “Demystifying the Higgs Boson”, Prof Leonard Susskind from Stanford University explains what the Higgs mechanism is and what it means to “give mass to particles”. The video is an interesting (re)discovery on the occasion of the recent death of Peter Higgs. In general, the “Susskind Lectures on Theoretical Physics” are highly recommended. The videos and books complement each other wonderfully.

Why not take a closer look at the interdisciplinary and interesting topic of openness next?

Open access publishing explained simply and clearly

Open access (publishing), especially thanks to Creative Commons licensing, is an essential feature of over 90% of the videos in the portal and not only enables access, but often also flexible re-use. The following selection of videos illustrates what this means or can mean:

Recommendations from the TIB Open Publishing team:

As a Diamond Open Access publishing platform, our playlist is a collection of topics that are particularly close to our hearts: open access funding models, open access licences, open publishing standards and contributions to the development of the open source publishing software OJS. With this bouquet of Open Access topics, we would like to congratulate the AV-Portal on its birthday!

Thank you very much for your congratulations, dear colleagues!

Speaking of openness:

Open Research Information “in a nutshell”

Also and especially interesting and relevant in the wake of the recently published “Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information” with the TIB as one of the first signatories:

Recommendation from Christian Hauschke (Open Science Lab):

Ludo Waltman’s keynote at the 12th International VIVO Conference provides a nice overview of what open research information is and, more importantly, why it is necessary for transparent and responsible research evaluation.

Openness also makes the following possible:

Drum roll for Open Educational Resources (OER)

In co-operation with ORCA.nrw, a large number of video OER from very different disciplines and genres were recently and are still added to the TIB AV-Portal. This also includes musicology:

Recommendation from Stefan Bielesch (Team Communication):

A really nice example of how versatile the repertoire of the TIB AV-Portal is!

When openness and user-friendliness come together in “user-driven” application development, a lot is already gained:

The psychology behind usability and design

Recommendation from Stefan Stretz (Team Project “AV-EFI – Automated Interconnection System for Audiovisual Assets via Uniform Film Identifiers”):

Great collection of basic principles of user experience (UX) design, perfect for promoting UX to project teams.

And finally, with a twinkle in our eye, we pop up again and go ashore and to the limit with:

Presenting complex issues briefly and simply

Always a challenge – “keep it short and simple”:

Recommendation from Adriana Bätje (Team Communication):

I particularly like Ralph Caspers‘ exciting presentation. He explains very clearly and humorously how difficult topics can be presented simply. You can find out why and how you can disguise knowledge as liver sausage in the presentation.

All video recommendations – as far as possible – are summarised here in a special playlist:

Thank you for your participation so far. But more can be added all the time! Please share your personal video highlights in a comment on this post or via social media using the hashtag #10JahreTIB_AV-Portal, e.g. at Mastodon.