BigShinyThing

Want to see the new Madonna video and can’t be arsed with HolyMoly‘s 3 sponsored ‘exclusive’? Check the Madonna tag on YouTube. Missed Sly Stone’s blink and you’ll miss it appearance on the Grammys? It’s on YouTube. The video clip on TV last night of Johnny Cash. YouTube. ‘Hilarious’ beer commercials from the Superbowl? YouTube. It’s all there… just as anything zeitgeisty is tipping up on Flickr. Hell, Flickr and other forms of sharing media online are the zeitgeist. Users are making YouTube their own TV channel — where content is supplied and shared freely for anyone who wants to view it.

On a more serious note, those cartoons were published in full on Flickr last week: what traditional media outlets balked at publishing, a lone Flickr user just went ahead and did anyway. Citizen reporters, bloggers, whatever… the people now get to publish and be damned.

Founded in 1973, Kent University’s Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, is a “research centre and picture library, based upon a unique archive of over 85,000 pieces of cartoon artwork supported by a reference library of newspaper cuttings, books, catalogues, and AV materials.” They fail to mention how much fun it is. Nor do they shout loudly enough about their online database of cartoon artwork, the contents of which range from the work of Hogarth to that of Steve Bell and beyond.

Recent political history is especially well-represented: since 1996, the Centre’s archivists have been dilligently clipping and scanning the daily papers into their system.

The collection doesn’t purchase art, growing rather via donation and bequest. This leaves some gaps, notably original works by James Gillray, whose influence looms large over modern British caricature. Nonetheless, a fine and lovingly-maintained resource.