host: mitch yockelson, how was it preserved and how do people access it today? who is in charge of this kind of precious resource? mitchell: these are u.s. government films that were in some warehouse probably here in washington, d.c. and survived many years then eventually were transferred to the national archives probably sometime shortly after world war ii. and the archives had the original cut and then eventually they were duplicated. i'm happy to say now they've been digitized, cleaned up quite a bit, and they're available on the national archives youtube channel. host: overall what is the volume? mitchell: wow. thousands and thousands of them made by almost every government agency around in world war i. primarily the u.s. army signal corps but you also had the committee on public information which was predecessor to o.w.i. in world war ii. they were kind of like the propaganda arm of the federal government. i think they were excited to have the new technology of motion picture and were kind of oing crazy and making films. like allison said they were there