LibGuides: Types of Resources: Open Access streaming video databases

Open Access streaming video databases

There are numerous sites that offer freely available films relevant to academic research. Here is a sampling of especially useful resources:

American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Access to over 100,000 historic public radio and television programs, as well as data records for approximately 2.5 million items inventoried by public broadcasting stations
American Experience
Recent episodes of the history series from WGBH.
American Indian Film Gallery
This University of Arizona resource is an online collection of more than 450 historic films by and about Native peoples of the Americas.
American Memory Collection
Several hundred early motion pictures preserved by the Library of Congress.
American Rhetoric
Resource focusing on public communication and rhetoric, includes over 5000 significant political, cultural, sports, and religious speeches.
American Theatre Wing
Working in the Theatre is the comprehensive documentary series revealing theatre’s inner-workings, profiling industry luminaries, and taking a closer look at unique stories that surround theatre work.
AP Archive
Film archive of The Associated Press., one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent news, includes almost 600,000 videos.
Archaelogy Channel
Streaming media website sponsored by Archaeological Legacy Institute offering several hundred videos.
Archive of American Television
Almost 1000 oral history interviews with television legends by the Television Academy Foundation.
BBC News Archive
The British Broadcasting Corporation provides thousands of archive films.
British Movietone Newsreel Archive
This archive, via a YouTube channel, contains almost 50,000 newsreel clips of many major world events captured during the company’s ninety year history (1895-1986).
Building + Design Movies
Hundreds of films covering modern architecture and design.
C-Span Video Library
Access to C-SPAN's extensively indexed and archived coverage of public affairs & federal government proceedings, including over 275,000 videos.
Civil Rights Digital Library
Provides access to online films, texts, images, and audio recordings related to the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1950's and 1960's. Offers over 4000 videos.
Digital Public Library of America - Moving Images
Over 300,000 videos from numerous U.S. educational and cultural institutions.
Europeana - Videos
Over 350,000 videos from educational and cultural institutions across Europe.
Evia Digital Archive Project
A digital archive of ethnographic field video for use by scholars and instructors. Users are required to create a free account to access the content.
Folkstreams
Hundreds of films offered by an organization dedicated to finding, preserving, contextualizing, and showcasing documentary films on American traditional cultures.
Forum Network (WGBH)
Thousands of WGBH video lectures by some of the world's foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policy makers, and community leaders.
HippoCampus
HippoCampus.org is a free, core academic website that delivers rich, multimedia content on general education subjects.
International Monetary Fund Videos
Over 5000 videos covering economics and monetary policy from the IMF.
Internet Archive - Moving Images
Vast digital library, including millions of freely available videos with associated copyright/rightsholder/use data.
Lannan Foundation Videos
Interviews sponsored by the Lannan Foundation featuring inspired literary writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as cultural freedom advocates with a social, political, and environmental justice focus.
Media Burn
Media Burn collects, preserves, and distributes hundreds of documentary and experimental media produced by artists, activists, and community groups.
Mike Wallace Interviews
Sixty-eight interviews from the nationally televised prime time television show, dating from 1957 and 1958.
Movieclips
Provides more than 40,000 short clips from feature films.
National Film Board of Canada
Over 6000 films available to stream from the National Film Board of Canada.
National Film Registry (Library of Congress)
The Library of Congress offers several "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" films from the National Film Registry.
National Geographic Videos
Topics include history, geography, archaeology, natural science, environmental conservation, and more.
Open Culture films
Over 4000 freely available classics, indies, film noir, documentaries and other films.
PBS Channel
Over 3000 PBS programs via YouTube. Also see separate channels for Austin City Limits, Frontline, Great Performances, Nature, Nova, & POV.
Russian Film Hub
Encyclopedic resource with hundreds of links to sub-titled Russian & Soviet films via various platforms.
SCI-Arc Media Archive
Over a thousand video lectures from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Speakers include the most significant architects, designers, and theorists of the last four decades.
ScienceCinema
Contains thousands of multimedia videos highlighting the U.S. Department of Energy's scientific research. State-of-the-art audio indexing and speech recognition technology allows the user to search for specific words and phrases spoken by the presenter in these video files. Simply enter a term and the results list will point to the precise snippets of the video where the term was spoken.
Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
Over 600 streamable films from the world's largest collection of Jewish/Israeli documentary material.
TED: Technology. Entertainment. Design.
Over 6000 short, though-provoking talks on diverse topics from TED conferences, TEDx, etc.

Public library options

Your public library also has great video streaming services (like Hoopla, Medici.tv, Kanopy, & Alexander Street). Get a library card to access popular movies and tv shows at home, for free. Public libraries do not usually require residency to get a library card and it's possible to have and use library cards from multiple area libraries.

Tip: When you visit their web site, look for Digital Resources, Virtual Resources, or eResources, this is usually where you will find video streaming