Historical primary sources online: Images and streaming media
Multipart guide to VT Libraries' many digital archives, whether based on types of sources or thematic collections.
Still images
- ArtstorArtstor provides high quality images of visual media like paintings, photographs, architecture, sculpture, decorative arts, and other forms of visual culture. It provides tools to create, manage, and present collections of images. Prehistoric times-present.
- Digital Collections: Photo, Print, Drawing (LOC)Library of Congress portal to many digitized images available online, with convenient linking to other kinds of digitized historical objects. Formerly part of "American Memory."
- ImageBase (VT Special Collections & ArchivesVT ImageBase is a browsable/searchable database of images and related information (metadata) held by Special Collections and University Archives in the Virginia Tech University Libraries. Images are retrievable by 19 fields, including subject, title, and creator. Both small thumbnail images and larger full-screen images are available.
- Civil War Photo SleuthVirginia Tech-based project is a reference database of ~40k Civil War-era portraits that uses facial recognition technology to identify unknown soldiers in those portraits.
- FIMo Fire Insurance Maps OnlineVT has coverage for Virginia and District of Columbia only . Uniform series of large-scale maps, starting in the mid-19th century, depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of towns and cities in Virginia and Washington, DC., in full color. Interface permits overlaying some historical maps on recent remote-sensing imagery.Data contained include the outline of buildings; size, shape, and construction materials; functions of structures; locations of windows and doors; street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, and house and block numbers.
Streaming media (film, broadcast, internet)
Broad-based video collections
These are your best options for finding classroom-legal versions of programs originally offered on consumer-oriented streaming platforms like Netflix or Amazon, whose licenses exclude library use. This list highlights streaming sources that provide content most directly related to historical and social science inquiry. It is not an exhaustive directory to all our library's video providers.
- Academic Video Online from ProQuest
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Academic Video Online provides 70,000 streaming videos: documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels, arthouse movies, TV programs, and more. Public performance rights are included for all films except Film Platform content. AVON builds on our former Alexander Street streaming video collection, including highlights named below. Two search interfaces:- Standard Proquest search (for latop/desktop users) ; Visual interface (for phones, tablets, etc)
- American History in Video. Historical newsreels, archived news broadcasts as well as recent documentaries.
- Meet the Press Archive (1947-2013). Decades of interviews from the archetypal Sunday-morning TV news “talking heads” show.
- Engineering Case Studies Online. Documentaries, accident reports, experiments, visualizations, case studies, lectures and interviews from leading engineering institutions
- Kanopy Streaming Videos
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Kanopy provides hundreds of streaming videos in a wide variety of subjects. For videos outside our collection, you'll be presented a form to request they be added.
NOTE: As of Spring 2021 Kanopy made changes to links and access, so older links to streaming videos on the platform will no longer work. Please update any links to Kanopy videos in Canvas, syllabi, etc, with the new URLs: the new base URL for Kanopy is https://vt.kanopy.com/, and links for specific specific videos use the following format: https://vt.kanopy.com/video/slavery-another-name. - Docuseek2 Complete Collection
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Docuseek contains over 1500 documentaries by producers, distributors, and independent filmmakers from around the world. The documentaries focus on contemporary social issues in a variety of disciplines, including environmental sciences, political and social sciences, history, health, psychology, and more. The collection includes exclusive access to content from renowned leaders in documentary film distribution, including Bullfrog Films, Icarus Films, KimStim Films, Kartemquin Films, National Film Board of Canada Films, Fanlight Films, ScorpionTV, MediaStorm, dGenerate Films and Terra Nova Films.
- Films on DemandFilms on Demand provides streaming documentaries and educational films on many topics and genres, notably including
- Archival films and historical newsreels and
- "World cinema" collection.
- Swank Digital CampusSwank offers over 1,000 streaming videos: popular movies, documentaries, and foreign films. Swank offers over 1,000 streaming videos: popular movies, documentaries, and foreign films. The available titles are revised by the vendor near the beginning of every academic year.
- Bloomsbury Video LibraryBloomsbury Video Library launched in December 2022 with the Arts and Humanities Collection (formerly known as Artfilms). With an international range of content across the visual arts and performing arts, film, history, and more, this collection features exclusive indie films and shorts, avant-garde performances, interviews with renowned writers, artists, choreographers, performers and practitioners, and documentaries on an international range of themes, traditions, and historical figures.
- Locally hosted video ('Newman Library Documentaries' on Kaltura)Streaming videos made from selected DVDs in VT Libraries collection -- we were able to purchase additional streaming rights. VT login required.
- Moving Image Archive (Internet Archive)Non-profit digital library archives millions of free digitized movies and broadcasts (even advertising), along with music, websites, software, and scanned periodicals and books.
Specialized media collections
Though covering many things, events, and people, these collections are curated within boundaries such as topic, creator, or medium. Free sources may become unavailable at any time.
- Platino EducaPlatino Educa offers unlimited access to hundreds of Spanish and Ibero-American movies, classified by subjects and covering themes across the Environment, Social Sciences, Language and Literature, Arts, and Social Justice. Films have Spanish and English subtitles.
- Digitalia Film LibraryDozens of streaming documentary and dramatic films selected from a much larger package of films that we dio not subscribe to. From the same vendor as our Digitalia Hispanica database, but not linked to it.
- Socialism on Film from Adam Matthew
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Socialism on Film provides streaming video from the communist world reveals war, history, current affairs, culture, and society from the 20th century and countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, much of Eastern Europe, the GDR, Britain, and Cuba.
- C-SPAN Video Libraryrecords, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Programs are indexed by subject, speaker names, titles, affiliations, sponsors, committees, categories, formats, policy groups, keywords, and location. The congressional sessions and committee hearings are indexed by person with full-text. 1987-present.
- American Archive of Public Broadcasting
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AAPB is a collection of 40,000 hours of public radio and television broadcasts. Alongside significant national programs, APB offers mostly of regional and local programs that document American communities since the mid-20th century: local news and public affairs programs, local history productions that document the heritage of local communities, and programs dealing with education, environmental issues, music, art, literature, dance, poetry, religion, and even film-making on a local level. Searchable and browseable by topic and participating broadcaster - NBC News Archives from Getty Images With some content dating to the late 1948s, the NBC News Archives is the oldest television news collection in the United States, featuring programs from NBC's news division and MSNBC. Segments can be viewed in the platform, but special licenses are usually required to download or reuse files. Browse within broad subjects or use the search box within the NBC banner image. (The top-of-page search box covers the whole Getty platform -- which is set up to market images and footage, with various kinds of licenses.)
- Presidential SpeechesThe Scripps Library at the University of Virginia, through cooperation with various presidential libraries, has been collecting some of the most important presidential speeches in American history. These speeches all have transcripts, and some are available in their entirety in audio or video. 1789-present. One of UVA Miller Center's American President collections of primary and secondary sources.