Need to book an appointment with a librarian? Click here!
A number of freely accessible internet sites provide access to streaming videos. These sites may host content or merely point to content hosted elsewhere. Advertising supports some of these sites. Others are the official site for a producer, distributor, series, or festival. Searching functions on these sites vary widely, and content can change or be removed without notice.
To connect to site, click on site name. For additional information, hover on site name.
Not all episodes are on the site
Description: Vintage motion pictures offering rich perspectives on the American Indian experience.
The site organizes titles by tribes, linking to films for more than 100 tribes. A text box to describe each film is nonfunctioning, providing only "lorum ipsum dolor" filler text as a place holder. Apart from what displays in the film itself, no additional information (publication date, running time, etc.) is provided.
These archival films are not perfect. Some were educational shorts used in American schools from the 1930s to the 1970s. Several have abbreviated titles or missing endings. Some are spliced or scratched; others have faded color. These films are windows into the human past, stunning documents with much to tell us about our New World story.
America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894-1915
American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920
Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916
Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904
Last Days of a President: Films of McKinley and the Pan-American Exposition, 1901
Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906
Origins of American Animation
Prosperity and Thrift: the Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929
Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures
Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film
Not all series listed on the site are available for streaming. A graphic "VOD" marks programs available for online viewing . Videos stream in Flash. Many of the videos include closed captioning. Users accessing the site on a PC have greater control over the size of the playback window.
Archive of American Television
Hosted by the TV Academy Foundation this archive provides access to hundreds of in-depth video interviews with TV's greatest legends and pioneers. These television history interviews can be browsed by person, show, topic or profession. New interviews and indexes are added regularly.
Presents a collection of vivid wildlife films and still photographs, with more than 3,500 of the world's leading filmmakers and photographers actively contributing to the project. Also included are teaching resources organized by age, games, and other activities. The site permits searching across Species Groups, Eco Regions, Geography, and Conservation status.
BBC History of the World in 100 Objects
Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, narrates 100 programa that retell humanity's history through the objects we have made. Each episode consists of an image of the item discussed, and a radio naration lasting about 15 minutes.
Contains all C-SPAN programs since 1987, indexed, abstracted, and cataloged by the C-SPAN Archives staff. 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.
CRDL is a partnership among librarians, technologists, archivists, educators, scholars, academic publishers, and public broadcasters. The initiative receives support through a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The site provides both simple keyword searching and advanced searching. Content also can be browsed by Events, Places, People, Topics, Media Types (including print, government records, correspondences, etc.). Other features of the site include numerous instructional materials, including lesson plans, quizzes, slide shows, study guides, and worksheets.
Provides streaming access to a large collection of documentary films about American folk, or roots, cultures. Includes essays about the traditions and filmmakes, transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites. Site provides simple keyword and advanced searching, as well as ability to brose by subjects, regions, titles, filmmakers, and other categories. Video displays include links to additional, related films.
View complete episodes of a large selection of films from the acclaimed PBS public affairs series. Not all episodes are available.
The Stanford Health Library provides a collection of online videos covering various health topics, including health and society, cancer support, and women's health. Videos may be viewable online through Stanford University iUniversity (iTunes interface) or QuickTime, or available for purchase on DVD. Not all videos are available for online viewing.
A project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE), HippoCampus provides high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students. Content is organized by broad disciplines: Algebra, American Government, Biology, Calculus, Environmental Science, Physics, Psychology, Religion, Statistics, US History. The site was designed as part of Open Education Resources (OER), a worldwide effort to improve access to quality education. Colleges and universities develop the content and contributes it to the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC), another MITE project. Both HippoCampus and NROC are supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
The Moving Image Archive within the Internet Archive provides access to nearly a quarter million films, uploaded by Archive users, and ranging from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Videos in the Archive are organized into 15 broad sub-categories: Animation and Cartoons, Arts & Music, Computers & Technology, Cultural & Academic Films, Ephemeral Films, Home Movies, Movies, News & Public Affairs, Open Source Movies, Spirituality & Religion, Sports Videos, Video Games, Vlogs, and Youth Media. The Archive also contains the Prelinger Archive, the most complete and varied collection of ephemeral films (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) in existence.
The site provides access to 15 years of audio and video recordings from live events and interviews with notable authors, scholars, and activists. The site also provides @450 brief biographies. There are separate search interfaces for biographies, audio files, and videos. More recordings are included on the foundations podcast site, which is available for subscription via iTunes.
Metropolitan Museum of Art - 82nd & Fifth
One hundred episodes, each @ 2 minutes, in which Metropolitan Museum of Art curators talk about works of art that changed the way they see the world. Episodes posts two at a time, Wedensdays, through December 25, 2013. Each episode links to related clips and/or interactive pieces, and includes full identification of the curator, the work of art, and its donor(s).
Metropolitan Museum of Art - Connect to Connections
Offers personal perspectives on works of art in the collection by 100 Met staff members, each one addressing a theme such as Motherhood, Magic, Masks, or Water.
Metropolitan Museum of Art - Connect to Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Presents the Met’s collection via a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of global art history. Targeted at students and scholars of art history, it is an invaluable reference, research, and teaching tool. Authored by the Met’s experts—predominantly made up of curators but also of conservators, scientists, and educators—the Timeline comprises 300 timelines, 930 essays, close to 7,000 objects, and a robust index, and is regularly updated and enriched to provide new scholarship and insights on the collection.
Video of 65 interviews from the television series hosted by the late Mike Wallace from 1957 and 1958. Provided by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Each program includes a text transcript. Available interviewees include Eleanor Roosevelt, Frank Lloyd Wright, Margaret Sanger, and Salvador Dali among other notables of the time.
Provides access to selected programs from the acclaimed PBS science series. Programs are divided into chapters and have closed captioning. Available videos are organized by broad subject categories: Anthropology, Disasters, Earth, Exploration, Flight, Health, History, Investigations, Nature, Physics & Math, Space, and Technology. Not all episodes are available.
Provides a selection of full length films, short films, and lesson plan based clips from the acclaimed PBS documentary film series POV. Not all episodes are available.
Provides access to selected programs from selected PBS series (such as Nature, American Experience, Nova, and Frontline, among others.) Users can browse by Programs, Topics, or Collections. Individual programs are subdivided into smaller segments. Not all episodes are available.
Contains 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.
Scripps Library and Multimedia Archive
From the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, the Scripps archive provides a unique collection of material on U.S. public policy. The Library's collection includes streaming video of State of the Union addresses from Kennedy to Obama. The multimedia archive also includes more than 2,500 hours secret White House recordings, hundreds of presidential oral history interviews, audio and video recordings of Miller Center Forums, and documents related to the executive branch of American government.
Selections from the National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is a list of movies deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" that are earmarked for preservation by the Library of Congress. They are not selected as the "best" American films of all time, but rather as works of enduring importance to American culture. They reflect who we are as a people and as a nation. The Librarian of Congress makes the annual selections to the Registry after reviewing hundreds of titles nominated by the public and conferring with Library film curators and the distinguished members of the National Film Preservation Board.
TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED Talks)
Makes available the best talks and performances from TED and partners. More than 500 TED Talks are now available, with more added each week. All of the talks feature closed captions in English, and many feature subtitles in various languages. Videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted. Talks are organized under broad subject categories: Technology, Entertainment, Design, Business, Science, and Global Issues.
TUBI is a free on demand video streaming app. It includes over 40,000 movies and television shows. It is available on all devices, but does require watching ads.
This portion of the Internet Archive collects and preserves television news. The collection contains more than 350,000 news programs collected over 3 years from national U.S. networks and stations in San Francisco and Washington D.C. The archive is updated with new broadcasts 24 hours after they are aired. Older materials are also being added. Use the index of searchable text and short, streamed clips to find programs to borrow on DVD-ROM or view at the Internet Archive’s library in San Francisco. Fees apply for borrowing. Further details on borrowing from TVNews.
This guide was created with permission from the Arizona State University Streaming Video Guide at https://libguides.asu.edu/StreamingVideo.
