Research & Subject Guides: Using the Internet for Historical Research: Audio-Visual

Audio-Visual Collections

There are an increasing number of excellent web sites that have historic audio-visual material.

YouTube - Great resource for finding speeches and historic news items, as well as musical and cinematic trasures.

Internet Archive - Probably the best overall collection of audio-visual material that could be used for primary sources. The Archive currently contains almost 400,000 moving images and nearly 700,000 audio items, along with software and other material.

American Memory Motion Pictures - Sixteen different collections of motion pictures from the Library of Congress, including:

Coca-Cola Advertising - 1951-1999 - Fifty Years of Coca-Cola Television Advertisements: Highlights from the Motion Picture Archives
Film, Animated ~ 1900-1921 - Origins of American Animation
New York City ~ 1898-1906 - The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906
San Francisco and 1906 Earthquake ~ 1897-1916 - Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916
Variety Stage ~ 1870-1920 - The American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920

History.com - Web site from the History Channel. Covers numerous topics, with video and other media.

BBC History - History web site from the BBC. Contains videos on numerous topics. Particularly good section on World Wars.

Primary Source Materials: Moving Images and Sound Recordings - An excellent guide to finding primary soruce material from the Media Resources Center at the University of California Berkeley.

Photography Collections

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
More than 1.2 million digitized images from the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), including photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.
American Memory Photography & Print Collections
Sixty-six different collections, including Selected Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865; Chicago Daily News Photographs, 1902-1933; Edward S. Curtis's North American Indian Photographs, Ca. 1900; Daguerreotype Photographs, 1839-1864; William P. Gottlieb Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz 1938-1948; and three collections on Women’s Suffrage, 1850-1938. Some overlap with the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
The Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
Picture Collection of the French National Library
The Banque d'images (Picture collection) is an online database created by the Reprographic Department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French national Library). It inventories more than 100.000 digitized still images from documents and objects held in the collections of the Library. You can order digital prints online or get files in multiple formats or resolutions.
British Library Online Gallery: Points of View Exhibition
Explore the 19th century's great themes through photographs, and watch videos about early photographic techniques of innovators such as Henry Fox Talbot.

Using the Internet for Historical Research

Audio-Visual Collections

Photography Collections

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