A landmark collection, the largest of its kind, American History in Video lets you bring thousands of titles into your library for a fraction of what it would cost to purchase them individually. Semantic indexing makes the entire collection powerfully cross-searchable. New, powerful tools and features let you navigate, access, re-purpose, and share video as never before.

Contemporaneous footage

American History in Video includes 2,000 total hours of streaming video content. More than half is contemporaneous video from the 1890s to the 1980s. The early newsreels, including the complete series of United Newsreel and Universal Newsreel, available online in their entirety only in this collection, capture history as it was made and reported to viewers of the time.

Award-winning documentaries

American History in Video also includes hundreds of the documentaries most frequently used in history classrooms, from leading video content producers such as PBS, California Newsreel, Bullfrog Films, Documentary Educational Resources, Pennebaker Hegedus Films, The History Channel®, and others. Featuring dramatic reenactments and engaging analysis from prominent scholars and experts, these documentaries bring history alive for students and give public library patrons hundreds of educational video titles they can enjoy from home. Learn about the Battle of Gettysburg from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson. Understand the scope and legacy of the American Civil War with Ken Burns’s riveting PBS series. Grasp the zeitgeist of an era through PBS’s Summer of Love, Ken Burns's The West, and Africans in America.

LibGuide

See an overview of the database with links to guides, tutorials, and more. Visit the Libguide.

Tools for teaching and research

American History in Video is designed specifically for teaching and research, packed with features that help you find, view, share, and analyze.

Search power: Fifteen combinable search fields—including subject, event, era, date, place, historical figure, and speaker—let you quickly find what you’re looking for.

Browse tools: In addition to the browse fields, the visual Tables of Contents let you scan what’s in a thirty-minute video within seconds.

Synchronized transcripts scroll along with the videos and are keyword searchable, letting you jump around within the video quickly.

Linking and sharing: Permanent, per-second URLs let you cite, bookmark, link, embed, and share either entire videos or custom clips that you create yourself. Organize clips in playlists by theme, research topic, or course unit.

Embed video directly in your online syllabus, course management system, library Web site, and online subject guides. Show clips or entire videos without worrying about permissions or copyright infringement—you’re automatically covered by the terms of your library’s subscription.

How will you use it?

As a biographical resource, American History in Video includes hundreds of profiles of great American leaders and personalities. As an encyclopedia of history, it provides footage of seminal historic events. Compare Kennedy’s rhetorical flair with Nixon’s. Examine racial stereotypes as presented in newsreels featuring African Americans prior to 1950. Consider Ed Herlihy’s use of alliteration and other tropes of propaganda in WWII newsreels. These and thousands of other searches are easy with American History in Video.

Publication details

American History in Video is an online collection available to academic, public, and school libraries via subscription or one-time purchase of perpetual rights. No special setup or software is required—all you need is an Internet browser.