Guides: Multimedia Database Tools for Faculty @ Pitt: Video Resources

Streaming Video Databases

These are the key library databases that provide video. These databases also offer the playlist capabilities.

Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online allows users to cross-search all of the video published by Alexander Street Press. Virtually every video in the collection is fully transcribed in addition to being indexed for subjects, people, places, release date, language, publisher, and video type. NOTE: There are no restrictions on simultaneous users for Alexander Street Press Academic Video Online content. The vendor ProQuest advises that content can be shared on Zoom as long as you are not charging admission.
American History in Video This link opens in a new window
A collection of commercial and governmental newsreels, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries. This release now provides 4,848 titles equaling approximately 1,215 hours.
Education in Video This link opens in a new window
Education in Video is the first online collection of streaming video developed specifically for training and developing teachers. Upon completion, the collection will contain more than 1,000 video titles totaling 750 hours.
Music Online: Opera in Video This link opens in a new window
Opera in Video contains five hundred hours of opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries.
Ethnographic Video Online This link opens in a new window
Intended to be a visual encyclopedia of human behavior and culture, online in streaming video. Contains classic and contemporary documentaries; previously unpublished footage from working anthropologists and ethnographers in the field; and select feature films. Includes footage from every continent and hundreds of unique cultures.
Theatre in Video This link opens in a new window
Contains hundreds of videos, including documentaries and definitive performances of the world’s most important plays. From celebrated productions of Shakespeare to rare, in-depth footage of the work of Samuel Beckett, the collection covers a wide range of 20th century theatre history. Interviews with directors, designers, writers, and actors, along with excerpts of live performances deliver an authentic, behind-the-scenes look at hundreds of productions.
Digital Theatre Plus This link opens in a new window
Provides online access to a digital streaming video collection of unique films of current, leading British theatre productions. Includes behind-the-scenes documentaries as well as teaching and learning resources to facilitate a deeper understanding of the productions and texts. Learning resources include a detailed introduction, plot summary, character biographies, a relationship map, language analysis, scene study, performance background and historical context for each play.

Users must have the latest version of Google Chrome to access.
Met Opera on Demand This link opens in a new window
Access to more than 600 full-length Met performances (The Metropolitan Opera of New York City).
Engineering Case Studies Online This link opens in a new window
Focuses on engineering successes and failures and can be used for projects, papers, and discussions that focus on ethics. At completion, the collection will contain 250 hours and 50,000 pages of quality documentaries, accident reports, experiments, visualizations, case studies, lectures and interviews from leading engineering institutions around the world.

Streaming Video Collections

The ULS is currently streaming a select number of films on Kanopy. You can search for ‘Kanopy’ in PittCat to see these titles. The expiration date varies by title but is visible in the detailed information provided in PittCat.

We now have access to Academic Video Online (mostly documentaries with some film). Here is the list of 4,000 films that appear in this database.
All of our streaming video databases can be found on the Video Resources LibGuide

Anyone interested in gaining access to film or media for research or teaching are encouraged to submit the media request form.

Create Video Playlists and Embed Video

A playlist is a selection of media (text, images, videos, clips, tracks, URLs) that are grouped together. You can also add ANY outside URL to a playlist, including links to YouTube videos. Annotations can be added to anything in the playlist.

You can save your own playlists in the Alexander Street Press music and theater databases, share them with students via permanent URL's, or embed the URLs and video into CourseWeb.