African American & Diaspora Studies Resources: Television News Archives

Use an article or web site to identify trends and events that affected the development of your topic, so that you can search for them in the Television News Archive database. For example, you may find a timeline: 

The Civil Rights Timeline - InfoPlease

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html

Vanderbilt is home to the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, the world's most extensive and complete archive of television news, including news broadcasts of the national networks since August 5, 1968. It includes items from ABC, CBS, NBC,  CNN and Fox News, as well as news content from specials. You can search the TV News Archives via their website or the Library Catalog.

The Internet Archive's TV News Archive has captured video of television broadcasts, from June 2009 to current. It covers news and current event programs from over 20 US networks, including Spanish language networks.  Local news coverage from a number major market network affiliates is also available in this archive.

Users can search by date, network and show using keywords. Videos appear in one minute segments. Commercials are included and political ads is a search limiter.

At the TV News Archive home page, click on "Advanced" Search (located directly below the search box). The computer searches in both the title and abstract.

On the Advanced Search page, right under the search box, you will see three options, "Word search", "Phrase Search", and "Boolean". Use the "Word Search". You can limit your search to a specific date range. This can be helpful when comparing the news from different decades.

Word Search:

The "Word Search" is the default advanced search and is usually the one you should use. In a word search, the computer matches only the items that have all the words in either the title or abstract, but the words do not have to be next to each other. The word search civil rights returned 3358 items. (Look at abstract in the record for March on Washington / 50th Anniversary / Rabbi Prinz, CBS Evening News for Saturday, Aug 31, 2013)

Other Searches:

Phrase Search: In the "Phrase Search", the computer matches only the items that have the words together in either the title or abstract. The phrase search civil rights returned 3043 items. (Look at any record)

Boolean Search: Do NOT enter just civil rights for a Boolean search. The default Boolean operator is 'or', so the computer returned 18366 items. Add a + (plus) in front of each word that must appear in the results. The Boolean search +civil +rights returned 3358 items (the same as the word search).

Click below to find a list of  15 selected news clips identified through various TNA searches related to civil rights. This list is by no means meant to be exhaustive. TV News Archive is also searchable through Library Catalog.