Finding Content in the Collection
Before you start your search for footage, it is important to familiarize yourself with how the collection is organized.
Each news program is segmented by staff into an individual clip for each news story. The majority of clips in the database are then given a staff-written title and abstract (summary) providing a short description of the contents of the clip.
When you search the collection, the results are based on keywords found in the abstract or title of a given clip (see example below).
Additionally, each clip in the collection is associated with a unique item number. The item number also appears in the URL for a clip. For the below example, the URL is https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/broadcasts/80394. Copying the item number to a separate document can help you keep your research notes organized.
Users at sponsoring academic institutions (excludes Vanderbilt users) will only be able to stream content originating from CNN and NBC. If a video is not playing, it is likely from a different network. Please use our loan service to access content from other networks.
To look up news programs that aired on a specific date, the broadcast index is the best way to search. The broadcast index allows you to view a list of all the segments that aired on a specified day.
The broadcast index can be accessed on the Television News Website via the navigation bar at the bottom of the homepage.
The page shows a list of years and months.
After clicking into a month, you'll be able to see news coverage for each day. Select a program to see a list of segments aired during the program. Click into any segment to view the clip.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to see a list of Specials in the collection that aired during the month. Click on any of the segment titles to view the footage.
To search the collection using specific keywords, you will need to open the advanced search box.
(1) Click on the "Search" button at the top of the website, then select "Advanced."
(2) Enter your keywords in the search box. The search function is NOT programmed to use Boolean operators. Changing the SEARCH TYPE is the best way to limit your results.
"Word Search" is toggled by default. Word search uses “OR” between each term and ranks the results based on frequency of all entered terms in the title and abstract.
Instead, toggle "Phrase Search" to search by the exact phrase entered (circled below in red).
(3) To further refine your results, you can limit your search to specific dates, a specific anchor, a network, or by selecting segment types to omit.
Users at academic institutions (excluding Vanderbilt) should limit the network to NBC or CNN.
"Word Search" versus "Phrase Search" example
Doing a word search for the keywords "strawberry festival" yields 1,608 results. It includes all clips in the collection that contain the word "strawberry" or "festival" in the title or abstract. The order of the list is based on the number of times a keyword appears in the title or abstract. The top result is a story featuring a baseball player named Darryl Strawberry, not news about strawberry festival.
Doing a phrase search for the keywords "strawberry festival" yields 2 results. Both results are news stories that mention a Strawberry Festival.
Additional Resources
The following list is a non-exhaustive guide to other sources of archival audiovisual footage:
- A resource guide to television news archives: http://www.televisionarchive.org/resources.html
- The Internet Archive began in 1996 by archiving internet web pages, but today contains millions of other archived materials such as books, audio, videos, imagines, and software programs. The Internet Archive's TV News Archive began archiving television programs in late 2000 and today contains a searchable index of select television news broadcasts from 2009 to the present.
- The Library of Congress' Moving Image Research Center allows researchers to access the Library's approximately 1.2 million items of moving image material. The collection spans nearly the entire history of cinema and television. The LOC MIRC also hosts a list of resources for locating moving image related subjects and materials.
- The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and GBH, a Boston-based public broadcasting service, with the mission to to digitally preserve and make accessible public radio and television programming from across the country. To date, over 100,000 historic public broadcasting radio and television programs and original materials have been digitized and preserved, a subset of which is accessible through the organization's online reading room. Additionally, users can search the 2.5 million metadata records that document public radio and television assets.
- The CBS News Video Archives spans 6 decades of flagship news programming, dating back to November 7, 1954.
- The National Archives holds historical U.S. government documents (federal, congressional, and presidential records) that are created or received by the President and his staff, by Congress, by employees of Federal government agencies, and by the Federal courts in the course of their official duties. The National Archives includes moving picture items, many of which are viewable on the website.
- The UCLA Film & Television Archive conserves more than 520,000 holdings of films, television programs, news footage and radio recordings. The majority of the holdings are contained in three collections:
- The Motion Picture Holdings includes more than 350,000 materials, with the oldest dating back to the 1890s. The holdings contain content from Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Sony/Columbia Pictures, New World Pictures, Orion Pictures, Universal, RKO and Republic Pictures.
- The John H. Mitchell Television Collection documents the entire course of broadcast history: it includes the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences/UCLA Collection of Historic Television, donations from the Hallmark Hall of Fame, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Carol Burnett and Loretta Young, and a collection of milestones in the history of television technology. The News and Public Affairs (NAPA) subset consists of over 100,000 news programs and broadcasts taped off air from 1979 to 2003.
- The Hearst Metrotone News collection is one of the largest newsreel collections in the world, containing over 27 million feet of theatrically released newsreels, unreleased stories and outtakes that span 1914 through 1968
- The University of Georgia's Walter J. Brown Media Archive & Peabody Awards Collection preserves over 250,000 titles in film, video, audiotape, transcription disks, and other recording formats dating from the 1920s to the present.
- The University of South Carolina's Moving Image Research Collections preserves films and videos produced outside the American feature film industry to make them available to present and future audiences. The Fox Movietone News Collection includes picture film documenting the national and global politics and culture from 1919 through 1934 and from September 1942 through August 1944. The Local Television Newsfilm Collections contains footage dating from the late 1950s to the early 1980s and was donated by several South Carolina television stations. Many of materials are available to view online.
- The University of Maryland Libraries' Digital Collections includes the Public Broadcasting collection, consisting of noncommercial radio and television programs spanning the years 1959-2004, and the Commercial Broadcasting collection, consisting of commercial radio and television programs, as well as interviews, news reports and speeches spanning the years 1952-1982.
- The University of Virginia Center for Digital History holds the collection "Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950-1970." The current archive contains films from the nightly news from two local television stations in Virginia--WDBJ (CBS) Roanoke and WSLS (NBC) Roanoke.
- The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation archives Canadian and International footage from its English Network holdings, which include Network News & Current Affairs, Entertainment, Nature and Science.
- Getty Images hosts a large archive of photos and videos available for liscensing. Their website also includes content from partners including the BBC Motion Gallery, Smithsonian, Walt Disney Studios, Premiere Archival Collection, and more.
- The Associate Press Archive's YouTube channel provides access to select archival footage from AP videographers/journalists.
