Sources of Archival, Public Domain, Open Source Material:

Archive.Org

www.Archive.org

Huge repository for video, audio and text. Most material has Creative Commons license. See
here for more information about CC: http://creativecommons.org/

see especially: Prelinger archives for 40s and 50s educational films (many by Coronet)

http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

Archives.gov
http://archives.gov/

This is the Website for the National Archives, a US Government institution. From their site:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record
keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by
the United States Federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or
historical reasons that they are kept by us forever.

The site is a searchable index of most of their holdings. They do not offer much that is
downloadable. In order to get copies of video or audio you must contract with a vendor lab. The
good news is that the quality of the footage and audio is excellent. Much of the war footage, for
instance, was shot by Hollywood cameramen and directors who were drafted into the army.
Some material has rights restrictions. Some material (for instance recorded Presidential phone
calls) is housed in other locations.

Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/index.html
From their site:
The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as
the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of
books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.

The Library of Congress has some amazing oral histories, regional music styles, etc. from the
early 20th century through today. Some was collected as part of specific projects to document
regional speech patterns and culture, using technology like the phonograph, tape recorders, and
now digital recorders. The Alan Lomax collection is now housed here. From the site:

The Alan Lomax Collection contains pioneering documentation of traditional music,

dance, tales, and other forms of grassroots creativity in the United States and abroad.

For a sample, go here: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html

Library of Congress (continued)
http://www.loc.gov/index.html

The Library of Congress houses the American Memory collection. The materials which
are online are indexed here:

http://www.loc.gov/folklife/onlinecollections.html

For a sample from the Paterson NJ interviews from 1994, go here:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/paterson/title_sound_recording_nonmusical.html

News, current events

Each major broadcaster has some online archive. Many have limited material for download, most are
copyright protected. There are others, but to start, see the following:

http://topics.npr.org/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

http://www.itnsource.com/

http://www.cnn.com/help/search.html

Vanderbilt University maintains an archive of major news shows, which are made available to
researchers: Information is here:

http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/

Human Rights
There is a special archive of human rights footage funded by the musician Peter Gabriel. The archive is
located in Brooklyn New York. One of our former Grad students works there in some high-level
capacity. Much of the footage is shot by local people on the ground in various conflict areas.
Information is here:

http://www.witness.org/

YouTube
Copyright issues aside, YouTube is a great repository for video and sound. In order to rip clips and
audio, use this tool which will convert video from flash to quicktime, and audio to .wav

http://www.zamzar.com/

If you will need to rip clips regularly, drag their bookmark tool to your browser so you can click right
from the YouTube site.
DVD
Again, copyright issues aside, you can rip most DVDs using Handbrake. Information is here:

http://handbrake.fr/