Videos, Images and Sounds
This page focuses on finding videos, images and sounds that can be used in papers, presentations and other academic projects or which have scholarly value for research such as oral histories, musical performances, audiobooks, etc.
If you are looking for popular or educational DVDs and Blu-rays, you can find them in SuperSearch by filtering your search to “Videos” as a Material Type and selecting “Available in the library” as the Availability. If you are looking for instructional videos and tutorials that demonstrate how to use various library tools and resources, see our Instructional & Reference Videos page.
CCSearch (Creative Commons Search) provides a convenient tool to find open web content that you can mix, adapt and re-use. Not precisely a search engine, CCSearch offers convenient access to search services provided by other sites and includes music, video and images.
Videos
Databases focusing on videos:
Kanopy Streaming Video is a collection featuring over 26,000 movies, documentaries, and indie and foreign films from hundreds of producers including The Criterion Collection, The Great Courses, Kino Lorber, and PBS and thousands of independent filmmakers. Instructors must request that the library purchase a license to a film before it can be made available for viewing.
Swank Streaming Films partners with major studios to offer thousands of feature films and TV shows on its streaming platform. Instructors must request that the library purchase a license to a film before it can be made available for viewing.
Academic Video Online (AVON) includes thousands of streaming videos with curricular relevance: documentaries, interviews, feature films, performances, news programs and newsreels, and demonstrations.
Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) – Neuroscience. JoVE is an online peer-reviewed journal devoted to investigations of the structure, function, physiology, and pathophysiology of the brain and nervous system in a video format.
Psychotherapy.net Videos is a collection of streaming videos in the fields of counseling, psychotherapy, addiction, and more.
For more information about these and other streaming video sources, see our Streaming Video at Drake guide.
Databases that contain videos include:
Birds of the World features audio and video of different bird species.
Britannica Online contains a large number of videos of general and contemporary interest. Choose “Media Collection” to begin a subject-based search of video titles. Sample subjects include: “Animals,” “Arts & Literature,” “Science,” “Sports & Recreation” and “Society.”
Global Issues in Context contains over 15,000 videos on global issues, conflicts and events. Use advanced search to limit to video or “Browse Issues and Topics” for a more general overview.
Gale in Context: Environmental Studies (formerly GREENR) features a gallery of more than 400 videos relating to the environment. Videos include interviews, lectures, and commentaries.
Images
Databases focusing on images
ArtStor provides over one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with software tools for teaching and research.
Databases that contain images include
Britannica Online has images, diagrams and more. Be sure to narrow your search to multimedia.
CREDO Reference has images and diagrams from numerous reference sources. Click “preferred” for Images in Results.
Image sources from the open web:
The Drake Digital Collections have historic images of Drake and Des Moines.
Google Images and Yahoo! Image Search provide extensive search capability for images on the web. Licensing information is rarely provided and what is provided may be quite inaccurate.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog contains more than 1.2 million digital images, including photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. Whenever possible, the Library of Congress provides information about copyright owners and other restrictions in the catalog records or other texts that accompany collections, but as with most other open web collections, rights assessment is ultimately your responsibility.
The Life Photo Archive hosted by Google contains “millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.” Particularly useful for historic photos of American life. Searchable. See individual images for use information.
Metropolitan Museum Initiative “… more than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works in the Museum’s world-renowned collection may be downloaded directly from the Museum’s website for non-commercial use—including in scholarly publications in any media—without permission from the Museum and without a fee.”
NASA Images Gallery provide a wealth of astronomical, space and technology images related to or extending from the United States’ space program. Nearly all materials are released to the public domain by NASA.
Smithsonian Open Access allows you to download, share, and reuse more than 4.5 million 2D and 3D digital items from across the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
Wikimedia Commons contains more than 12 million images that can be used freely. Note that permissions vary and you may need to provide attribution or meet other criteria under GPL, Creative Commons and other licenses.
Unsplash is a growing collection of more than 3 million high-resolution photographs that can be used freely.
Sounds
Databases that focus on auditory information
Naxos Music Library – An audio database comprising a fast-growing catalog of world, folk and classical music.
Databases that include auditory information
The African American Experience includes music and interviews, including testimony from former slaves. Click “Resources” then “Audio Files.”
Birds of the World is a database where you can listen to bird calls.
CREDO Reference contains a variety of audio clips. Click “Advanced Search” and then check Audio in the “Entry Features” box.
Auditory information resources from the open web
British Library Sounds provides collections of unique sound recordings from all over the world that cover the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds.
LibriVox provides audiobooks for titles in the public domain created by volunteers.
Western Soundscape Archive contains recordings of a wide variety of animals from the Western U.S.