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There are many video, audio, and image resources to help you deepen your understanding of various topics and enhance your assignments. Whether you need documentaries, educational videos, audio clips, or high-quality images, the sources provided here offer diverse materials to support your scholarship.
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.
The library's collection of DVDs and Blu-Rays are located on the east side of the main floor. 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. There are viewing stations on the main floor, or you can check out a DVD/Blu-Ray player to take with you.
Instructional and reference videos that demonstrate how to use various library tools and resources can be found on the Cowles Library YouTube channel.
More than 70,000 streaming videos with curricular relevance: documentaries, interviews, feature films, performances, news programs and newsreels, and demonstrations.
Swank Motion Pictures 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. Guide to Swank Streaming Films
Collection of streaming videos in the fields of counseling, psychotherapy, addiction, and more.
Learn more about these video resources in our guide to Streaming Video at Drake.
More databases are including video content along with traditional full text articles and research materials. Here are a few examples:
A database focused on the issues relating to the environment. Its coverage extends to news, case studies, videos, and news, as well as academic journals.
The library has a collection of LP albums and a listening station on the east side of the main floor. You can also check out a Bluetooth turntable to take with you.
Streamed recordings of primarily classical music. Also includes world/folk music, Chinese orchestral, folk, and traditional music. 5 simultaneous users
Encyclopedia of information about African American life and experiences.
Provides life histories and images for over 700 species of birds breeding in the USA (including Hawaii) and Canada with video and audio recordings for many.
Portal to over 500 highly regarded reference sources. Examples of sources covered include: Art, Business, Food & Beverage, History, Language, Law, Literature, Medicine, Music, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Science, Social Sciences, and Technology.
The Voices of Drake oral histories contains the stories and reflections of various individuals who worked at or attended Drake University
BBC Sound Effects Archive makes more than 33,000 clips available for personal, educational, or research purposes. Sounds range from natural environments to cityscapes and historical events.
Freesound has thousands of openly-licensed audio files, from background ambience to music loops to foley sound effects.
Free Music Archive, run by U.S. radio station WFMU, is a database of free music tracks you can use in videos and other projects. Most are in the Public Domain or carry Creative Commons licenses.
LibriVox provides access to U.S. Public Domain audiobooks.
Western Soundscape Archive contains recordings of a wide variety of animals from the Western U.S.
The Drake Digital Collections contain historic images of Drake and Des Moines.
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.
Open Access at The Met provides access to more than 492,000 public-domain images, which are available for free and unrestricted use.
NASA Images Gallery has 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 4.9 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.
