You are here: Home » Using Multimedia » Multimedia Resources

Multimedia Resources

arkive.org allows you to link to its site by embedding a thumbnail picture (this one of lemur leaf frog, (c) David M. Dennis)

ARKive: Images of Life on Earth

Type: images, audio, video

ARKive is a global initiative, gathering together films, photographs and audio recordings of the world’s species into one centralised digital library. ARKive is creating a record of the world’s biodiversity - complementing other species information datasets, and making a key resource available for scientists, conservationists, educators and the general public.

Barnacle Press

Type: images

Barnacle Press is a large collection of vintage comic strips, most of which are in the public domain, and all of which are available for non-commercial re-use under a Creative Commons licence.

BBC Archives

Type: audio, video

Selected collections of documents, audio and video recordings from the BBC archives, available for linking only (i.e. not downloadable). Wide range of topics including world history, politics, society, TV history and more.

BBC/OU Creative Archive

Type: video

A collection of downloadable generic video footage from OU/BBC programmes, mostly for illustrative purposes. Released under the Creative Archive licence, which is like Creative Commons except that it only applies to the UK.

BFI InView

Type: video

A collection of diverse and rarely seen moving image titles focusing on the changing social, political and economic landscape of Britain in the 20th and into the early 21st century. The content is searchable and also comprehensively catalogued and organised under six main historical categories (education; health; environment; immigration; race and equality; industry and economy; and law and order). Sources include television documentaries, party political broadcasts, Parliamentary debates and newsreels. Accessible using your LSE username and password.

BFI Screenonline

Type: video

An archive of information and clips from Britain's cinema and TV history. Most entries for films and programmes provide several streamed video clips.

Blinkx

Type: video

Blinkx is a video search engine that uses speech recognition and video analysis to filter its results. It claims to be the world’s largest index of video content on the Web, indexing over 35 million hours of video.  The video content comes from a wide range of providers including national broadcasters and commercial media producers (e.g. BBC, HBO, MTV).

The videos available are for the most part streamed, so they may be linked to, but not downloaded.

British Pathe film archive

Type: video

Over 3500 hours of British Pathe film footage, covering news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896-1970. Free to use still and moving image files, for UK audience only. The images/audio files can be presented in the classroom and/or within a password protected, online environment, such as Moodle.

British Universities Newsreel Database (BUND)

Type: video

The BUND database holds 160,000 records of British cinema newsreel production from 1910-1979 and a large collection of digitised documents. Login with name and LSE email address. Once registered you can download film clips from various organisations, such as Pathe News. Please note that in some instances the database contains documentation about a film and not the actual film itself. Documentation can include original commentaries and shot lists.

Broadcast material for teaching & TRILT

Type: audio, video

The School holds an Education Recording Agency (ERA) Licence, which allows staff to record broadcast television and radio programmes from ERA members (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 & 5) for classroom use (LSE campus). The programme has to be recorded "off-air" (i.e. as it was broadcast) rather than derived from a bought or commercial copy and must comply with the licence terms and conditions. If you can't record the programme yourself, the AV Unit can do it for you. Any 'Off-Air' broadcast requests are handled by Ray Flood in the LSE Audio Visual unit. More details about the licence are available at: ERA licence

If you've missed a programme that was broadcast or you want to look through an archive of programmes spanning from June 1998, the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) have an off-air recording back up service which records BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, ITV1, Channel 4, Five, More4 (from June 2010), BBC Radio 4 (since September 2008) and BBC Radio 7 (since September 2009). The LSE can request videocassettes or burned CD/DVD copies of missed programmes broadcast since June 1998.

To find specific details about a broadcast, go to the 'TV and Radio index for Learning and Teaching' (TRILT) on the BUFVC website. Data is available at least ten days before transmission and builds up as an archive of programme information and schedules from June 1998 onwards.

Using TRILT:

• Go to: http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/trilt/
• On your first search you will probably see a yellow box which says:

"All searches are restricted to a start date of 20 Oct 2010. Access to the full version of TRILT is a privilege of BUFVC membership. If you are already a BUFVC member, please log in…"

Follow the 'log in' link which will take you to a drop down menu of institutions to choose from. Find 'London School of Economics' and click on the 'select' button.

• You will then be led to an authentication page, which will ask for your LSE username and password. You should now have access to the 'Basic Search' and see links to 'Advanced search'.
• Once you've found your chosen programme, click on the programme title for further info. If a copy is available, you should see a grey 'request this programme' button. Once you've selected this button you will see a 'Off-Air Programme Request' form. [Note: if it says that there isn't a representative selected for your institution it may be that 'London School of Economics' is not selected in the drop down menu. Simply find LSE in the list and select 'change institution'].
• Fill in the details on the 'Off-Air Programme Request' form to submit your request. You will notice that the Off-Air Rep is listed as Ray Flood from the LSE Audio Visual Unit.

Digitising broadcast material:
Under the current ERA licence you can also digitise copies of broadcast material, provided the electronic copy is streamed from a secure network, such as Moodle, and restricted to the LSE campus. The Centre for Learning Technology (CLT) offer a limited service to academic staff who wish to digitise selected broadcasts for use in Moodle. We recommend that where possible you select short clips or extracts from programmes, bearing in mind that students will need to use public computer rooms and headphones to access the material. For further enquiries about digitising broadcast material contact Kris Roger at: clt-support@lse.ac.uk

Please note that if you are planning to use broadcast material for teaching purposes, it is essential that the tape or electronic copy details the programme title, date of recording and channel, together with a statement saying it was recorded under the terms of the ERA Licence.

CartoonHub

Type: images

Hosted by the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent. The world's largest electronic archive of cartoons, with a catalogued database of over 90,000 British cartoons of social and political comment. The images on CartoonHub are under copyright, and may only be reproduced with the permission of the copyright owners, who can be contacted via CartoonHub.

Creative Commons Search

Type: audio, images, video

A cross-site search enabling you to search a number of large repositories for material that can be legally re-used for free. Includes Google Images, Flickr and Wikimedia Commons.

Ethnographic Video Online

Type: video

An extensive collection of ethnographic videos from every region of the world and from many of the most influential documentary makers of the 20th Century. 250 hours and 1,000 films will be available at completion. Each video comes with a synchronised transcript and you can edit smaller video clips from the full footage. Note: you need to register separately to edit and save your own clips. Login using your LSE username and password.

Fathom

Type: audio, video

Fathom.com was as an online consortium of universities, libraries and museums both in the UK and the US; producing content from the LSE, Columbia University, Cambridge University Press, The British museum and many more renowned educational institutions. Since the collapse of Fathom in 2003, the LSE have held an archive of all the Fathom articles and seminars produced by LSE academics. Subject areas include: anthropology, history, economics, international relations, social policy, gender, sociology, information systems and social psychology. For a full list see the Fathom content database. Contact: clt-support@lse.ac.uk for further information and advice.

Flickr Creative Commons

Type: images

An index of all Flickr images for which the owner has specified a Creative Commons licence. This allows you to search for items with different types of licence. Each licence type is concisely explained in a panel on the right, so you can search only for images that you will be able to legally use to fit your particular needs.

FORA.tv

Type: video

Provides free access to video recordings of live events, lectures, and debates at universities, think tanks and conferences. Current partners include the Heritage Foundation, Chatham House, the Cato Institution and the Brookings Institution.

FreeFoto.com

Type: images

An archive of over 100,000 photos that are "free to private non-commercial users". However, there are conditions for educational use: students may use images in their own work, and teachers may use them in "their own personal teaching work". However, permission is not given to distribute images outside the classroom, so they cannot be used on websites. In all cases, images must be credited with " © Ian Britton - FreeFoto.com".

GlobalCast: Euromonitor's podcast series

Type: audio

Free to access. Euromonitor International provide business intelligence on industries, countries, and consumers. Their new podcast series include interviews and analysis from research analysts and discussions on innovative concepts from around the globe. One of the most listened to podcasts to date was published in December 2008 about Barack Obama and his impact on the global Travel and Tourism industry.

You can download the podcast of your choice to your mp3 player, or listen to them on your computer.

Google Images

Type: images

Google now offers a "licensing filter" for its image search, so you can search for images that you will be able to reuse in your teaching without needing to ask for permission. Note, however, that you may still need to attribute the work - check the specific licence that applies in each case to find out whether this is necessary.

Image*After

Type: images

A large, free photo collection, with very liberal terms. Images are free for any use, personal, educational or commercial. Images can be modified in any way you see fit, and may be redistribtued in both digital and printed form. It is not clear how many images are available.

Imperial War Museum Collection

Type: images, audio

The IWM collection offers access to material spanning all aspects of twentieth century conflict. The site includes detailed catalogue information for over 160,000 items from the Imperial War Museum's collecting departments.

There are over 3,000 images in the collection, including photographs, works of art, aircraft, vehicles and objects, as well as selected 'soundbites' from the Sound Archive. The Crown Copyright protected material may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium for research, private study or for internal circulation within an educational organisation. The source of the material must be identified, the copyright status acknowledged and picture reference numbers quoted when presenting the material.

Internet Archive

Type: audio, video

This wide-ranging archive of all sorts of online resources has specific sections for moving images and audio. There is an enormous range of different types of content, including news, feature films and documentaries. Most content is in the public domain and therefore freely available for use in teaching.

Interviews with Anthropologists

Type: video

A collection of interviews with prominent anthropologists, recorded as part of the DART (Digital Anthropology Resources for Teaching) project at LSE. Each interviewee discusses one or more of their most important books.

JISC MediaHub

Type:audio, images, video

The LSE Library has a subscription to the JISC MediaHub - a new multimedia platform offering a wealth of digital image, video and audio collections accessible from a single interface. The new platform offers access to free-at-the-point-of-use images, video and audio content licensed for educational and research use, via an easy-to-use interface, cross-searching across all the collections and the ability to source content from a wide range of content-providers through a thumbnail and search portal. Most resources are free to download for use in teaching and research and can be displayed online via a secure network, such as Moodle. Collections include: Newsfilm Online (ITN and Channel 4) and Getty Images.

LSE anthropology photographs online

Type: images

A photographic collection of images taken by academics from the anthropology department at LSE is now available online.

The ‘LSE Anthropology Photographs’ project was developed by the Department of Anthropology and LSE Archives in connection with the DART project (Digital Anthropology Resources for Teaching). The DART project explored the potential of digital resources for the teaching of undergraduate anthropology.

Anthropologists and Archive staff worked together to create a catalogue of images that can be used as a teaching tool both in the classroom and during students' private studies. The anthropologists selected photographs that they felt represented their fieldwork and interests and the Archive team digitised them and made them available online using the existing catalogue.

LSE Archive images on Flickr

Type: images

An extensive collection of images of the LSE through the years, from the LSE founders to present day.

LSE Archives

Type: images

LSE Archives have produced a number of online resources that are freely available for teaching and research purposes by LSE staff and students without any special permission, including use in study packs, lectures, conferences, assignments, dissertations, presentations and workshops, and online display via a secure network, such as Moodle.

The relevant resources are:

• Bronislaw Malinowski fieldwork photographs
• British and Soviet political posters
• Charles Booth Online Archive
• Historic pamphlets

LSE Image Bank

Type: images

This Image Bank contains over3,500 pictures by School photographer Nigel Stead. They range from LSE buildings and landmarks, to students, staff and LSE's highly popular public events programme. They also include a growing range of "generic" or "conceptual" photographs, illustrating broad concepts such as "health", "retail" or the "environment".

MorgueFile

Type: images

Registration is only required if you want to submit photos; downloading and redistribution is allowed "for ... ordinary personal and/or commercial purposes". You do not need to include credits with the photo. It is not clear how many images are available. The strange name is a publishing term for a place to keep reference material.

National Archives: Public information films

Type: video

An archive of streamed British public information films produced by the Central Office of Information (COI) between 1945 and 2006.

OpenStreetMap

Type: images

Like Google Maps, but open data, currently licensed under a Creative Commons licence but about to move to an "Open Database Licence" which is equally liberal, but more suitable for licensing data. Maps can be used freely and adapted, as long as they are attributed properly, as explained on the copyright and licence page.

Pics4Learning

Type: images

A "copyright-friendly" image library for teachers and students. The thousands of images in the collection are all donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers. Permission is granted for teachers and students to use the images in print, multimedia, and video productions, within an educational setting.

Researcher's Guide to Television, Radio and Related Documentation Collections in the UK

Type: images, audio, video

This database is run by the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC). It features entries from national and regional film and television archives as well as libraries and collections held by local authorities, museums, institutions of further and higher education, industrial companies and private individuals. There are 118 entries on core radio collections, 319 on core moving image collections and 110 on documentation collections.

Each entry provides a description of the collection and full contact details (including e-mail and website addresses where available), access information, viewing facilities, copyright status of material held, catalogue systems and documentation.

stock.xchng

Type: images

A collection of free-to-use images (if you don't use them for commercial gain). When you search for images, you will see non-free 'Premium' images at the top, but the free ones are underneath, headed "Results on SXC.hu". Terms of use vary, but the standard licence allows you to use the images free of charge in an non-commercial or educational context.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)

Type: video

A collection of over 200 talks recorded at the annual TED conference, which brings together high-profile speakers (such as Bill Gates and Al Gore) from the three worlds of technology, entertainment and design. Presenters are challenged to give "talk of their lives" in no more than 18 minutes. The videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reused.

VADS the online resource for visual arts

Type: images

VADS is the online resource for visual arts. It has provided services to the academic community for 12 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK. The collection includes illustrations, photographs, paintings, posters, political prints and museum pieces from around the world.

VLC

Type: video

Not a source of media resources, but a free video player, able to handle most video formats. Install this and you need never hunt around trying various different video players to find the one that will play a particular video clip - VLC should always handle it. It also plays DVDs.

WikiMedia Commons

Type: images, audio, video

Launched on 7 September 2004, Wikimedia Commons is a repository of free multimedia content including photographs, sound and other multimedia files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, from which uploaded files can be used across all Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource and Wikinews, or downloaded for offsite use, as all of the content is either in the public domain or released under free licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License. As of January 2009, the repository contains over 3.8 million media files. Everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files freely as long as the source and the authors are credited and as long as users release their copies/improvements under the same freedom to others.

Xpert Attribution Tool

Type: images, audio, video

Another way to search Creative Commons licensed resources, but it also automatically adds attribution and licence information text to the image or video.