Textbook Alternatives & Open Educational Resources (OER): Images, Video, & Audio

This page lists many subscription and free collections of streaming video resources available through Miami's libraries. A small selection of them are listed below.

Kanopy is a streaming video platform with more than 8,000 films from a variety of important collections and producers, including the California Newsreel, Green Planet, PBS, BBC Active, and Stanford Executive Briefings collections. *Please note that we have short term licenses for some films and not others, but you may request that we purchase a license by sending a message on the Kanopy site.

American History in Video provides the largest and richest collection of video available online for the study of American history, with 2,000 hours and more than 5,000 titles on completion.

Education in Video provides a large and rich online collection of video available for the study of teaching methods and education theory. Upon completion, the collection will contain more than 1,000 video titles totaling 750 hours of teaching demonstrations, lectures, documentaries, and primary-source footage of students and teachers in actual classrooms.

A finding tool for free and rental/purchase sites for videos.

Free access to documentary films.

Free feature length films. Users must create an account.

No account is needed to watch.

Some movies are made freely available here with ads, others are rentals. No account is needed to watch.

Includes free movies and TV shows. No account is needed to watch.

Some movies are made freely available here with ads, others are rentals. Users must create an account.

Includes movies and TV shows. You can stream Roku without having a player or enabled TV. Users must create and account. Note: Works in the US only, if streaming from a desktop browser.

Go to the individual show website (linked as "official website" from the pages linked in the list at this URL) to see if individual episodes are available for free. Some may require a Passport (available with membership in a local PBS station).

Search for rental/purchase options.

Search for rental/purchase options.

With this downloadable-only card, patrons may access, among other items, streaming movies and TV through the Hoopla, Overdrive, and Kanopy services provided by the library click the video icon to the right of the link above for more information on the services). Ohio residents are eligible to apply for the card online.

"One of the best places to download (for free!) unique HD stock video footage and animated backgrounds for any production purpose. All clips in the library are completely free to use and are a simple "right click save" to download."

"With a library of over 4,000 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace."

"Great talks to stir your curiosity. Browse by subject, length, or rating (inspiring, jaw-dropping, funny…)"

"Free stock video footage."

Videos, instructional and otherwise.

"YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos."

Education-focused videos within YouTube.

Find Creative Commons-licensed images you can share, use and remix.

"Critical Commons is a public media archive and fair use advocacy network that supports the transformative reuse of media in scholarly and creative contexts."

"Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license."

See the page in this guide with links to several sources for images of diverse people.

A guide from the University of Texas San Antonio with links to freely available images online from several disciplines.

"Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images and videos."

This image collection from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is composed of both public domain and copyrighted images. They are marked as such, and those which are copyrighted do require that you ask the copyright holder for permission.

2.8 million images "from all 19 Smithsonian museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo," all released into the public domain.

"Over 1 million free high-resolution images brought to you by the world’s most generous community of photographers."

"Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language."

A guide from the University of Arizona Libraries listing places to find open-licensed images, discussing copyright considerations for using images, and showing how to cite images.

Music of diverse origins from America’s past and present in genres including country, folk, bluegrass, Western, old time, American Indian, blues, gospel, shape note singing, doo-wop, Motown, R&B, soul, funk, and others, on labels such as Rounder, Testament, Document, Folkways, Stax, Rebel, County, etc.

Recordings from folk to opera, Native American to jazz, 19th century classical to early rock, musical theater, contemporary, electronic and beyond, from New World, CRI, Albany, Cedille, and other independent labels.

Provides access to a variety of jazz artists and labels, both current and retrospective.

Includes Naxos and affiliated labels in classical, jazz, world, folk, and pop/rock musics

Recordings from Smithsonian, Folkways, and affiliated labels in folk, blues, jazz, country, children's and spoken word from a wide range of world locations.