Yet another opportunity for infoDOCKET to mention the vital C-SPAN Video Library, a free resource allows users to keyword search (fielded searching also available) and then view the video of those words spoken online.
As of today the C-SPAN Video Library offers searchable access to over 224,329,000 hours of content, just about everything that has aired on the C-SPAN
The search interface can be found at the top of any C-SPAN web page or using this page.
The text your searching on comes from the closed-captioning. It’s not always 100% accurate so be careful.
The C-SPAN Video Library is constantly updated with new video.
C-SPAN Convention Website
2016 Party Conventions
C-SPAN is providing live, interrupted, gavel-to-gavel coverage of this week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland and next week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the C-SPAN Video Library makes all of this coverage keyword searchable.
Other events taking place around the convention (e.g. breakfasts, interviews, etc.) that are also airing on C-SPAN can also be found in the database.
Browsing Video
In addition to using the primary search interface to enter keywords and access video, C-SPAN is providing this interface that allows users to browse convention speeches by date and speaker name.
Past Conventions
At the bottom of the “convention” page you’ll also find a pull-down menu to quickly access key speeches from conventions back to 1996 but film/video from conventions before this data can also be found. For example, here’s material from the 1952 Republican National Convention.
Search Tips
A potentially useful way to not only find material quickly but also learn how to take full advantage of the database, consider:
1. Run a search on possible topics, terms. etc.
2. Find a few potential records of interest and review the metadata. Make note of it.
3. Next, use the filters on the left side of a results page to either manually add or select metadata. Rerun search if necessary. To access the filters click the Filter/Sort Options near the top of the results list.
4. Finally, if you’re looking for videos featuring a specific person, enter the name in the search box and limit to “Person”. You’ll find this option directly below the search box.
Refine Options on a C-SPAN Video Library Search Results Page
Finally, directly below each video box is a link to create custom video clips to share with others.
C-SPAN via YouTube
In addition to the massive and constantly collection of searchable video directly accessible and shareable via the C-SPAN Video Library the network is also posting key speeches from the conventions to their YouTube channel.
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