Guides: Library services and resources for Penn Museum staff: Streaming Video and DVDs through Penn Libraries

Look for an individual movie title in the Franklin catalog to discover if Penn Libraries has a DVD, VHS tape, or access to it through a major streaming service.

If you are logged in to Franklin, use the Request option to ask for a DVD or VHS to be delivered to the Museum Library circulation desk from another location like LIBRA or Van Pelt.
If you are at the Van Pelt Library and want something from the Van Pelt - Video Collection, note the DVD number as it appears in the Franklin catalog and request it at the Van Pelt Circulation Desk using that special number.
For personal use, try BorrowDirect or EZ Borrow if Penn Libraries cannot provide access.

Be aware that educational licensing for videos are very expensive and sometimes cost-prohibitive. Penn Libraries cannot honor all patron recommendations for DVD and streaming video because of highly restricted licenses and high costs, and videos requested for class use must be given priority.

Streaming Video through Penn Libraries (per Charles Cobine, Cinema and Media Studies Librarian)

A select number of films are available to stream. Search a film's title in Franklin, the Penn Libraries Catalog to see if a film is available on DVD. Portable all-region players and external DVD drives are available to check out from the Vitale Digital Media Lab (link: Equipment Lending). Course-related streaming film requests from instructors are given priority due to the prohibitive cost of streaming licenses for films.

Academic Video Online (AVON)
Large, wide-ranging collection of feature film, documentaries, news footage, historical newsreels, and a range of primary source content. Includes film from the Criterion Collection, PBS, BBC, and Academy, Emmy, Peabody award winners, as well as silent films, serials, and early cinema shorts, including Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang, Chaplin, Murnau, and Lubitsch.

Independent World Cinema: Classic and Contemporary Film
This is a collection from indie film distributors—Milestone, Zeitgeist, Pragda, and Oscilloscope. These films support disciplines such as cultural history, psychology, gender studies, anthropology, African-American studies, and more.

Kanopy
Streaming collection of films and documentaries covering many subjects: pop culture, social policy, politics, education, and gender studies.
Swank Digital Campus
Selected streaming full-length feature films and documentaries.
Swank Digital Campus Resident Select (via Penn Video Network)
Selected streaming full-length feature films, licensed for on-campus viewing only. Line-up changes monthly, and films do not appear in Franklin, Penn Libraries Catalog. Note: After a brief licensing redirect, you will see movie choices. You can only use Resident Select while you're on Penn's campus, using a Penn IP address.

New World Cinema: Independent Features & Shorts, 1990-Present
Full-length feature films and award-winning shorts from leading independent distributors.
Ethnographic Video Online
Classic ethnographic films, films about cultural change over time, and films made by and for indigenous communities. Browse by geography or cultural groups. Some films include study guides.
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI): Streaming Art Films

Films on Demand

Selected streaming films from Films Media Group.
March of Time, 1935-1967
Newsreel and television series which ran in U.S. movie theaters until 1951 and on television until 1967, blending confrontational journalism and docudrama
USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive
Digital library of video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust.

Streaming videos about cultural heritage

Penn Libraries has a number of streaming video collections focused on cultural heritage, including:

Ethnographic Video Online - collection of classic and recent documentaries from working archaeologists and ethnographers, including indigenous scholars.
Heritage Broadcasting Service - over 300 educational films about cultural heritage topics from independent filmmakers, small organizations of professional archaeologists, or larger organizations like the Council for British Archaeology. Curated by the public archaeology, non-profit Archaeological Legacy Institute.
Wild Archaeology, seasons 1 and 2 - award-winning series by indigenous archaeologist Rudy Reimer and filmmaker Tracy German. The episodes aired 2016-2022 on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Canada.