Szegedi Tudományegyetem Klebelsberg Kuno Könyvtára
Today, there are countless databases that contain collections of photos, movies, museum materials as well as materials that showcase the work of scholars and scientists.
Some of these databases are community-based (Fortepan), while others are operated by libraries or by academic communities (SZTE Klebelsberg Library Gallery and Media Library, Videotorium).
These databases are covered in a series of three lessons as follows:
Media Libraries: University Video Databases and Educational Video Databases [Current lesson]
Community-based Content Development: Trove, Fortepan, Hungaricana
The Klebelsberg Library Gallery and Media Library
How are university-related videos provided to audiences?
What is there beyond universities but still within the realm of scholarship and science?
Featuring videos produced by universities, mostly in connection with their courses, university media libraries provide a significant amount of content through aggregator websites that offer scholarly and scientific videos. Some of these university videos are available to the general public free of charge, while others are only accessible either to university students or for a subscription fee. While some university platforms provide access only to their own university materials, others are linked to major websites that serve as aggregated platforms (for a specific range of users) for providing videos produced by various universities, organizations, researchers, or other individuals with the purpose of educating or disseminating knowledge.
What follows is a brief look at some of these websites.
Coursera is one of the most popular platforms for online courses, providing e-learning courses created by various universities, institutions, and companies. As Coursera’s online courses contain a significant number of videos and, in particular, educational videos, the platform can also be considered as a media library.
Here, Coursera is discussed among university media libraries due to the fact that it provides access to courses by top universities such as Yale University, the University of Cambridge, or the University of Tokyo. In addition to these university courses, however, there are also courses by top companies, including IBM and Google. In total, Coursera has hundreds of partners from several countries.
The extent to which Coursera cooperates with universities to provide a wide range of services is aptly illustrated by its partnership with the University of Szeged, as this partnership has made it possible for the University to design several of its courses as Coursera courses. Such courses can be completed on the platform, and upon completion, Coursera issues a certificate that students can present to their university instructors as proof of completion.
For a list of courses available to students at the University, click here. Please note that courses may vary from semester to semester.
MIT OpenCourseWare is a platform developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the special purpose of making all of MIT’s educational materials OER (Open educational resources*). Such educational and research resources are licensed in a way that allows users to own, share, and, in most cases, even modify the materials used.
Currently, there are thousands of MIT courses available to the public.
‘Open educational resources’ include teaching, learning, and research materials that are licensed in a way that allows users to own, share, and, in most cases, even modify the materials used.
The aim of the OER initiative is to expand general access to academic content.
In 2019, UNESCO defined OER as follows: “teaching, learning and research materials that make use of appropriate tools, such as open licensing, to permit their free reuse, continuous improvement and repurposing by others for educational purposes.”
For more details about OER, click here.
OER Commons website
Source: Wikipedia and OER Commons website
Aiming to expand access to knowledge, Yale University has created the Open Yale Courses platform to provide free and open access to a selection of its materials, with no registration required.
The list of courses on offer is available here.
Educational media libraries are usually aggregator websites that provide videos tailored to the interests of non-expert audiences but still potentially regarded as scholarly or scientific.
As one of the best known video content platforms today, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) operates under the motto: „Ideas worth spreading”.
The aim of TED is to provide a platform for the dissemination of knowledge stemming from ideas that have an impact and advance things, irrespective of what discipline they emerge in. That is why organizers of the annual TED conferences always invite and welcome speakers who have something new, something more to show to the public (be it about education, business, science, the arts, or global issues) and want to share their ideas to help people, communities, and the world.
TED is on a mission to discover the most interesting people and to communicate their ideas to the world.
These are various conferences organized to kick-start other events organized by TED.
a. Audio and video podcast, making the best talks available online for free
b. Almost every video has subtitles and clickable transcripts with time-codes
c. Launched in 2006 (First TED talk made available: Averting the climate crisis)
d. 100 million views in 2009
e. 4200+ talks
Simulcast version of the main TED Conference
Since 2009, this fellowship program has been supporting TED speakers – for example, by providing public-speaking training, media training, professional coaching, and educational programs – to help them articulate their ideas and vision to others more efficiently. In addition, fellows receive help in connecting with experts active in fields related to their own fields of activity, with additional assistance also provided to help them get in touch with industry leaders on a global scale.
Since 2009, TED allows independent organizers to hold local TED events, which are based on the TED Conference format but not controlled by TED. More than 3000 such events are held annually.
TED has created a separate infrastructure to allow for all the TED Talk videos available online to be translated into more than 100 languages.
a. TED-Ed was launched in 2012.
b. Its video library contains short, animated video lessons targeted specifically at educators and learners to help with teaching and learning.
c. It brings together experts in given fields with professional animators to have original animations made.
d. Videos are accompanied by questions and further information on relevant subjects, with related discussions also available in many cases.
TED Radio Hour is a weekly, hour-long radio program and podcast produced by TED in partnership with broadcasters to allow certain TED Talks to be broadcast on public radio stations
Among all the Hungarian websites that host video content, Videotorium is the one most worth mentioning and trying, as it has been Hungary’s number one academic video sharing platform since its launch in 2010. Videos uploaded to Videotorium may be coupled with images, presentations, and documents.
Videotorium “provides a fitting platform for videos that facilitate academic work and also provide viewers a closer look at various disciplines […] It functions as a novel and engaging learning environment, while its multimedia services are of great benefit to public collections, libraries, public education and higher education institutions, and research institutions.” Source
Public videos are available to everyone, but there are also videos with restricted access and videos that may only be viewed by members of groups.
Registered users can use the following features:
Big Think is a video library that contains over 2000 interviews with the world’s greatest minds, from Judith Butler through Helen Fisher to Elon Musk. It also comes with categorized playlists and videos on issues of special interest.
The Internet Archive is a platform that attempts to archive websites, but as a digital library, it also contains many videos in many categories, such as movies, news, TV shows.