Introducing Ethnographic Video Online

A new resource just added to the Penn Libraries homepage, Ethnographic Video Online, provides access to a collection of over 1,000 films for the study of study of human culture and behavior, covering every region of the world, and featuring the work of many of the most influential documentary filmmakers of the 20th century. EVO Iicludes interviews, previously unreleased raw footage, field notes, study guides, and more. Thematic areas such as language and culture, kinesthetics, body language, food and foraging, cooking, economic systems, social stratification and status, caste systems and slavery, male and female roles, kinship and families, political organization, conflict and conflict resolution, religion and magic, music and the arts, and sex, gender, and family roles can all be studied cross-culturally.

Database features include:

• uniquely powerful browse and search capabilities enabled by Alexander Street's Semantic Indexing™
• multiple points of access—browses, searches, thumbnail images, transcripts — allowing you to find your point of interest in hundreds of hours of video within seconds
• synchronized, searchable transcripts
• video clip-making tools
• annotated playlists—you can make, annotate, and share playlists for course or individual use, and you can include links to materials or resources outside of the collection to make this your one-stop resource
• high quality, licensed, in-copyright material plus newsreel and other valuable footage
• the ability to create synchronized annotations and multi-media presentations
• an embeddable video player and playlist for use on a class Web site, library home page, or an electronic syllabus—lets you drive usage and deliver content to users where and when they need it without instructions or countless screens and clicks
• streaming, quickly accessible online video at 400 and 800 kbps with no delays and no special equipment (just Flash and a browser)