INFOhio's Core Collection of Electronic Resources have a variety of video clips which can be used to enhance PowerPoint presentations. Links can also be added to Word documents in online assignments or even to EBSCO Page Composer pages, making it easy for students to access these resources directly.

Finding Video Clips

Britannica Online School Edition contains over 2,000 video clips and animations. You can either SEARCH or BROWSE to locate them. All three Britannica encyclopedias display the same Multimedia or graphics, regardless of which one you select. To SEARCH, choose one of the three, such as Compton’s, and enter your search term. If graphics are available for your topic, they will be displayed in the frame to the right labeled Multimedia. Click on More Multimedia for all the images retrieved by your search. Both still graphics and Video/Animations will be displayed. Those which are motion will be labeled Video/Animations.

To BROWSE Britannica’s video clips by subject area, select Compton’s and under Features choose Video Browse. Video clips are arranged by subject area and may be further subdivided.

Annals of American History – This is also a Britannica product and contains several hundred video clips on the subject of American History. A quick way to locate the video results is to use the Timeline. After selecting a time period, select Show Only: Multimedia, instead of Documents. Click Go to see Images, Audio and Video. They are grouped by type, with Video being at the bottom of the list.

While Annals maiin purpose to to provide primary source document, and the video camera was not invented until the early 1900s, some of the videos are actually still photos or illustrations with narration. Therefore, the video content can be found in all of the time periods.

Adding Video Clips to Documents or Presentations

Frequently, teachers and students have a difficult time adding movie clips to presentations so that they play directly without going through several steps within the database. A recent tip sheet, Linking Britannica Video Clips to PowerPoint Presentations will make this process easy. [MS Word OR PDF 2 pgs]

These methods also work well with most videos or clips you might find using SingingFish, a search engine for audio and video on the Internet. You might want to share this method with your Technology instructor if he/she is teaching PowerPoint.

Sheila Benedum
Librarian, Bay High School
Electronic Resources Spotlight Coordinator

Suggestions
INFOhio participants and visitors to this site are encouraged to submit suggestions to INFOhio about our Electronic Resources and ER Spotlights.