C-SPAN Video Library is the
audio and video streaming website of
C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
, the
American legislative broadcaster
A legislature broadcaster is a broadcaster, a television channel or a radio station that mainly broadcasts sound or video from the legislature and other parliamentary chambers such as parliamentary commissions in a city, state or in a country.
...
. The site offers a complete, freely accessible
archive going back to 1987. It was launched in March 2010, and was integrated into the main C-SPAN website in 2013.
Available content
The site provides access to C-SPAN's collection of Congressional proceedings and other political and public affairs programming, including complete archives dating back to 1987. Content is searchable and browsable by program, topics, date, and speaker. At its launch in 2010, the site offered 160,000 hours of archived programming. New programming is archived shortly after broadcast.
[
C-SPAN was launched in 1979 but has limited archived material from its early years. According to C-SPAN itself, the first ever event broadcast by the network to be archived was the 90-minute confirmation hearings for Judge Robert Bork that aired on C-SPAN1 in September 15, 1987. When the site was launched in 2010 its director ]Robert X. Browning
Robert Xavier Browning is a professor at Purdue University and head of the C-SPAN Archives in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Education and academic career
Browning graduated from Marquette University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1972. He recei ...
said 10,000 hours of other tapes from 1979 to 1987 were slated for restoration, digitization, and addition.[
''Congressional Chronicle'' is a section with searchable transcripts of House and Senate floor debates and pages for current and past members of Congress, with biographies, voting records, campaign finance records, and a timeline of House and Senate sessions. The site also provides episodes of '' Book TV'' and '' Booknotes'', its now discontinued series of author interviews.]
Recognition
Journalists and opposition researchers have used the site to locate past statements by politicians. Three sources used it to locate clips and information about Christine O'Donnell
Christine Therese O'Donnell (born August 27, 1969) is an American conservative activist in the Tea Party movement best known for her 2010 campaign for the United States Senate seat from Delaware vacated by Joe Biden.
O'Donnell was born in ...
during her failed 2010 Senate bid.
Political commentator and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow
Rachel Anne Maddow (, ; born April 1, 1973) is an American television news program host and liberal political commentator. Maddow hosts ''The Rachel Maddow Show'', a weekly television show on MSNBC, and serves as the cable network's special eve ...
is a prominent fan of the site. She said having access was "like being able to Google political history using the ‘I Feel Lucky’ button every time."[ and in May 2011 it was recognized with a ]Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
.
History
C-SPAN has recorded and catalogued its coverage of Congress and other public affairs programming since the establishment of the C-SPAN Archives in 1987 at Purdue University's Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, Indiana.[ upon completion of a multi-year project that digitized C-SPAN programming from 1987 onward.]
References
External links
C-SPAN Video Library
{{authority control
Video library
American digital libraries
Archives in the United States
Video on demand services