The Academic Video Online database (AVON) provides scholarly video material including documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and commercials. Alexander Street is a large website where one of the many websites they host is the AVON Database. Alexander Street, LLC was founded in May 2000 with the goal of publishing large-scale digital collections of exceptional quality in the humanities and social sciences.
The front page is creative, as it features a montage of the different videos they have on the site. The site can be overwhelming at first because there are so many subjects. You have to know what you’re looking for to be able to navigate through it. But if you’re like me and you just want to explore, it’s not hard. I love cooking and I want to learn more about food. There are videos on food preparation to learn the basics of work in the kitchen, and videos exploring Italian cuisine. There is a show called “Faces of Italy” with 30 episodes! Another show called “Food Safari” takes viewers all around the world tasting food from other cultures.
This is a great resource for class, too. I may not fully understand a lesson, but if I go to the AVON database I can find tons of videos explaining it. There are over 12,500 videos just on American history. There are even videos about nursing, literature, engineering and language.
Academic Video Online offers videos in every field imaginable. It delivers more than 64,000 videos from subjects including anthropology, business, counseling, traveling, history, music, health and more.
This blog post was written by journalism student Megan Wilson for the University of Arkansas Libraries.