The Vanderbilt Television News Archive houses over a million news stories and half a million commercial breaks from August 5th, 1968 to present day. This tutorial helps academic users who belong to an institution which sponsors the archive through the process of borrowing one or more clips, or segments, from the collection.
Login
- Navigate to https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/login.
- If this is your first time using the website, enter your institutional email address (ending in .edu), then select “sign-up” to begin the account creation process.
- Please allow up to 10 minutes to receive the account verification code. It will come from <no-reply@verificationemail.com> and may be caught in your spam folder.
- If your institution has configured Single Sign On (SSO) you will be directed to SSO instead of the account creation process.
Search
- After logging in, click the search icon in the navigation bar to bring up the search functions.
- From here, you can either conduct a simple search or open the “Advanced Search” options.
- Select "Browse by Date" in the navigation bar to locate content using a calendar view.
Advanced Search
- This menu allows you to tweak the parameters of your search to limit by date, network, omit terms, and more.
- As we continue to make site improvements, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Under network, make sure to select “All” (or select individual networks). The networks are not currently selected by default, so your search may fail if you skip this step.
- The transcript search currently includes the following broadcast types: evening news segments from 1968-2022 and episodes of ABC's Nightline.
- The ability to search by location and topics is currently available for content aired in 2025.
Search Results
- After running your search, select “details” to view more details about the item, such as its network and segment description.
- Select “Add Clip” from the search results page or the description page to add it to your basket for checkout.
Check Out
- When you are ready to view the clips in your basket, navigate to the basket icon in the navigation bar.
- From the basket page, select “Check Out.”
- Please read the Copyright Acknowledgement statement.
- Check the box for Acknowledgement and Proceed to Check Out.
Borrowed Items and Video Playback
- After competing the check out process, you’ll automatically be redirected to your Borrowed Items page. From here, select “Details” > “Watch” to view an item.
- You can also reach the Borrowed Items page by selecting "My Account" in the navigation bar.
- The loan period on borrowed items is 14 days. After the two-week period, the items will be returned to the catalog.
- There is a 2400 minute (40 hours) runtime check out limit for individual users. This limit resets at the beginning of every month.
