Guides: Resources for Faculty and Teaching: Digital Resources and Archives

A-Z Database List

The library has multiple options for exploring different digital resources available for your research online. You can view all of our electronic databases/content in our A-Z Database List. Here, you can search by name or filter by subject or database type (i.e. streaming or image databases).

You can also explore our librarian-built subject guides for your school or course. View our research guides (also called LibGuides) here: library.uncsa.edu/

Additional Open Access Resources

There is a wealth of information on the internet that is free and accessible to everyone, some of it not available anywhere else, parts of the collections of research libraries, and some providing educational resources such as textbooks and other content. Some open access resources can be found below, and more can be found in the A-Z Database list:

Internet Archive This link opens in a new window
Internet Archive is a non-profit digital public library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. All content is free and digitally accessible for users that create a personal patron account.
Digital NC This link opens in a new window
Explore the history and culture of North Carolina through original materials from cultural heritage repositories across the state.
Digital Public Library of America This link opens in a new window
Explore nearly 17 million digital items such as maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, and museum objects from libraries, archives, and museums across the US.
Open Education North Carolina Collection This link opens in a new window
Contains free, open textbooks that have been curated for the most frequently taught courses across North Carolina's 2 and 4-year colleges and universities. Faculty can adopt these open educational resources (OER) to save their students money and lower the overall cost of higher education.
Open Stax This link opens in a new window
Open Stax publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print. Students and instructors can create a personal account with their UNCSA email and access all online materials for free.
Open Library This link opens in a new window
An open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published; a project of the non-profit Internet Archive.
Open Score Project This link opens in a new window
OpenScore aims to digitize and liberate all public domain sheet music, including the great classics of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. They aim to transfer history’s most influential pieces from paper into interactive scores which you can listen to, edit and share. Community based ongoing project.
Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.All DOAJ services are free of charge including being indexed. All data is freely available.

Video Streaming Services

Swank Digital Campus This link opens in a new window
A feature film collection, curated by faculty for use in UNCSA classes, but licensed for viewing by all campus ID holders.
Kanopy This link opens in a new window
A film collection curated by faculty and now including a base collection of a variety of films, including feature films, documentaries, and more.
Films on Demand Master Academic Video Collection This link opens in a new window
Collection of almost 40,000 streaming videos on many subjects as well as documentaries, music and indie films.
World Cinema Collection This link opens in a new window
Includes silent era, groundbreaking international directors, masterpieces from the mid-20th century, and contemporary films from around the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and North America. A collection in Films on Demand.
Digitalia Film Library This link opens in a new window
An eclectic and diverse collection of world cinema and television programs.
Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window
More than 68,000 titles spanning a wide range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more.
Digital Theatre+ This link opens in a new window
Includes about 400 streaming performances, 300 interviews, and supplementary learning materials for theatre, music, and dance. Full-length productions include West End recordings of plays by Ibsen, Miller, Ravenhill, Clare Bayley, Sam Shepard and Frantic Assembly alongside collections from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Complicite, Tara Arts, Talawa, Shakespeare's Globe, and more.
Music Online: Opera in Video This link opens in a new window
Opera in Video contains five hundred hours of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries. Selections represent the world's best performers, conductors, and opera houses and are based on a work's importance to the operatic canon.
Royal Shakespeare Company Collection This link opens in a new window
High-definition recordings of modern productions featuring great Shakespearean actors such as David Tennant, Sir Antony Sher, Paapa Essiedu, and Simon Russell Beale, and directors like Robin Lough and Dewi Humphrey. Recordings are accompanied by production images, teacher packs, and study notes to enhance student understanding of these important plays.
Broadway HD Collection This link opens in a new window
Streaming access to 17 premium performances of plays and musicals from the New York theatre scene.
Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall This link opens in a new window
On your TV, computer, tablet or Smartphone, enjoy video streamed concerts in HD with excellent sound from the Berlin Philharmonic. Each season, concerts are updated and broadcast live, but also archived for later viewing. There are hundreds of recordings of classical music, documentaries and bonus films. To access, create a user account on or off campus.
Metropolitan Opera On Demand This link opens in a new window
Enjoy instant access to more than 575 full-length Met performances with the online streaming database for college and university libraries.
Dance in Video This link opens in a new window
Over five hundred hours of dance productions and documentaries covering ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance.
Medici.tv This link opens in a new window
Streaming video collection of classical music, opera and dance performances. Includes over 3,500 musical works filmed from the 1940s to present; over 2,000 films, including artist portraits, documentaries and master classes; and access to over 100 live streaming performances from the world’s most prestigious venues.

Music Streaming Services

Music Online: Classical Music Library This link opens in a new window
Listening database of classical music recordings.
Music Online: Contemporary World Music This link opens in a new window
Contemporary World Music delivers the sounds of all regions from every continent.
Music Online: American Music This link opens in a new window
Listening database of songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers and cowboys. Included in the database are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war protests, and more.
Music Online: Jazz Music Library This link opens in a new window
Jazz Music Library is the largest and most comprehensive collection of streaming jazz available online; with thousands of jazz artists, ensembles, albums, and genres.
Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new window
Naxos Music Library offers streaming access to more than 130,000 CDs with more than 2 million tracks of both standard and rare repertoire. Over 800 new CDs are added to the library every month.
Music Online: Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries This link opens in a new window
Database of music, spoken word, natural and man-made sounds.
Music and Dance Online This link opens in a new window
Delivers the largest, most diverse catalog of music content in the world for students, scholars, and patrons of the arts. The multimedia resource features works from thousands of respected partners, covers hundreds of genres from alternative to zydeco and from alternative dance to operatic arias, and encompasses a wide range of content formats - including scores, reference, and high definition audio and video.
Music Online: Listening This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary collection of audiovisual content that touches on the curriculum needs of virtually every department. Music Online: Listening allows students and researchers alike to analyze unique and valuable content from over 500 producers and distributors around the world

Digital Collections

Selections from the Archives collections have been digitized and are available to view online. Please note that the material represented online is not the full extent of the physical holdings of the Archives - please consult the Collection Guides or contact the University Archivist to explore material on-site.

The UNCSA Archives Digital Collections contain over 13,000 digitized images and posters from the Archives collections. Digitization efforts have focused on the school's Drama, All-School Musical, and Opera productions. Other subjects include Buildings and Campus Views; Campus Life and Special Events; the International Music Program; and the first campus production of The Nutcracker in 1966. Additional items are added to the database regularly as they are digitized.

Digitized copies of the NC Essay (student newspaper), course bulletins/catalogs, and yearbooks are available through DigitalNC, a statewide digitization and digital publishing program hosted by UNC Chapel Hill's Wilson Special Collections Library.

(NC Essay Logo, 9 December 1968. Publications Collection, UNCSA Archives, University of North Carolina School of the Arts.)