C-SPAN Video Library
C-SPAN Video Library is the audio and video streaming website of C-SPAN, the American legislative broadcaster. 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 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. In addition to C-SPAN programming, the site provides access to certain historic videos from the National Archives, such as video from President Nixon's 1972 trip to China.
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 during her failed 2010 Senate bid.Political commentator and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow 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." Mediaite columnist Frances Martel called it "a landmark in government transparency" and said it was valuable for historical research.
In September 2010, the site was awarded the Golden Beacon by the Association of Cable Communicators, and in May 2011 it was recognized with a Peabody Award.