Finding Resources: American Archive of Public Broadcasting
OVERVIEW
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH Educational Foundation. It was founded in 2013 “to coordinate a national effort to identify, preserve, and make accessible as much as possible the historical record of publicly funded broadcasting in the U.S.” It now features contributors from nearly every state.
The AAPB digital collections are available for online streaming and contain more than 50,000 public television and radio programs from the late 1930s to the present day, including interviews with leading political and cultural figures as well as ordinary people, national newscasts, news from diverse communities, revealing documentaries, and live event coverage. For more information, review the AAPB FAQ.
BROWSING
To get better acquainted with the content of the collections, begin by browsing by topic or through one or more of the special section listed below. Additionally, check into the What’s New section to learn about recent additions to the archive
Exhibits: curators contextualize digitized primary and secondary source materials to present a diversity of perspectives on a variety of topics
- Climate Change Conversations: Causes, Impacts, Solutions
- Documenting and Celebrating Public Broadcasting Station Histories
- Education Reporting on Public Television
- Exploring Public Media in the Peabody Awards Collection
- Freedom Song: Interviews from Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965
- “Gavel-to-Gavel”: The Watergate Scandal and Public Television
- Latino Empowerment through Public Broadcasting
- Native Narratives: The Representation of Native Americans in Public Broadcasting
- On the Right: NET and Modern Conservatism
- Protecting Places: Historic Preservation and Public Broadcasting
- Speaking and Protesting in America
- Structuring the News: The Magazine Format in Public Media
- Televising Black Politics in the Black Power Era: Black Journal and Soul!
- Voices of Democracy: Public Media and Presidential Elections
- Voices from the Southern Civil Rights Movement
- ZOOM: Children’s Community and Public Television in the 1970s
Special Collections: finding aids provide detailed information about the content, recommended search strategies, and related resources; most materials are available online
- 1964 Interviews
- 9/11 Special Coverage
- AAPB Road Trip
- Abolitionists Interviews
- Africans in America Interviews
- Alabama Experience
- American Masters Interviews
- BirdNote
- BackStory
- In Black America
- Black Journal
- Broadcasting in the Public Interest: The Newton Minow Collection
- Center for Asian American Media
- En Français
- Evolution of Jazz
- Eyes on the Prize Interviews
- Feminist Community Radio at KOPN
- Focus 580
- Freedom Riders Interviews
- Friday Night Jazz with Reuben Jackson
- Georgia Gazette
- Great Depression Interviews
- Jean Walkinshaw Collection
- Jewish American Heritage Collection
- John Beyer Iowa Documentaries
- John Brown’s Holy War Interviews
- Jubilee Singers Interviews
- Ken Burns’ The Civil War Interviews
- LGBT+ Collection
- Línea Abierta
- Local Programs from WSRE from Pensacola, Florida
- To the Moon Interviews
- Murder of Emmett Till Interviews
- National Association of Educational Broadcasters Programs
- National Educational Television
- National Federation of Community Broadcasters Programs
- North Carolina Now Collection
- North Carolina Voices
- OutCasting: LBGTQ Youth Programs
- Pacifica Radio Archive
- PBS NewsHour
- Peabody Awards Collection
- People Near Here
- Prospects of Mankind with Eleanor Roosevelt
- Radio KDNA
- Reconstruction Interviews
- Rock & Roll
- Say Brother
- Stonewall Uprising Interviews
- Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows
- Vegetable Soup Collection
- Virginia Public Media: Journey through the Archives
- Vietnam: A Television History Interviews Collection
- Vision Maker Media Documentaries
- Wall $treet Week With Louis Rukeyser
- Watergate Hearings
- WRVR-FM (Riverside Radio) Collection
- Woman Series
- Word on Words
- Zoom
SEARCHING
AAPB recommends using the general search box at the top right of any page (as opposed to the Advanced Search option) when searching a topic for the first time, though you might want to include your “search terms” within quotes to search for an exact phrase. After you receive the results, you may want to use the filters in the left column to narrow the list of results (see options/descriptions below). Be aware, however, that the archive is still in the process of being catalogued so not every item available online have been tagged with all the filter facets.
Filters
- Media type: moving image or sound
- Genre: for example, interviews, news shows, talk shows
- Topic: for example, education, fine arts, global affairs
- Asset type: episodes, program, raw footage, segment, compilation
- Contributing organization
- Producing organization
- Date: you may select a specific year or range of years