The Library maintains collections of both physical (DVD, VHS, 16mm) and streaming media. You can search the catalog for specific titles or go directly to the catalog or database to search for films by title, director or genre. If you have any questions or need help finding a title, just contact us.
Search Anything
Search through our list of Databases
Search for Journals by title
Search the Cooper Union Archives
Academic Video Online from Alexander Street delivers 80,000+ titles spanning a wide range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. More than 18,000 titles are exclusive to Alexander Street.
EAI’s Educational Streaming Service is a unique subscription-based resource that transforms EAI’s Online Catalogue into a “digital textbook.” Almost 1,200 titles by 65 artists are currently available for streaming via this digital delivery platform. Eventually, the Service will encompass EAI’s entire collection of 3,800 media artworks.
Streaming videos selected to support coursework at Cooper Union for the current academic year.
The Cooper Union Library maintains a select collection of films on 16mm. They are for classroom use only and must be shown by a qualified projectionist. Below is a complete list of titles and information on whether we also own copies in DVD or VHS formats. For more information, please contact Dale Perreault.
The AdViews digital collection provides access to thousands of historic commercials created for clients or acquired by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency or its predecessor during the 1950s - 1980s. All of the commercials held in the DMB&B Archives will be digitized, allowing students and researchers access to a wide range of vintage brand advertising from the first four decades of mainstream commercial television.
The AIFG presently contains over 450 non-fiction films that document Native lifeways from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, with a large concentration on peoples of the Southwest. The films range from a 1922 silent newsreel to recent footage of pow-wows and political meetings in 2011.
Art21 produces award-winning documentary films about the world’s most groundbreaking contemporary artists.
Black Film Archive is a living register of Black films. In its current iteration, it showcases Black films made from 1898 to 1999 currently streaming.
British Pathé is considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world. Spanning the years from 1896-1978, its collections include footage from around the globe of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, science, and culture. It is an invaluable resource for broadcasters, documentary producers, museum curators, and researchers worldwide. The entire archive of 85,000 films is available to view for free on the British Pathé website while licences can be acquired for other uses.
As of January 1, 2022 all films released in 1926 and earlier are in the public domain in the United States. In 2023, all films released in 1927 will enter the public domain, and so on. Films on this list released in later years lost their copyright status for a variety of reasons while protected under old copyright laws. Obviously, this list is far from exhaustive and presents only a small selection of the public domain’s ever-increasing riches.,
Watch 4,000+ movies free online. Includes classics, indies, film noir, documentaries and other films, created by some of our greatest actors, actresses and directors. The collection is divided into the following categories: Comedy & Drama; Film Noir, Horror & Hitchcock; Westerns (many with John Wayne); Martial Arts Movies; Silent Films; Documentaries, and Animation.
The focus of the Public Domain Review is on works that have fallen into the public domain—a vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction.
The BBC Sound Effects Archive is available for personal, educational or research purposes. There are over 33,000 clips from across the world from the past 100 years. These include clips made by the BBC Radiophonic workshop, recordings from the Blitz in London, special effects made for BBC TV and Radio productions, as well as 15,000 recordings from the Natural History Unit archive. You can explore sounds from every continent - from the college bells ringing in Oxford to a Patagonian waterfall - or listen to a submarine klaxon or the sound of a 1969 Ford Cortina door slamming shut.
The focus of the Public Domain Review is on works now fallen into the public domain, that vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction. Our aim is to promote and celebrate the public domain in all its abundance and diversity, and help our readers explore its rich terrain – like a small exhibition gallery at the entrance to an immense network of archives and storage rooms that lie beyond.
The Voices from the Great Hall digital platform encompasses all known sound and video recordings made in the Hall and held by The Cooper Union dating back to John Dewey’s 1941 address "In Philosophy." This historical collection, which documents over 3,000 Great Hall programs, also includes photographs, fliers, press releases, and other ephemera dating back to 1859.
