Find MovieClips Online

Looking for high-quality movie clips online? Try MovieClips, a free website which offers more than 12,000 scenes searchable by actor, title, genre, occasion, action, mood, character, theme, setting, prop, and even dialogue. You can save clips as favorites, add and answer trivia questions related to movie scenes, embed clips on your own website, and share clips with friends via Facebook, Twitter, and more. MovieClips is only available in the US and Canada, and right now clips are available from six major Hollywood studios: 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros.

Currently in beta, MovieClips also welcomes feedback, including suggestions for movies that you’d like to see added to the collection.

VoiceThread Used by NYPL Picture Collection

The New York Public Library’s Picture Collection uses a collaborative web-based discussion and presentation tool, VoiceThread, to show images from their collections to the public and to students in classrooms. VoiceThread allows users to make comments on presentations by webcam, computer microphone, text, or telephone. If leaving a comment by computer, users may also draw on an image to illustrate their opinions.

For more information about VoiceThread, click here.

The Bayeux Tapestry Comes Alive

The Bayeaux Tapestry, one of the most important chronicles of its day, offers a vivid depiction of the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. A video available on YouTube from PotionGraphics brings the tale to life through animation and sound effects. The clip begins about halfway through the tapestry, at the appearance of Haley’s Comet, and ends at The Battle of Hastings.

Video discovered via Open Culture. The entire scroll is available to view here.

Database of Virtual Art

The Database of Virtual Art seeks to document and ultimately preserve the evolving field of digital installation art. The database is intended for both researchers and artists, and digital media artists are encouraged to post content themselves. The web-based resource is free and allows browsing by artist name as well as keyword. Works, literature, people, events and institutions may also be searched.

Pictured: The Living Web by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, 2002.

Vintage Television Commercials on iTunes U

More than 1,500 historic American television commercials from the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in the Duke University Special Collections Library are now available on iTunes U. This collection is called AdViews. Videos are free to download, and can be viewed at the computer or on video-capable iPods.

Most of the 1,500 currently available videos date from the 1950s and 1960s. A keyword search for “coffee” brings up eight albums, including a Yuban Coffee ablum with more than seventy commercials.

The total collection comprises 12,000 commercials and librarians at Duke hope to finish digitization by the end of 2009. Click here for more information.

accessCeramics Receives NEA Grant

accessCeramics is a free, web-based digital collection of contemporary ceramics created by recognized artists. In April, the project was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Access to Artistic Excellence Grant. The collection makes use of the robust metadata of a traditional digital library while comprising the openness and flexibility of Flickr. Designed for artists, art educators, scholars and the public, the project was organized by the Visual Resources Collection of Watzek Library and the Art Department of Lewis & Clark College.

For more information, click here.

Photography Tool: Tourist Remover

Have you ever found yourself waiting for passersby to move out of your viewfinder? Perhaps while trying to photograph architecture or other works of art? A free web-based filter allows you to remove tourists and other unwanted moving objects from your photographs. The aptly titled Tourist Remover even allows up to 100 MB of storage (and more with a paid upgrade).

Read more about how the tool works here. Happy 4th of July picture-taking!

London’s National Gallery of Art on the iPhone

Collections from London’s National Gallery are the first to ever be accessible via a downloadable iPhone application. iPhone owners can now explore the museum’s galleries from anywhere in the world using a free (for a limited time) Pentimento application called Love Art.

Making use of special iPhone features such as its large touch-screen, zoom, Rolodex and scrollable menus, Love Art offers a playful exploration of the collection, together with informative commentaries. The paintings are showcased to the best advantage using high-resolution images on the iPhone’s excellent-quality screen. Due to a tactile interface the experience gained through this application is not only highly enjoyable, but also lets you zoom in to see details that are often missed.

For more information, read this review from Applelinks, or see the National Gallery’s press release about Love Art.