Next time you find yourself scrolling through your streaming queue and thinking that there’s nothing worth watching, try the Library of Congress’s National Screening Room.
This multimedia project, which launched last month, digitized the Library’s video collection and made it free to the public. Available films are both fiction and nonfiction and span 1890 to 1999.
The Library of Congress isn’t Netflix: You won’t be able to watch current Hollywood blockbusters and every season of your favorite TV show. You will, however, find historical films and newsreels ranging from Depression-era documentaries to home videos to educational series about mental health.
All films in the collection, including those that are copyrighted, are available to stream on the LOC website. Files that are in the public domain (which is most of them) can also be downloaded in up to four formats: GIF, JPEG, MP4, and Quicktime.
To watch, visit the National Screening Room. You can sort by date, location, and subject, among other categories, and learn more about each film, including download availability, once you’ve clicked on the title.
As of this writing, the Library of Congress has 298 items in its screening collection. Plans for the project include adding new content every month.
