Find Stock Footage, Sound Effects, Production Music, and Clip Art

Do you need just the right image for your project? Looking for the perfect sound effect for your presentation? Ball State University Libraries can help...

If you're looking for clip art, we do have a selection of royalty-free images. These can be found by checking clip art on the Software & Electronic Games Media Finder and hitting find.

Wanting sound effects or production music? We have a large selection available from the Sounds & Sound Effects Media Finder. If you go to the Educational Resources Center counter on the lower level of Bracken and ask, they have a number of more detailed print guides to our sound effects and production music.

We even have a little bit of royalty-free stock footage for your productions. Some, such as VideoTraxx 1 from Digital Juice, are on DVD-ROM (searchable from the Software & Electronic Games Media Finder by checking video under clip art and media clips) and some are on VHS (searchable from the Videos (All) Media Finder by typing stock footage in the search box).

Tolkien Reading Day (March 25, 2007)

March 25 was selected by the Tolkien Society as Tolkien reading day because it marks the downfall of Sauron in Tolkien's Middle Earth.

J.R.R. Tolkien was my favorite author for many years as a child so I wholeheartedly recommend reading something by him today.

Or you may want to watch movie versions of The Lord of the Rings (both Peter Jackson's version and the 1978 animated film) and The Hobbit. We also have Tolkien on audio if you prefer to catch up with Frodo and Bilbo and the rest that way. We even have the PC game The Lord of the Rings. The Battle for Middle Earth.

You may not have known that Tolkien was also a medieval scholar, who translated or edited a number of Old and Middle English works. Why not sample some other examples of Old English and Middle English literature?

Pi Day, 3.141592... (March 14, 2007)

There aren't too many mathematical holidays, but March 14 is Pi Day. Bracken Library has lots of videos, software, pictures (including posters of multicultural geometry that range from ancient Egyptian methods of computing the area of a circle to patterns in American patchwork quilts), activity and flash cards, and teaching aids to help you brush up on your geometry. Or, to help a younger friend conquer math, use the Software & Electronic Games Media Finder to find math-related educational software for kids (choose children under audience and check math under selected subjects)

Personally, I like my pie sweeter and more concrete than the pi I dimly remember from math class. Although they won't satisfy your sweet tooth, the library does have pictures and plastic food models of pies. Use the Mega Media Finder and select food models under specific materials to find all of our food models, which are useful for teaching about nutrition and portion sizes.

From the Movies & TV Programs (fiction video) Media Finder, try Pi, Darren Aronofsky's bizarre movie about a mathematician flirting with insanity in his quest for the mathematical secret to the universe (or at least the stock market). You could follow this up with the intriguingly-titled video Is God a Number?: Maths That Mimic the Mind. Or, for another type of pie entirely, you may prefer to check out the American Pie movies.

Find Chamber Music by Instrumentation

The Chamber Music Media Finder will help you find scores and recordings for different instruments. You may wonder why we offer three types of searches: "exact instrumentation," "including these instruments," and "exactly X parts."

Well, most of the time, most people probably want "exact instrumentation." So if you want duets for flute and piano, you can easily select one flute and one piano and get just that. If you're looking just for scores, don't forgot to select scores under format in the upper right corner.

The other two options can be more helpful with less common instruments. For example, if you want to listen to shakuhachi music, you can choose "including these instruments," any number of shakuhachi (under other woodwinds) and recordings (under format) to get pieces that include any number of shakuhachi parts.

This "including these instruments" option also often works better if you want to include percussion in your search because the number of percussion parts in a given piece of music is not always fixed.

The "exactly X parts" option could be helpful in some cases. Say you play sax and you want to play a duet, but you don't know with whom yet. You could choose scores under format, exactly 2 parts including 1 saxophone, and get all the duets for saxophone and something else without having to specify the other instrument.

International Women's Day (March 8, 2007) & Women's History Month

Celebrate International Women's Day by using media from the library to learn more about women's history and women in the world today. Check out videos, CD-ROMs, non-fiction audio, and pictures and posters about women. Or look into these Women's Week 2007 events here at Ball State during Women's History Month.

Why not browse for media on women and...

Art

Business and Economics

Dance and Theater

Education

Film and Television

History and Politics

Language, Literature and the Press

Music

Religion

Science

Sports

John Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath

Muncie Civic Center is presenting Frank Galati's adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath on March 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, and 17.

Want to know more about Steinbeck? Did you know that University Libraries' Archives and Special Collections Research Center holds a large collection of Steinbeck-related material, including the Hayashi Steinbeck Collection and Archives? You can see much of our Steinbeck collection in our catalog.

If you want to brush up on The Grapes of Wrath, we have the book (in many languages!--not just French and German, but also Japanese and Czech) or we also have it in audio form. Or try some other fiction about migrant laborers, like John Grisham's Painted House, or fiction set during the Great Depression (mostly kids' books).

We also have the film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath with Henry Fonda. You might also enjoy these other films set during the Great Depression.

For background information, we have a few videos that discuss the dust bowl, including a video on how the U.S. government launched the U.S. Soil Conservation Service as a response to the devastation of the dust storms of the 1930s. You might also like Surviving the dust bowl, an episode of the TV program American Experience. To get a sense of what it was like back then, check out Documentary Photo Aids' pictures of the Dust Bowl era. We also have some videos on history and life during the Great Depression.

Introducing the Mega Media Finder

The new Mega Media Finder helps you search multiple types of media at once. Do you need props for a lesson plan or presentation or materials for hands-on, experiential learning? Find 3-d artifacts, such as toys, models, and clothing--yes, it's true; in addition to mooching from your roommates, you can also borrow clothes from the library :-) , multi-format kits, pictures and posters, activity and flash cards, software, spoken recordings, videos, and more with the Mega Media Finder.

Why not try it out? Find it on the Media Finder home page in the right-hand column under "Other." Let me know what you think or what could be improved by commenting below or contacting me (Kelley) at kmcgrath at bsu.edu.