About the Archive

The Vanderbilt Television News Archive began operations on August 5, 1968, with the mission to record, preserve, and provide research access to news programs broadcast by national television networks in the United States.

Recognizing the importance and impact of television news, the VTNA records broadcasts off-the-air to preserve its content for future generations. We offer extensive access to the collection for scholarly and research purposes within the bounds of copyright restrictions

The Core Collection of the archive consists of regularly scheduled evening newscasts from ABC (since 1968), CBS (1968), NBC (1968), CNN (1994) and Fox News (2004). Additionally, the Special Reports Collection includes TV news coverage of major national and world events, such as political conventions, election coverage, presidential speeches, and military conflicts.

The database currently includes 1,496,413 records, including story level abstracts for evening newscasts and catalog records for special reports.

The Vanderbilt Television News Archive operates as a unit of the Vanderbilt University Libraries. Please visit the staff directory to find contact information for members of our staff. The VTNA also works in partnership with the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress. Copies of the programs we record are provided to the Library of Congress for permanent preservation and these recordings become part of their collection.

To see how the archive is being used as a resource for research projects and scholarly communications, visit our bibliography page. There you will also find articles about the history of the VTNA itself.

Access to the Collection

There are a few different ways to access our collection:

• Vanderbilt students, staff, and faculty can stream the entire collection when connected to vuNet
• Affiliated users at sponsoring colleges and universities can stream content from CNN and NBC on our website. Please contact your institution’s library to find out if your school is a sponsor or visit the sponsorship page to learn more about sponsoring the VTNA.
• You can search and view our entire collection by making a free making a few appointment to visit our office in Nashville, TN.
• You can access our collection for free by visiting the Moving Image Resource Center in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
• You can use our loan service to request content which will be delivered digitally. For step-by-step instructions on creating a loan request, please visit the VTNA research guide.

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