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#2 — EPA's Green Scene

An environmental video podcast and online streaming video in an interview format by the EPA. It is released on a variable schedule, but is about weekly or once every two weeks. The production quality is great, as is the bilingual anchorwoman.

Production Quality: Excellent
Update Frequency: Every two weeks...or so
Accessible?: Yes—captioning provided

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#3 — State Department Videos

Videos of the latest events at the State Department in news clip or video press release formats. The resolution is not perfect, but the videos are very timely.

Production Quality: Good
Update Frequency: Daily or several times daily
Accessible?: Yes—transcripts provided

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#4 — White House News Videos

Videos of the latest events at the White House in news clip or video press release formats. As with the State Department, the resolution is not perfect, but the videos are always current.

Production Quality: Good
Update Frequency: Daily or several times daily
Accessible?: Usually—transcript usually provided

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Top Educational Video Libraries

#1 — National Science Foundation

Well-produced and informative videos on current scientific issues. NSF recently started offering their videos in Flash format, which has increased the speed and reliability of their new releases. The only downside to these must-see videos is that only one new video is released per month.

Production Quality: Excellent!
Quantity: About 100 total. One new release monthly
Accessible?: Yes—captioning provided

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#2 — NASA Missions' Multimedia

The best NASA videos are their excellent short documentaries to explain most of their current missions. It can be a bit tedious to navigate to the videos through each "mission", but it beats hoping your mission is one of the lucky few that is featured or sifting through hundreds of videos in the archives.

Many missions make their videos relatively easy to spot, but for Hubble videos, click into the Hubble mission, then click "multimedia" on the left side of the screen. Closed captioning is available.

Production Quality: Excellent!
Quantity: A couple hundred
Accessible?: Yes—captioning provided

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#3 — Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has an extensive collection of distinguished speakers and scholars on subjects of History, Culture, Religion, Science, and more. The videos are generally in "talking head" format, but the content is educational and sometimes related to current events. You must navigate the videos by category. It would be nice to see which videos were added most recently.

If you have technical difficulties in Firefox, try the latest version of Internet Explorer.

Production Quality: Good
Quantity: A few hundred
Accessible?: No—neither captioning nor transcripts

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#4 — Whitehouse Video Tours

Nice videos provide virtual tours of the White House. Many of the tours are "led" by high-ranking officials, including George W. Bush. Sometimes the server can be slow.

Production Quality: Good — Excellent
Quantity: 17
Accessible?: No—neither captioning nor transcripts

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#5 — Department of Labor Career Videos

Through this large collection, viewers can learn about many careers. Each video explains and portrays a given career including what the work is like, what training is needed, and more. The most in-demand careers are promoted at the top of the collection.

This is excellent content that can help anyone choose a career. But the production quality and download speeds leave much to be desired.

Production Quality: Poor — Fair
Quantity: A couple hundred
Accessible?: Yes—captioning provided

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Best Public Service Announcement Collection

Ad Council

This is not a government site, but it showcases government-funded media campaigns by the Ad Council. These fantastic, professional television advertisements are some of the best examples of government communications. The ads are generally copyrighted, so see the terms of use for restrictions on each video.

Production Quality: Excellent!
Quantity: About 50
Accessible?: No—neither captioning nor transcripts

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Best of the Strange and Weird Collections

Commander in Chef Tribute

There are many government videos that make you scratch your head. But this series is the best in its class. If you have some time on your hands, you might get some chuckles from these interviews with the Executive Pastry Chef!

Production Quality: Excellent!
Quantity: 15
Accessible?: No—neither captioning nor transcripts

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Tips for Government Videographers

The best government video collections are polished and professional. These are some rules of thumb observed by the best video collections:

1. Be sure your videos work and load quickly. The most robust government video sites offer videos in multiple formats or in Flash.
   
2. Make sure your videos have some narration, dialogue, or explanation. Silent movies, whether paired with orchestral accompaniment or not, are no longer innovative.
   
3. Provide videos in high or relatively-high resolution.
   
4. Do not provide too little content per video or per video library. A year-old video library that contains 3 or 4 videos is not impressive.
   
5. Include the content date if possible.
   
6. Make your videos 508 accessible with closed captioning or text transcripts.
   
7. If you publish videos only a few times per year, do not call them "news". Call them "video press releases" instead.