Click here for more information about this demo.

This Ivy League Video Demo aggregates the metadata and transcripts of the videos from each of the main YouTube Channels of the 8 Ivy League Schools (plus MIT). This demo includes approximately 8000 demos. (That’s quite a few, but the demo could even hold millions of videos.)

Now that you have opened this webpage, several things are happening:

  1. The video search interface opens
  2. A search term ( in this case the word technology), is automatically inserted into the search box (you can enter any other word, if you like)
  3. The search begins. The search includes each of the transcriptions for the thousands of videos in the collection, the titles of all of the videos, and all the metadata of the videos
  4. The first video in the Results List opens: the Results List includes all the videos with the word “technology” in either the transcripts, the Titles, or the metadata.
  5. The Results List is sorted in rank order, and a number of factors impact the ranking: where is the search term found (Title, metadata, transcript), how many times, and how close together are the terms.

Go Ahead: give another search term a try! Think of any topic you’d like to learn a little more about, drop it into the search field, press search. Be prepared to learn from some of the most interesting videos on YouTube.

Once you click into one of the videos, not only can you watch the whole video right there in the same window, but you can also read the transcript as it scrolls in time with the video. Your search query is highlighted, and you can easily jump between results in the transcript. If you find something you like and want to share, just highlight the transcript and a link is created that jumps right to that spot in the video. You can share it via Facebook, Twitter, or email.