Expert Field Video Tours
Watch the landscape before making the claim
Field videos can help learners see rivers, mounds, paths, public sites, archives, and preservation landscapes. They must remain clearly sourced, rights-aware, and secondary to evidence labels.
Video Learning Path
Expert Field Video Tours
Use short, sourced field videos to help visitors see landscapes before asking them to interpret records. Videos should support the evidence path; they should not replace citations, claim labels, maps, or source trails.
Place Hubs
Place a field video after Quick facts and before the Story Map when the video explains the landscape, public site, mound, river, archive, or visitor route.
Library
Use videos as orientation shelves: field walk, archive walkthrough, map-reading lesson, and oral-history method. Each video needs a transcript or text alternative.
Research Method
Embed short method videos near claim review, source citation, map reading, and safe-sharing guidance.
Partner Path
Use MoorofUs.org links for wider Moor history context; keep TheFoundationsOf.us videos focused on foundations, Muur history framing, place, evidence, and community research.
Free-use source rules
- Prefer public-domain or open-access sources such as National Park Service media credited to NPS, Library of Congress Free to Use and Reuse materials, and Smithsonian Open Access assets.
- For YouTube, use only videos where embedding is enabled and the source is official, educational, or explicitly licensed for reuse. Embedding is not the same as owning reuse rights.
- Every video card should show source, reuse note, transcript or text alternative, and a short explanation of what the video can and cannot support.
- Do not use video narration as proof of identity, ancestry, tribe, legal status, DNA conclusions, descent, or community membership.
What these video tours add
- They give readers spatial and landscape context that is often hard to get from text alone.
- They help place hubs teach routes, terrain, preservation context, and site layout without pretending the camera settles the history by itself.
- They add teaching value when paired with records, timelines, captions, and source trails instead of being dropped in as atmosphere.
Publishing checklist
- Use public-domain, open-access, official educational, or clearly embeddable videos only.
- Write what the video supports, what remains open, and which sources still need review.
- Prefer short clips near place hubs, source trails, map lessons, and research-method sections.
- Add a transcript, caption, or text alternative before promoting the page publicly.
- Do not use a video as identity, ancestry, tribe, legal-status, DNA, descent, or membership certification.
How to evaluate a field video
- Identify who published it, why it is reusable or embeddable, and whether the source has educational or institutional value.
- Name the place feature the video actually helps readers see: river, mound, mission, road, archive, cemetery, port, boundary, or preservation landscape.
- Write one sentence for what the video can support and one sentence for what it cannot support.
- Pair the video with a text source, map, place hub, or field guide so the page still works without the media.
- Route any claim stronger than landscape orientation into Source Review or Claim Review.
Do not use a video when
- The rights status is unclear or the publisher does not allow embedding.
- The video adds atmosphere but no source, place, method, or teaching value.
- The narration makes unsupported identity, ancestry, legal-status, descent, DNA, membership, or tribal/Nation claims.
- The video exposes private property, living people, graves, ceremonies, or sensitive locations without clear public-use context.
- The page would become weaker if the video disappeared.
Viewer note prompts
After watching, a reader should be able to answer: What did the landscape clarify? Which record or map should be checked next? What claim still needs evidence? What detail should not be repeated publicly yet?
Use Expert Field Video Source: Source to verify Reuse note: Rights and reuse status must be verified before publication.Field video
What a viewer should leave with
A viewer should leave with better spatial orientation, a clearer sense of what the landscape can and cannot show, and a more responsible next step into source review or place-based reading.