An overlay server for illustrative video streaming constitutes a central part of a distributed system for linking content of video recordings to relevant information sources. The overlay server maintains a global object directory including information pertinent to a set of objects and network addresses of external servers providing information relevant to the set of objects. The overlay server further maintains a video-content directory having several overlay directories. Each overlay directory identifies content of a respective video recording from among a set of video recordings and includes a network address of a video-streaming server providing the video recording. The overlay server stores an authoring tool for constructing the overlay directories and an augmented display tool for associating content of a video recording with respective information.