Dear Video Abbey: Our College mounts fully online classes and I have been helping with the streaming issues for this. Of course, my first line for big box office films is Swank and my first line for all others is becoming Kanopy (I just don't have the time to research and schmooze on each title while tracking down rights). However, there are times when a professor wants a film that is widely available through major vendors at a very low cost that we can offload to students. Such is the case with a Pop Culture course coming up this summer.
What I normally do is take the list from the professor and determine the best approach for the college and the students. Here is an example: Picture Bride (1994) http://digitalcampus.swankmp.com/synopsis?0013788 $106 (I could see pulling this one out and asking students to pay since multiple vendors are offering access) --we could have them get Picture Bride http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Bride-Toshiro-Mifune/dp/B007Z9R04I/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1399488749&sr=8-3&keywords=Picture+Bride Rent 2.99 --also available streaming in Netflix: http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/60034052?strkid=786408852_0_0&trkid=222336&movieid=60034052 Since the title is available on Swank, I usually advocate for that since there are fewer issues with access. But sometimes, it is ONLY available streaming on Amazon or Netflix (or we have no money left so we need to push them there). So we give students that information and they can choose where to get their access. Problem is--Amazon in the UK is different in offerings from Amazon in the US and same with Netflix. It is a licensing issue. But there is nearly no way for us to avoid that. Last year, we had our first issue with a student in an online course who could not get a hold of a film at all because of his/her location. Now, there are lots of documents on the interwebs that "hack" the situation by using something like PureVPN or another tool/proxy. But I don't think we can point students to these for a variety of reasons. So, what do you do? Do we need to limit ourselves only to those things that we can host on our own or with Swank or Kanopy or FFH, etc? That would really narrow our offerings and significantly change what faculty can use. Have you experienced this? How do you deal with this? Is there a statement that you use to warn students in online classes that this may happen? Do you find out from where everyone will be accessing your courses and prep before hand? Is that even possible? Sometimes these are accelerated 3 week courses and I need to be nimble enough to have a solution on hand. --Screaming with Streaming! (Aka Rebecca) -- Rebecca Oling Coordinator of Instruction and Literature Librarian Purchase College Library 735 Anderson Hill Road Purchase, NY 10577 tel. 914-251-6417 fax 914-251-6437 [email protected] Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
