Dixon, Jennifer

English

Fordham University School of Law

Fordham Law School FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History Staff Publications Law Library 9-7-2017 The Academic Mainstream | Streaming Video Jennifer Dixon Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/staff_publications  Part of the Law Commons The Academic Mainstream | Streaming Videoby Jennifer A. Dixon Sep 07, 2017 | Filed in Reviews+Streaming video is becoming a mainstay on college campuses, butdiscovery and walled-off content create their own challengesRecent trends in technology are dramatically reshaping academiclibrary collections, and while the use of video in higher education isn’tnew, the move toward streaming brings a new array of benefits andchallenges for academic librarians. LJ recently explored the ways inwhich libraries are addressing interest in streaming video services.In April 2017, LJ conducted a blind survey of academic librarians inthe United States and Canada, sponsored by Swank MotionPictures, receiving 330 responses. Most respondents—221—are in four-year colleges anduniversity programs, serving an average of 10,392 students,while the remainder are atcommunity colleges or graduate schools. Slightly over half of the schools were in publicuniversity systems.STREAMING FROM THE OUTSIDEThe vast majority of responding libraries—95 percent—offered some sort of streaming videocontent, with a particular focus on documentaries, full-length movies and television programs,and historical archive footage. Of those that offer streaming, 83 percent license their videocontent from multiple vendors’ video streaming platforms, particularly Films on Demand, Kanopy,Alexander Street, and Swank Motion Pictures. Other notable platforms included Ambrose Digital,Swank Digital Campus, Docuseek2, Film Platform, Intelliform, JOVE, and MedCOM.Alexander Street is the vendor from which libraries license the most content, though Films onDemand is the vendor with which they spend the most money. Kanopy was selected as the“most valuable” streaming platform for both students and faculty.Over 90 percent of respondents rely on IP address authentication to access these platforms.About a third use single sign on, while others work with proxy servers, geolocationauthentication, or multiple logins.HOSTING AT HOMEOnce you get beyond commercially available content, the numbers drop significantly, though asubstantial minority are streaming other content as well:61 percent of responding libraries provide access tostreaming faculty- or student-produced videos. Of thosethat do, 76 percent host them locally, while 32 percentoffer them through a vendor platform. Christine Fischer,head of technical services for the University of NorthCarolina (UNC), Greensboro, Library, describedworking with a faculty member who inquired aboutposting his own film to make it more widely available.The library connected him with vendor Kanopy, and thefilm is now not only available to UNC students, it is partof the Kanopy catalog. Making that happen was an“interesting and different” library service, she said.Hosting streaming video comes with its own concerns.As a community college librarian in Illinois explained,content from commercially available sources “is vettedfor copyright compliance. As such, we do not ripanything in its entirety.” Multiple respondentsemphasized the importance of taking into account legalrestrictions, particularly copyright, when hosting videos.A librarian at a private postgraduate Massachusettslibrary said in response to this topic, “We are verycareful about not ripping commercially available DVDsas that violates copyright. The locally streamed content is content taped at [the] university that isproduced by the university.”HOW LIBRARIES BUY STREAMINGCONTENTThe most significant factors for libraries in choosingvendors are cost per title, nature of the content, andavailable streaming technology and platform. Othernoteworthy considerations are the purchasing model,availability of a specific title, and license duration. Moststreaming video content selection—70 percent—isguided by faculty requests. For example, Fischer told LJthat the significant increase in the library’s streamingvideo collection over the past four years has largely come via faculty. While many requests canbe satisfied through vendors such as Kanopy, Docuseek2, and Films on Demand, Fischer notedthat it can present challenges when a “faculty member wants this one thing, and it is in this oneplace, or only available through a single provider.” This can lead to librarians navigating questionsof licensing for one-off downloads. Where faculty request a video that the librarians can’t locate,they have presented specific requests to vendors like Kanopy, with some success.For approximately 59 percent of libraries, a collectiondevelopment/acquisitions librarian will make streaming contentselections. Other influencers on content choices are subjectlibrarians, electronic resources librarians, or requests from a librarydirector. Of the librarians responding to the LJ survey, 76 percent areinvolved in licensing streaming videos for their library, and a quarter(26 percent) are the final decision-makers.The majority of libraries, 48 percent, acquire their video contentthrough preselected collections curated by vendors, though only 20 percent prefer to do so.Many responding librarians (39 percent) expressed a preference for acquiring video contentthrough demand-driven acquisition instead, while 16 percent prefer making evidence-baseddecisions. Librarians assess the return on investment of streaming video services according tousage metrics, frequency of inclusion in course assignments, and cost per use. Based onresponses to the LJ survey, librarians estimate that the average number of streaming video viewsin 2015–16 was 11,429, which amounts to .65 views per each streaming title.STREAMING BY THE NUMBERSOver half of responding librarians said that the funding for streaming video comes out of theirelectronic resources budget, while a third said it comes from a media budget. The averagebudget for streaming content is $19,800 (median $12,800), with nearly half of libraries reportingbudgets in the $5,000–$19,999 range. The average amount spent per annual license for onestreaming title is $110.60.Because of the rising popularity of streaming video, libraries are seeing their budgets for thistype of material increase. Over a third of schools reported that their 2016–17 streaming videobudgets increased from the 2015–16 year, with an overall increase of 16.3 percent. Additionalfunds were commonly taken from budgets for physical media and print monographs. In addition,45 percent of librarians reported an expectation that their streaming budgets would increase inthe 2017–18 year. Only five percent expected a decrease.Libraries offer large collections of streaming content: the average number of streaming videotitles licensed by responding libraries is 17,481. Almost half (41 percent) of the respondentscurrently have access to more than 5,000 titles.Most content is provided via a license lasting one to two years, although over 40 percent ofresponding librarians expressed a preference for perpetual licenses. A number of librarians, 22percent, did state a preference for one- to two-year licenses. Othersexpressed interest in licensing based on number of views rather thana set time frame.EASY AND EVERYWHEREFor most libraries, the greatest benefit of offering streaming videocontent is that patrons can access materials at any time, from anyplace. According to a librarian at a private four-year college inMassachusetts, round the clock access “is especially important foronline, distance, and continuing education programs.” The samelibrarian also noted the benefit of resources that “can’t get lost,stolen, or damaged” and don’t “take up shelf space,” as well as the“ability to embed links in [the] Learning Management System [and]create playlists, clips, comments.” Besides making material morefindable and usable, the online format removes common librarianworries about wear and tear, loss, or theft.Several praised the flexibility that these new materials present forstudents’ academic experiences. Streaming video allows faculty to“offer classes online that were impossible in the DVD era,”responded a Michigan public university librarian. “Students also havethe option to rewatch content, which was harder when [they were]forced to attend an in-class screening.” Many other respondents emphasized the accessibility ofthis type of content, with patrons able to watch videos in class, at home, or in the library, withmultiple students able to view the same content simultaneously.Numerous librarians described streaming video as “convenient” and “easy to use” for studentsand faculty and highlighted that the content can be obtained “instantly.” According to FayeO’Reilly, assistant professor and digital resources librarian at Wichita State University, KS, “Withthe growth of distance learning and nontraditional students, there is no need to commute to thelibrary—users can watch the video on their own time in their own home.”O’Reilly also pointed out that, as streaming technology becomes the ubiquitous new norm forhome entertainment, students may no longer have access to other off-site viewing options: “Asmost of the world is streaming now, users may not have DVD players or even televisionsavailable.”WHY STUDENTS STREAMSocial science and humanities students use video content the most, while students inpreprofessional programs and the hard sciences use it the least—despite the presence in thefield of the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JOVE), which specifically focuses on hard science.Librarians have found that nine out of ten students use the library’s video content as part of aspecific assignment, while nearly half have used the content for entertainment or as part of a“flipped classroom.” About 40 percent will use video content as an introduction to a researchtopic, but students rarely use videos in later stages of their research.About 75 percent of faculty assign video contentfrom nonlibrary sources for their coursework, withthe majority (98 percent) directing students toopen websites such as YouTube or Vimeo. Nearlyhalf have also assigned content from paid consumer sites like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon.Sarah McCleskey, head of resource and collection services with Hofstra University Library,Hempstead, NY, pointed out the unique challenge posed by popular streaming services such asNetflix and Amazon Prime, which provide original content to streaming subscribers that is notavailable in a different format. When it comes to this content, librarians “don’t have any way toacquire it or preserve it or make it accessible to users in a way that is legal,” she said. “There isno way that I can make the content accessible to someone teaching with it or someone whowants to study it.... I can’t license it.” This places barriers in the way of students and faculty whodo not have access to their own personal streaming  subscriptions.Faculty may also assign faculty-produced videos that are not hosted by the library, or openaccess materials from other institutions, such as EdX videos.COMMON CHALLENGESSlightly over half of the responding libraries noted cost as the biggest challenge to providingstreaming content. For the minority of academic libraries reporting that they do not offerstreaming content, cost is the primary reason, although a small number also referencedbandwidth problems. Other common issues include copyright concerns and patron discovery ofthe resources (or lack thereof). Some librarians described difficulties incorporating streamingvideo into their catalogs and ensuring that patrons were aware of these resources. Only 14percent of the libraries that don’t offer streaming video expressed plans to add it in the nearfuture.Some librarians noted resistance, from faculty and sometimes from students, to streamingtechnology. As a librarian from a private four-year institution in Kentucky wrote in the survey, forstudents there may be “a bias against using video content as a scholarly source for research.”Meanwhile, Charlene Baxter, public and technical services librarian at LaGrange College Library,GA, has found that faculty can be hesitant to incorporate the library’s streaming collection intoDT_Reviews_Collection_Academic  LJ_2017_Sep_01  streaming videotheir courses, and “they still useYouTube to show clips in class [and]say it is easier. It is more familiar tothem.”For those who do offer streaming,lack of awareness and discoveryissues are the top barriers keepingfaculty and students from makinggreater use of these collections. Forstudents, the top three methods ofproviding information about thelibrary’s streaming resources are viathe library website (91.3 percent),through one-on-one reference interactions (76.2 percent), and through information literacysessions (69.4 percent). To keep faculty informed, librarians rely again on the library website(85.4 percent), as well as departmental liaison relationships, one-on-one meetings (76.9percent), and email (66 percent). Students and faculty may also learn from signage in the libraryor elsewhere on campus, or from e-newsletters. Survey respondents told LJ that students alsofrequently discover videos through LibGuides (73 percent), word of mouth from a librarian (70percent) or faculty (67 percent), or the library OPAC (69 percent).As with any change in library collections, streaming video offers its own unique challenges andbarriers to use. Overall, however, librarians responding to the LJ survey reported a strong interestin this kind of content, as many students and faculty in their communities find it to be a powerfultool for teaching and learning. For students raised on Netflix and Amazon, streaming videoplatforms fit with their lives and their expectations for how technology works—and how to workwith it.

The Academic Mainstream | Streaming Video

https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1024&amp;context=staff_publications

The Academic Mainstream | Streaming Video

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Fordham University School of Law