How many streaming film purchases or licenses can faculty request for their courses?
Answer
According to the Library Collections for Course Use Policies, faculty can request a purchase or license for 5 films per course in addition to the standing library subscriptions. The library maintains subscriptions to the Swank Top 500 films and Acadermic Video Online (AVON), and films from these providers do not need to be requested.
Why is there a limit to the number of films I can request?
Each license and purchase costs the library between $100 and $600, depending on the option and the provider, and the streaming media expenditures have grown to nearly $80,000 per year since the COVID-19 pandemic. The library has, historically, been unable to purchase all the required readings for each course, and the library is also unable to purchase all required viewings for each course.
How should I prioritize my requests?
- Anything that is published by a major streaming service, such as Netflix, Prime, Apple TV, etc., will likely not be available. See this FAQ for more information.
- Focusing on films that are available as perpetual purchases will allow you build courses with more films over time since these will not need to be requested in the future. The Faculty Streaming Media Request Form lists several providers we have worked with, but searching for the film and digital site license or institutional site license online could identify new potential providers. Put those URLs in the request form.
- If we already own any of the films on DVD, it may be worth it to prioritize other films. The library has a guide for showing DVDs and Videos in class via Zoom.
- The form is designed to be filled out for one course, and requests for multiple course need to be submitted as separate submissions vis the form. This allows us to track the number of requested film titles per course section.
Are all of my requests available as streaming videos through the library?
In order for the library to host a streaming media, it must be available from a vendor or rights holder as an institutional site license. This typically excludes things from popular streaming services, and there is no guarantee that the film will be available in a streaming version with a license that the library can buy. If there is no license available, we can pursue purchasing a DVD or you can reach out to Montezuma publishing to see if they can do the copyright clearance.
Questions?
Questions can be directed to Tim Tully, Head of Collections Strategies at ttully@sdsu.edu.