Faculty and Staff

In this case study, we reflect on our journey through a major revision of our streaming video reserve guidelines, informed by an environmental scan of comparable library services and current copyright best practices. Once the guidelines were revised, we developed an implementation plan for communicating changes and developing training materials to both instructors and internal library staff. We share our navigation strategies, obstacles faced, lessons learned, and ongoing challenges. Finally, we map out some of our future directions for improving and streamlining our services.

In spring 2013, the presenters developed a survey on academic library streaming video and distributed it broadly through various discussion and mailing lists.

This is the first large-scale and most comprehensive effort to date to collect data on streaming video funding, licensing, acquisition, and hosting in academic libraries. Its results will provide benchmark data for future explorations of this rapidly expanding approach to video in academic libraries.

Streaming video is becoming a common occurrence on many campuses today. Its fast growth is due in part to the steady growth of online classes and programs. Technology has also played a role in this growth as alternatives for ingesting and accessing content have expanded. Multiple options are now available including in-house approaches, cloud storage, and third party vendors.

This survey collected data on how academic institutions address the day-to-day operations related to streaming video as well as perceived directions for future action.

Survey questions addressed selection and acquisition of video in both hard copy and streaming formats, funding for acquisitions, current and planned hosting interfaces, cataloging and access, and current practice and policy on digitization of hard copy titles for streaming. This session reviews the instrument used, and provides a preliminary look at some of the key data collected.