The Francis A. Drexel Library recently added two new video streaming services
for library patrons. Kanopy and Films on Demand include documentaries, newsreels, lectures, performances, speeches, news stories and other content that can be used for academic purposes.

The services can be accessed by going to the library’s website and are listed with the other databases.

“This opens up at once tens of thousands of titles that we could never purchase and supply as individual DVDs,” Jenifer Baldwin, the library’s associate director for public services, said.

The library now has a total of four streaming services, including Ambrose Video and Academic Video Online (AVON).

According to Baldwin, all the services offer something different to students. The content on Films On Demand is focused on instructional and training videos while Kanopy includes HBO documentary films, short films and other popular videos like “Super Size Me.”

“Kanopy has famous documentaries, and other things you’ve probably heard of,” Baldwin said. “The kind of stuff you would see on Netflix but curated for academic purposes. Some are just entertaining too.”

Anne Krakow, library director, said accessibility is the key to adding services like these to the library’s offerings.

“Our main priority is to acquire resources that are essential to the curriculum and can be easily accessible,” Krakow said. “Streaming services have the advantage of great accessibility. They can be accessed anywhere with an SJU login. If we find that the resources are used regularly, which we determine by database statistics, we will grow the collection.”

The services also saves the time it used to take to order and make available DVDs, Baldwin said.

“To wait for us to order a DVD and then have students check it out one at a time, that was not an easy process,” Baldwin said. “Now, for example, a teacher says they want to teach ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. They can just go into all [the services], do a search and find the performance, and then link to it. They can do that as fair use. We are licensing this for use inside the classroom and out for use. It’s my hope that it makes people excited about the content. And my hope for students, it makes learning more fun.”

Baldwin said the streaming services allow professors to upload a link to a video or documentary to their Canvas course sites where students can access the link directly.

Susan Liebell, Ph.D., associate professor of political science, uses the video streaming services often in almost all of her classes, uploading links to Canvas to allow her students to watch the videos for homework.

“Instead of watching a documentary in class, I had the freshmen watch the video as homework so we could then have a conversation in class,” Liebell said. “And they can take notes at their own speed.”

Liebell said it is important for her to integrate these services into her classrooms.

“I try to help students understand that digital media is not just for your personal life and shopping life,” Liebell said. It’s also for doing research.”

Daniella Campos ’23 was a student in Liebell’s first-year seminar last semester.
“I enjoyed watching these videos since they were about topics that I found interesting” Campos said. “Since I don’t have Amazon Prime and there are some documentaries I would like to watch, I will most likely use these databases again whenever I get the chance to watch them.”

But Baldwin said for the resources to remain available, faculty and students need to take advantage of them.

“Use it or lose it,” Baldwin said.