[Eril-l] limiting Kanopy

[Sally J. Lockwood]

We dropped the Kanopy PDA in May 2018 due to runaway costs and now use a mediated approach.  Anyone can make a purchase request.  It's labor intensive to constantly process one-off purchases, but it keeps costs under control and each subject selector decides whether or not to use their funds.  I take those requests and search our public catalog to see if we already have it via another provider (Alexander Street Press Docuseek2 and Criterion Collections in particular have kept us away from needing to purchase from Kanopy).  If we have the dvd and the requester needs it for course reserve, we transcode it and put it on blackboard for that semester for that specific class.  To keep in line with fair use, the streaming file gets deleted after the semester has ended.

Swank<https://www.swank.com/> Digital Campus is another provider that helps keep us from being Kanopy-dependent.  We prepaid with our course reserve fund for something like ~150 titles.  Swank provides the marc records usually within 24 hours or sooner, have good analytics, and they have the "licensed through" date display under the video.  With Kanopy, we have to put a public note when our access ends.   Swank does allow the patron to make a purchase request, but the patron has to know to create an account first.  They fill out a form indicating why they want that particular film and their justifications tend to be more specific than the Kanopy form.  Whenever I can, I forward the Kanopy purchase request to Swank and ask them to add that film to our holdings.

We also use Film Platform and Films Media Group as alternatives although only a few purchase requests are for titles on those platforms.

Sally Lockwood
__________________________________
E-Resources Specialist
110 Olin Library
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
607-255-1620
SJL8 at cornell.edu<mailto:SJL8 at cornell.edu>


From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Amy Lynn Fry
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2019 4:08 PM
To: Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: [Eril-l] limiting Kanopy

I was wondering if anyone out there had come up with a way to limit Kanopy use successfully. What did you do? How much did it make a difference to your spend?

Evidently, for public libraries, Kanopy loads all patron accounts and libraries can limit each person to a certain number of streams per month. I asked Kanopy about that at ER&L last week and they said there was no way that would be possible for academic libraries.

I also asked if they had thought about making ways for us to limit besides only by subject or provider, and they said no and that they weren't interested in creating additional options.

Without other good alternatives, we are planning to change our entire Kanopy profile to mediated after this semester and thereafter only approve license requests made by faculty and perhaps graduate students.

Has anyone else made this switch?

What about alternatives to Kanopy? The content and access are good and obviously filling a need in our user population, but Kanopy's business model is just not a good fit for our budget limits. Is there another service that could be a substitute?

Amy Fry
Associate Professor, E-resources Librarian
Jerome Library
Bowling Green, OH 43403
afry at bgsu.edu<mailto:afry at bgsu.edu>
email is the best way to reach me

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