[Eril-l] Workflow for single streaming video orders?

Diane Westerfield dwesterfield at coloradocollege.edu
Mon Sep 28 08:40:31 PDT 2020


Hi all,

I assume other folks out there have fallen into the position of part-time video librarian, if your normally residential college has students in quarantine or doing distance learning from home. Does anybody have a good streaming video workflow for single (selective) streaming video orders? Two of us at my institution are handling streaming video requests.

This is more or less how it's going now:


1.       Liaisons get a request from faculty

2.       Liaisons do their own looking around to see if the video is readily obtainable in one of our databases or a free source.

3.       If not readily available, liaisions email the two people handling video requests (me and the Collections Librarians)

4.       We enter it on a spreadsheet and order it if on Swank or Global Eagle/CriterionPicsUSA, noting info like which professor requested it via which librarian, for what Block (our schedule instead of semesters or quarters), expiration date, vendor, link, price or deal info.

5.       If not available then we start looking for where the streaming video might be available

o   Google

o   WorldCat

o   EBSCOAdmin Holdings

o   ?

o   Potentially ask Kanopy to try to get the film

6.       Then there is tracking cataloging and expiration dates.

The searching step, #5, is where it starts to get really messy. So I'm wondering if anybody has ideas from an e-resource librarian perspective, and an example of a spreadsheet if you're using that to track everything. There are so many places to look, not just a first-page scan of Google. I am on VIDEOLIB now but find it overwhelming.

One thing that is saving our sanity: we have been able to cancel some things and not buy DVDs (we normally buy a lot of DVDs, some very expensive), and redirect funds to streaming video databases. We already had Films on Demand and Kanopy; we've added World Cinema Collection (Infobase), Docuseek, and AVON. Not having to buy and track individual films on the latter two databases has been very helpful. Our faculty like to show DVDs in class and have been scrambling for online equivalents; the 5 databases we now subscribe to have been very helpful in offering up the streaming equivalent or viable alternatives.

BTW if anybody is looking for video hosting solutions, Microsoft 365 now has Stream where you can upload videos that only people in your institution can watch. I'm only doing this if the distributor gives us a file and gives us express permission to do so. This is particularly useful if you run into a distributor who refuses to use Vimeo. I understand AVON has a hosting option, but we just obtained it last week and we haven't gotten that far yet. Probably talk to your IT department first before you start throwing 800 MB files up, as the "free" file space is limited.

Thanks,

Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian
Colorado College, Tutt Library
diane.westerfield at coloradocollege.edu<mailto:diane.westerfield at coloradocollege.edu>
(719) 389-6661

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.eril-l.org/pipermail/eril-l-eril-l.org/attachments/20200928/36150190/attachment.html>


More information about the Eril-l mailing list