Library Joins Collaboration to Improve Streaming Media Access

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, on Films on Demand

Streaming media has exploded in importance and popularity in education in recent years. But while streaming media is proving valuable as a learning tool for students and faculty, the available collections are often relatively limited, and pricing models make it difficult for libraries to fully meet their users’ needs.

Georgetown University Library has joined a cohort of academic libraries, led by the research and consulting service Ithaka S+R, to share evidence about and strategies around streaming media licensing terms, with an ultimate goal of developing new and more financially sustainable strategies for licensing and managing streaming media use.

As part of this project, we and other academic libraries will collect information about current streaming media licensing and approaches to assessing and managing streaming media usage. The project will use that information to identify new approaches for academic libraries to provide better streaming media services to their users at lower cost.

“The Library is committed to supporting the needs of the Georgetown University community by providing access to high quality streaming media for teaching, research, and scholarship,” explained Meg Oakley, the Library’s director of scholarly communication and copyright. “Our partnership with Ithaka S+R on this research study will help us better understand and respond to the needs of our community for streaming media in a complex and rapidly changing environment.”