By Nella Letizia, WSU Libraries
PULLMAN, Wash. – Thousands of award-winning documentaries, training films and theatrical releases will be available to Washington State University faculty and students this fall through a service offered as a pilot by WSU Libraries.
Kanopy is an on-demand streaming video service for educational institutions that provides 12 million students and faculty with access to more than 26,000 films each year, according to the service website. Schools only pay for the films their students and faculty actually watch.
Kanopy works directly with filmmakers and film distribution companies to offer award-winning collections, including titles from PBS, BBC, Criterion Collection, Media Education Foundation and more.
“Faculty can easily share films, create clips or teaching playlists and embed them into the course system,” said Gabriella Reznowski, WSU Libraries’ humanities librarian. “The service puts the power into patrons’ hands. I think it’s a really nice model of media streaming.
“We tend to get a lot of requests from faculty for documentaries, but streaming these titles online required special licensing,” she said. “Now if faculty members identify a film available through Kanopy, their students can access the film from off campus.”
WSU Libraries is testing the service this fall to see how it is used on campus, what films are accessed and how many times a selection is made. To browse Kanopy offerings on campus, go to https://wsu.kanopystreaming.com. For off-campus access, log in to Search It (http://searchit.libraries.wsu.edu/), type in “Kanopy” in the search bar and follow the links to the streaming service website.