Welcome to Stream Magazine!

Welcome to Stream Magazine! In the 2019 publication Guide to streaming video acquisitions, Eric Hartnett stated that “Streaming video at academic libraries is here to stay” and the past few years have only proven Hartnett correct. This evolution has been years in the making due to an increased demand for incorporating videos into the curriculum, space limitations in libraries, and a continued decrease in technological barriers. However, even though streaming media has an important role in the curriculum, streaming media licenses are costly and present libraries with several licensing and budgetary challenges. Indeed, most academic libraries have struggled for the last decade with how to tackle the growing need for access to streaming feature films (Morris & Currie, 2016). These struggles have been further compounded as academic libraries navigate high costs, performance rights, licensing issues, the obsolescence of media formats, and the many films yet to migrate to a streaming format which an academic library can easily license.

Additionally, we cannot ignore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; many colleges and universities during the COVID pandemic had to move quickly into online and hybrid modalities. All of these institutions and academic libraries in the United States had to rapidly pivot to support these unexpected demands. At most institutions, these sudden changes due to COVID, magnified existing curricular demands for streaming content; however, the pandemic also forced libraries to examine past media acquisition practices and tensions around media collection development in general.

This issue’s theme puts a special focus on streaming media’s impact upon instruction and use in the classroom. However, while we have not expressly asked for perspectives on the impact of the pandemic, it was impossible to ignore since it has had a significant accelerating effect on the adoption of streaming content. For this issue, we have invited pieces from Collection Development Librarians, a Teaching Faculty member in Film Studies, and a Product Manager for video content for their perspectives. Tim Tully (Interim Asst Head of Collections), Linda Salem (Interim Head of Collections) and myself, provide some insight into the Library Collections experience at San Diego State University (SDSU) with increased curricular demand for streaming media. This article pairs well with an article by Dr. Brian Hu, Professor of Television, Film, and New Media at San Diego State University, who provides a perspective from the instructor’s point of view on the impact of COVID, use of media in the classroom, and echoes both Hartnett and Hellman in this article stating that, “Online streaming in film studies classes is here to stay and that’s largely a good thing, so long as we see it as a supplement to physical media…”. Finally, Sarah Brennan, the Senior Product Manager-Video at ProQuest, discusses streaming media post-pandemic, the increased delivery of streaming content through Learning management systems (LMS), and how libraries, faculty, and publishers continue to work towards overcoming the challenges of cost, discoverability, and evolving the educational impact of streaming media.

Streaming media is, now, simply an expected part of a student’s academic experience in what is frequently, or at least partially, a virtual classroom. Libraries, who have already been struggling with collection and subscription costs, are increasingly being asked to provide access to more streaming content, all while maintaining existing subscriptions and continuing traditional collections. As libraries wrestle with their collection development challenges, as media publishers adapt to educational markets, and as teaching faculty adjust to an ever-changing educational landscape, access to streaming media in higher education will inevitably become a more important and complex topic of discussion. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this first issue of Stream Magazine as we kick off this important conversation with these thought-provoking perspectives.

References

Hartnett, E. (2019). Guide to streaming video acquisitions. ALA Editions.

Morris, & Currie, L. H. (2016). To stream or not to stream? New Library World, 117 (7/8), 485–498. https://doi.org/10.1108/NLW-03-2016-0021