Streaming Video at the CSUSB Libraries: Message From the Dean of the Libraries

Current CSUSB students, staff, and faculty have access through the library to thousands of streaming videos.

August 14, 2023

The CSUSB Libraries are evolving our streaming video collections strategy. We invested in the Swank 1000 service this year, which provides streaming access to the top one thousand requested videos in their catalog. It is a subscription service, so will require ongoing budget support. The subscription cost for access to these one thousand videos is roughly the equivalent of only *forty* perpetual access videos at average cost.

Streaming rights and licenses continue to be a volatile topic beyond the academic and library world. Note that streaming publishing is a key issue in the writers’ and actors’ strike that is making local, national, and international headlines. Some titles are not available for perpetual access or at all on a streaming platform. Some titles from popular producers of content are available only exclusively on services meant for individual commercial market.

Given this landscape, the CSUSB Libraries needs to concentrate on purchasing a variety of content that we can sustain. Ongoing, we will be purchasing very few individual title requests that will be reviewed for favorable licensing conditions and pricing. If you have funding sources, we will consider acquiring and hosting if the content is available on a stable platform that we judge we can maintain and link to via single sign on.

Thank you for helping us navigate this challenging intellectual property environment.