'Tis the Season: SnagFilms

At this chilly, festive time of year I can't seem to keep visions of streaming video from dancing in my head. My new favorite site--launched back in 2008--is SnagFilms. SnagFilms provides free online access to over 1,700 fine documentary films. Many of the titles they offer online can be found on DVD in Lilly Library's collection, but the big hook they provide is free streaming access. No software or downloading is required; a good broadband connection is a plus, of course. And have I mentioned that you can watch the films for FREE???

The site relies on advertising to generate revenue for filmmakers and to support its enterprise. SnagFilms founder, Ted Leonsis, espouses a philosophy of "filmanthropy," and one of the admirable aspects of SnagFilms is that it connects documentary with a mode of action. They tie each film in their library to a charitable effort related to the topic of the film--many of them selected by the filmmaker--so you can learn more and get involved, immediately.

The SnagFilms collection is a fantastic complement to the documentaries placed on Video Reserve every semester at Lilly. Faculty--please opt to "snag" the streaming video titles you assign your students. Build an embeddable playlist and put titles directly in Blackboard. You'll be promoting a worthy site, and your students will be most pleased. Repeat their mantra: "Find. Watch. Snag. Support."

Here is a small sampling of what's available through SnagFilms:

Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me
(Lilly DVD 3809)

What Would Jesus Buy?
by Rob VanAlkemade
(Lilly DVD 11077)

Times of Harvey Milk
by Rob Epstein
(Lilly DVD 14855)

Occupation: Dreamland
by Ian Olds and Garrett Scott
(Lilly DVD 5587)

Nanking
by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman
(Lilly DVD 14665)

Darnton on Research Libraries and Open Access

Sometimes it's hard to get a sense of what your average, intelligent member of the general public thinks of academic research libraries, or if they think about them at all. I have a handy rule of thumb that helps a little with this: pay attention when Robert Darnton is talking. Darnton's new article in the New York Review of Books is entitled "The Library: Three Jeremiads," and in it he reviews the "plight of American research libraries in 2010" for members of the public and of academe.

You may not have access to the article linked above unless you or the institution to which you are affiliated has paid for access to the NYRB. And that's a very small object lesson in what has Darnton, the director of the Harvard University Library, so riled up: the ever-increasing cost of electronic subscriptions to scholarly periodicals (especially in the sciences) takes up a huge portion of most research library budgets, even though the faculty of the institutions contribute most of the content to those periodicals.

Duke's Academic Council has adopted an open access policy which confronts this problem by supporting the deposit of published articles by Duke's faculty in an online institutional repository, open to the public. You can read about the policy, the repository, and the reasons for the decision to support open access on this page. Duke's Scholarly Communications Officer, Kevin Smith, has also discussed it extensively on his beloved Scholarly Communications @ Duke blog.