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  • Netflix, Collections and Mobile Learning

    By Joshua Kim August 30, 2010 9:45 pm EDT

    Netflix recently announced a new iPhone and Touch app that lets subscribers stream video over 3G and Wi-Fi connections. You can watch a quick video about the application from Netflix at this link.

    According to Wikipedia, Netflix has over 17,000 movies and TV shoes available for streaming. The library of videos available for streaming is growing rapidly, with Netflix signing a mulityear deal with EPIX to stream 3,000 more titles from Viacom's Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM. Unlimited streaming plans start $8.99 a month.

    All of which leads me to ask, should IHE's be in the business of purchasing videos for our collections? The Netflix value proposition was pretty compelling with over 100,000 titles, but has the iPhone and Touch app put Netflix over the edge?

    As usual, some questions:

    • Does it make sense to depend on one company for all an institutions curricular media? Do the benefits of a large selection and Netflix's lead in mobile technology outweigh the costs of becoming depending on a for-profit company? I think that the marvelous Barbara Fister might have something to say about this. But has the game changed, and do we have an opportunity to both re-invest resources from collections to people (librarians who can work with instructors to select appropriate curricular media) and offer more resources across more platforms?
    • Has anyone tried to work with Netflix to create an EDU subscription service? A special deal for enrolled students and faculty members? This seems like it would be in the interest of both parties.
    • What consortium or professional organization could negotiate on behalf of institutions of higher learning?
    • Would it make sense to wrap a Netflix subscription into a technology fee? Or should subscribing to Netflix, either at the $8.99 cost or the reduced EDU fee, be an individual choice? The advantage of an institutional subscription, paid for by technology fees, would be to insure that every student had access to all the media assigned as curriculum. Perhaps individual students could decide to "bump up" to more expensive plans if they chose.
    • Let's assume that we decided to go this route and sourced our curricular media to Netflix. How much money would this save? (assuming we could pass the costs along to students through some sort of fee). Do we know what proportion of the acquisition budgets across institutions go to media purchases? Is there a rule thumb to understand the per-spending pupil on library (and therefore) media materials. I know that this must vary greatly across institution, but can we say anything about spending across different types of institutions?

    Is my infatuation with sourcing traditional college/university functions both to the cloud and for-profit entities fundamentally misguided? Does my desire to move from fixed to variable costs to save resources (and ultimately drive down tuition) in reality a recipe to erode quality?

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Comments on Netflix, Collections and Mobile Learning

  • No Public Performance Rights issues with netflix?
  • Posted by andrea , partnership director at bigthink on August 31, 2010 at 6:15am EDT

  • A question: Does having a Netflix subscription give you Public Performance Rights to the movie or TV show? Or is it intended, legally, for personal use only? In other words, would educational institutions have to work out specific legal details with Netflix to allow for educational use?

  • Posted by Barbara on August 31, 2010 at 9:00am EDT

  • Some libraries do supplement their collections with Netflix subscriptions. I think the issues are with the person who wants a video right now - believe it or not, sometimes professors forget to reserve a video before they see it's something they plan to show in class today - and some concern about rights issues, though for most face-to-face teaching situations in which the use is a fundamental part of a course, a "home use" license is okay. (You run into issues if you show a film to a group of people outside a classroom situation, like the Russian Club or a dorm section social event. Of course, it's not really possible for libraries or Netflix to enforce the way their videos are used.)

    OCLC issued a report this summer that public libraries actually edge out Netflix just slightly in the number of videos circulated annually (2.1 million videos checked out daily versus 2 million at Netflix). I have a feeling that, if libraries shifted to Netflix in a big way, we'd see some pressure from the movie industry to make libraries pay more or for Netflix to impose limits.

    At the moment I'm less concerned about Netflix than about ebooks because Netflix doesn't have the ability to alter a video, but Amazon can alter/delete books and has. They also have a history of purging books from their catalog when they are arguing with a publisher over terms, which Netflix could do, but so far as I know hasn't.

    I'd be interested in hearing from people more directly involved in media collections.

  • ILL use
  • Posted by Cathy on August 31, 2010 at 9:00am EDT

  • Netflix is taking off in the ILL community as a way to filling requests for just in time video. Netflix doesn't seem to want to deal with the educational market, especially the tax-exempt issue, but people have solved the problem

    I've examined packages from Swank and Films on Demand recently and they are very expensive so far, even with Swank's new package model (which we did use this summer.)

    I've had a couple of faculty members who wanted to turn their course into a film festival talk about having the kids get a Netflix subscription in lieu of a textbook to watch the films outside of class, I think that this will become more popular in the future. We're looking at ways to grow streaming media to place things in Moodle courserooms and to save space that we don't have in our collections.

  • Access for Students with Disabilities
  • Posted by Teresa on September 13, 2010 at 4:45am EDT

  • One issue with streaming Netflix is that captions are rarely included. As a faculty member at Gallaudet University, where 95% of our undergraduate students are deaf or hard of hearing, streaming Netflix is not an option. (Getting the red envelopes in the mail is fine, as most DVDs do have captions or subtitles). But it isn't only Gallaudet faculty who need to be aware of this - all faculty should have a plan for accessibility when they are using sources that are inaccessible to students with disabilities.

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