How Much Do Universities Pay For The Alexander Street Press Services

Ellen Sexton

Nosotros have just started subscribing to Academic Videos Online (AVON), the nigh extensive production curated by Alexander Street Press, a vendor that licenses video collections to university libraries. AVON contains 66,000 titles from multiple disciplines and in diverse formats: documentaries, feature films, lectures, news programs, and more. The metadata describing each video is detailed and includes abstracts and subject headings. Most (but not all) of the videos are airtight-captioned in English.

Design

AVON videos are accessed via two user interfaces: the ProQuest search interface and the Alexander Street platform.

The ProQuest interface consists of an index with descriptive metadata and just a tiny thumbnail image of the video. The thumbnail epitome links to the video itself, which is hosted by Alexander Street on their platform.

This is an unusual construction for a database, only the ProQuest search interface alleviates meaning aesthetic and functional problems with the Alexander Street platform. Searching the metadata on the ProQuest interface is many times quicker than on the Alexander Street platform. (Unfortunately, there is no easy link back to the ProQuest search engine from the Alexander Street platform, but perhaps that is something they volition eventually add.)

Discovery

The fastest and most efficient mode of searching for videos by title or past specific topic is past manner of the ProQuest search layer. The advanced search is specially powerful: searches can exist express by document type, linguistic communication, and publication engagement. Word searches tin exist narrowed to specific record fields, including title, subject, location, person, etc.

All of the metadata is besides harvested and shared with the library'due south primary discovery tool, OneSearch. Restricting OneSearch results to Resource type: Sound visual makes for more efficient searching and volition search video content from multiple vendors.

The all-time fashion of browsing by discipline is on the Alexander Street Platform—slow, simply it works.

Content

There's a substantial corporeality of more obviously educational material. Documentaries, archival footage, news programs, training materials, music performances, and lectures typically announced in search results. Many are short enough to evidence in their entirety during one undergraduate course catamenia and yet accept time for discussion.

AVON includes content previously packaged for us every bit American History in Video and Criminal Justice & Public Safety in Video. The easiest way to browse content from either of these collections is to navigate via the bailiwick headings on the Alexander Street platform—for instance, Social Sciences » Criminal Justice & Public Safety.

The feature film content is astonishingly good, though non piece of cake to browse. It is discoverable using the ProQuest interface by limiting the search to results tagged with the certificate blazon "performances." Or search for the proper noun of a distributor, or a particular honor. Some films that caught my eye include, from benefactor Kino Lorber, The Return (2003), Urban center of Life and Expiry (2009), and Happy Together (1997).

From Music Box films we get Ida (2014), Seraphine (2008), Viva Riva (2011), Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Nowadays (2012).

From Sony Pictures Classics, we get Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens) (2002), Persepolis (2007), Made in Dagenham (2010), 12 (2007), Frozen River (2008), Volver (2006), Flit With Bashir (2008), The Triplets of Belleville (2003), Sunshine State (2002), Friends with Money (2006), Breakfast on Pluto (2005), Firm of Flight Daggers (2004), The Raid: Redemption (2012), and The Tango Lesson (1997).

Too notable are We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Bicho de Sete Cabeças (2000), and many honour-winning movies from the Middle East, Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, South and East Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Early motion picture is represented in the collection with titles from Edison and Ford, The Battleship Potemkin, and other silent classics. An interesting micro-collection is the 13-championship Pioneers of African-American Cinema.

Award-winning documentaries include The Sorrow and the Compassion (1969), The Fog of War (2003), Call Me Kuchu (2012), Crumb (1994), Dogtown and Z-Boys (2002), Beirut Diaries (2006), 33 Days (2007), My Millennial Life (2016), Long Night'due south Journeying Into Mean solar day (2010), When the Bough Breaks (2001), Movie theater Komunisto (2010), Happy Valley (2014), After Tiller (2013). Also present are Citizen Jane: Battle for the Metropolis (2016), New York: The Dark-green Revolution (2013), (united nations)veiled: Muslim Women Talk Virtually Hijab (2007), The Devil Came on Horseback (2007).

Beware...

For all-time results, use a recent version of Chrome, Net Explorer, or Firefox. Videos will not play in Safari, including Safari for iOS devices.

The Alexander Street platform is slow to load content. This is especially noticeable when going from the ProQuest interface to the video, and when playing videos off-campus. It does have fourth dimension for the video to buffer initially before playing. Patience and consciously restraining from clicking pay off. We have been assured by the vendor that at that place are plans in motion to substantially ameliorate the appearance and functionality of the Alexander Street platform. Until then, the best approach is to employ the ProQuest layer for searching, and browse and view the videos on the Alexander Street platform. The quality of the content mitigates the imperfections of the user interface.

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Source: https://www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/blog/avon-academic-videos-online-alexander-street-press

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