{"id":10647,"date":"2010-02-25T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T14:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=10647"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:43:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:43:04","slug":"streaming-video-a-new-library-resource","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/02\/streaming-video-a-new-library-resource\/","title":{"rendered":"Streaming Video a New Library Resource"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Merlita<\/a>
Merlita Murphy, administrative services specialist, works in the new Streaming Video Lab in Homer Babbidge Library. Photo by Frank Dahlmeyer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The timing was perfect. Nicholas Eshelman had just started the Office of Streaming Video Services<\/a> in the Homer Babbidge Library last fall when a colleague at UConn\u2019s Torrington campus called: During the previous four years, the campus had amassed a vast array of videos taken during interviews conducted with well known Litchfield County authors. Would he be interested in streaming them?<\/p>\n

It was great news for Eshleman. Since he started the service, he had been working to acquire content, but the process is time consuming \u2013 creating a contract, working through copyrights, determining a price for streaming rights, assuring the owners that the content could not be stolen, and more. Now here was a clean opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I heard they had all those videos, and that we owned the rights to them, I thought it would be a great way to get started,\u201d Eshelman says.<\/p>\n

Today, little more than a year after the project began, the service offers more than 60 streaming videos of author interviews from the Litchfield County Writers Project<\/a>, including multiple interviews with Frank McCourt and talks with Honor Moore, Roxana Robinson, Susan Kinsolving, and Charles Van Doren, who also teaches at the campus.<\/p>\n

Davyne Verstandig, director of the Litchfield County Writers Project, says delivering the talks to all comers has been a personal goal since she began the series five years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have an old 1960s attitude toward education,\u201d Verstandig says. \u201cIt should be free. So I began taping the talks and collecting releases from authors at the very beginning. I did explore trying to post these, but nothing came to fruition until Nicholas called.\u201d<\/p>\n

Verstandig says the videos will be a boon to faculty, students, and the community. She also hopes to have all the questions posed to the authors posted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a sense, a student or professor could go on the website, see all the questions, and they\u2019d have a complete course readymade,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Verstandig has been interviewing authors who call Litchfield County their home since she started the program. Besides the interviews, the campus library holds more than 1,500 books from local authors, including a number of first editions and autographed copies. Five more authors are being interviewed this semester during the series, which draws faculty, staff, students and members of the community.<\/p>\n

The streaming video is creating a buzz. Since last September, the site has had nearly 3,700 visitors, and other universities also have weighed in, seeking information on both the speakers\u2019 program and the streaming video. Officials from The Gunnery, a private boarding school in Litchfield County, also have called about using the videos for their classes.<\/p>\n

Eshelman\u2019s service is growing by leaps and bounds. Besides the Litchfield County Writers Project videos, the library has amassed 100 documentaries from a range of sources, more than 250 plays and movies, and 10 feature films. The most recent addition is a collection of 55 documentaries in the humanities and social sciences from Film Media Group.<\/p>\n

The various streams have been used by more than a dozen departments and four of the five regional campuses. Last fall, 50 classes used the streaming video for distance learning programs.<\/p>\n

Verstandig contrasts the library\u2019s streaming video with its books: \u201cAs the volumes in our library are static, this is a living organism,\u201d she says. \u201cNow when I teach, it\u2019s not only for our matriculating students but for faculty, the community, and students yet to arrive. It really is a wonderful service.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Babbidge Library’s streaming video service began just over a year ago, it has expanded rapidly to include documentaries, plays, feature films, and interviews from the Litchfield County Writers Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[37],"class_list":["post-10647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 06:33:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10647"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10666,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10647\/revisions\/10666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10647"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=10647"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}