University of Wisconsin Oshkosh students and faculty now have access to thousands of documentaries and educational films from anywhere the Internet is available.

Ron Hardy, the head of information resources at Polk Library, said the library recently secured institutional access to Films on Demand, a state-of-the-art online streaming video platform, which offers content covering such subjects as the humanities and social sciences, business and economics, science and mathematics, health and medicine, technical education, family and consumer sciences, careers and job search, and guidance and counseling.

“We recognized that there was a demand for more support for online courses,” Hardy said. “This is part of the library’s strategy to move more of our resources online.”

Films on Demand will allow faculty and students to incorporate licensed educational films into course pages, classroom instruction, projects and more.

“Instead of a single copy of a film being on reserve at the library, the video is always available online — ready to be used at midnight, 6 p.m., it doesn’t matter,” Hardy said.

UW Oshkosh faculty can copy and paste URLs of videos to online course pages and can create playlists of both full-length videos and video segments to share with their classes.

Students can access Films on Demand from off campus computers using their Titan Mail username and password. Video URLs can be placed only where authorized users can see them.

Hardy said the Web site is gaining popularity at other university libraries, and this year is a trial for UW Oshkosh. He said Polk Library plans to continue the subscription if it proves to be a benefit to faculty and students.

Films on Demand can be accessed from the Polk Library Web site www.uwosh.edu/library or directly at http://digital.films.com/featuredVideos.aspx.

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