Interview with the Author: Fernandez on Streaming Video Collection Development

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Michael Fernandez, co-author of the book Streaming Video Collection Development and Management published by Bloomsbury. The book is an excellent resource for any librarian who holds streaming videos in their collection.

Please introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a librarian with a primary background of working within technical services. Much of my career experience has involved the acquisition of scholarly resources in all formats. My current position is the Head of Technical Services at Boston University. At the time of writing the book, I was with Yale University Library, in the role of Electronic Resources Acquisition Librarian. My professional interests are within electronic resource management, broadly, with a focus on issues relating to licensing, assessment, and accessibility. In addition to my own presentations and publications, I co-edit the journal Library Resources & Technical Services, published through ALA’s Core division.

Briefly summarize Streaming Video Collection Development and Management.

Streaming video has become an integral part of our everyday lives. We are constantly utilizing streaming video for communication, entertainment, and for education. For libraries, and academic libraries in particular, there is a constant demand for more and more streaming content. The user expectation is for access to be on demand and seamless. Naturally, this poses challenges to the library workers tasked with selecting, acquiring, and providing access to streaming video content.

Streaming Video Collection Development and Management is intended as a roadmap for navigating these challenges. Accordingly, we structured it to align with the lifecycle of streaming collections in libraries, from initial resource evaluation to the delivery and maintenance of user end access.

The book is laid out in such a way that library workers can read the individual chapters that correspond to the streaming job duties for which they are responsible. The initial chapters are concerned primarily with the collection development aspects of streaming: identifying and selecting content, evaluating acquisition models, and managing collection budgets.

The crux point occurs during the licensing process, which has its own dedicated chapter. Licensing with content providers will determine how the library uses streaming video, the access rights of library users, and the obligations of the provider.

The latter half of the book is devoted to the collection management aspects of streaming video, and closely follows the stages of the electronic resource lifecycle, from providing and maintaining access to content through assessment of streaming collections. In these chapters, the book focuses on the practical aspects of streaming video management—“keeping the lights on” as it were—and there are dedicated chapters on digital asset management for local hosting and accessibility.

The final chapter of the book looks toward the future of streaming video collections, identifying some of the prominent challenges currently facing libraries, such as availability of online content and the long-term stability of collections. These problems do not have easy solutions and are likely to stay with libraries in the years to follow.

Why did you decide to write this book?

My co-author Amauri Serrano and I have grappled with the challenges of managing streaming video collections over the course of our careers in libraries. By the time we both began working at Yale in 2018, we were already well-versed in streaming collections—Amauri on the collection development front and myself in the e-resource management back of the house.

The worldwide outbreak of the COVID pandemic in early 2020 was a singular turning point. Prior to that, Amauri and I were already developing workflows from scratch to address the demands of a curriculum and research that was increasingly dependent on streaming video content. As we rapidly had to pivot to making all video content accessible to library users remotely, we faced the challenge of scaling up what was already inherently complex work.

Obviously, all libraries were facing these exact same challenges in 2020. Even as things began to return to the pre-pandemic status quo, library users’ need for streaming video content was not receding—if anything, it was increasing. Could the methods, workflows, and policies we developed and refined during this dynamic time period be instructive and impactful in other libraries? Were they scalable outside the context of a university like Yale and applicable to other libraries, regardless of size or funding? Amauri and I felt that the answer was ‘yes’ to both of these questions.

Who is the target audience? Why?

Expanding on the previous answer, Amauri and I envision the intended audience as all library practitioners who work on the development and management of streaming collections, regardless of library type. Similarly, we wanted to write to all levels of experience, so the book contains a good deal of introduction to—and sometimes repetition of—key concepts in selecting, licensing, and acquiring content, to provide the necessary context for readers. Our mindset was to write a text that was approachable to the streaming collection novice, with enough practical exploration of the work itself to be relevant to seasoned library staff.

A crucial element of ensuring relevance to our intended audience was going beyond our own experiences in library work. While the book is written from our perspective of working in academic libraries, we also wanted to provide a platform for other voices to showcase institutional diversity. To that end, we included what we call “Streaming Vignettes” at the end of each chapter—short sections based off interviews we conducted with staff from other libraries doing similar work with streaming collections.

Through these vignettes, we were able to encompass perspectives from a variety of libraries—academics of various research needs (from small, to mid-sized, to R1), community colleges, public libraries, and library consortia. While the libraries varied widely in terms of budgets, users, and mission, the challenges of streaming video collections that we all were dealing with were largely the same.

What are two things you hope all readers take away?

On a general level, and particularly for readers who are new to the work of streaming video collection management, we hope they will take away a solid overview of the streaming landscape. Using the concepts covered in our book as a foundation, we hope the book can serve them well for building new collections or expanding existing collections.

On a practical level, we hope that readers will take away a better understanding or ideas for new workflows that will empower them in their day-to-day work with streaming collections. Whether they work with collection budgets, licensing and ordering, or access and discovery of streaming video, we feel there is actionable guidance in the book that will facilitate their work, as well as lead to opportunities to refine and improve upon existing workflows.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

The streaming video landscape is constantly shifting. While there have been other books written about streaming video collections, Amauri and I wanted ours to address the particular time that we’re in, especially post-COVID. With that said, we also understood that timeliness in streaming was always going to be a moving target. Even during the course of writing this book, we saw drastic changes to the marketplace as content providers merged and expanded offerings.

Largely, though, we found that the fundamentals of collection development and management for streaming remained the same—a takeaway bolstered by the interviews we conducted with other libraries. We hope that readers will still find these fundamentals to be practical, even as the industry continues to shakeout and reconsolidate.