The Cincinnati Library (PLCH) has a streaming movie site to which they subscribe and to which all card-holders have full access. It's called Hoopla, and you should check out some of these movies soon.
Charade
Baseketball
ET
Harvey
Hud
Endless Summer
Gung Ho
Sullivan's Travels
Igby Goes Down
Lars and the Real Girl
39 Steps
Man on the Moon
Four Lions
Where the Buffalo Roam
The Court Jester
The Nutty Professor
Mulholland Dr
Midnight Cowboy
The King's Speech
The Sting
The Iron Lady
Legend
Let Me In
Bernie
Brokeback Mountain
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Small Soldiers
Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels
Double Indemnity
The Serpent & the Rainbow
Holiday Inn
The Last Waltz
October Sky
Let Me In
The Evil Dead
Touch of Evil
Blown Away
Killer Klowns from Outer Space
Of Mice & Men
Mo' Better Blues
Shane
Ain't in it for My Health
Cloak & Dagger
The Woman in Green
I'm very pleasantly surprised at how many good movies there are - admittedly amidst a whole lot of dreck.
The Cincy Library (aka the best library in the world) has been a partner with Freegal for a couple of years now, and they just added the opportunity to stream movies for free. (I think that link'll work. You might have to click to the library's homepage then click through, but I don't know.) Let's take a look at their offerings...
Airborne - the real gem here is the only ice hockey/roller blading, high school, fish-out-of-water movie I know of that's set in Cincinnati. It's a gem, and I can't possibly recommend it highly enough. The sheer 90's of it all is just outstanding.
Barbarella - This one's a camp classic with Jane Fonda saving the universe by having sex with anything that moves. Heck, she even destroys a sex machine because she's so good at sex. Seriously. Worth seeing for all the chuckles and the miasma. Also notable for the origin of the band name Duran Duran.
Harold and Maude - An odd, odd love story between a young man and a very much older woman. Strange but beautiful film that is certainly a product of its era.
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh - I've had this on the to-watch-someday list for a long, long time. Another product of its era. Dr J leads a rag-tag team of basketball misfits (all born under the sign Pisces) in - I can only assume - almost winning a championship.
The Evil Dead - I am embarrassed to admit that I've never seen this one. Maybe I'll give it a try this weekend.
To Catch a Thief - Okay, finally, a real, actually great film. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly at their absolute wittiest. This is a wonderfully snappy love story between two characters who are determined not to fall in love but are destined from the film's first scene. Old school charm at its finest...
Yup...that's about it. The rest of the movies are a weird combination of films that I remember from days long gone trolling the VHS rental (or check-out) racks.
Here's to hoping that they add more movies. The service did just start up recently. I'll be happy if I finally get to watch Cube someday.
The Cincy Library had a news item up announcing the new availability of Rdio, a streaming music service.
From the few online reviews I checked out, it looks like rdio is a competitor to Spotify and Pandora with an iTunes-like interface. Their service is $5 a month for web-only access or $10 for web+phone-access, but the library is offering free 30-day access to anybody with a valid PLCH library card - which I conveniently have.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the new Freegal service that PLCH has begun offering to patrons. I had a few questions so I sent the following in to the library via their contact us page...
I saw that you've begun using the Freegal service. My initial response was excitement, and I went and used up my three downloads for the week in about ten seconds.
On doing some research about Freegal, however, I found that not every librarian is thrilled about the system...
...and it made me curious about the cost to PLCH for the use of Freegal.
Would you be willing to provide details of the contract that PLCH has with Freegal. I am, in particular, curious as to the total yearly cost of the contract, the total limit on the number of system-wide downloads, and the number of downloads that you expect to actually be used per year.
Thank you for your time.
They, as they always do, answered me...
Hello Mr. Dusch:
Thank you for taking the time to submit your comments and questions to the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
It is fantastic to hear that you have already taken advantage of the new service we’re offering for downloading music! The Library has a long history of offering customers options for enjoying music in a variety of formats as technology has evolved, from tapes to CDs, and we are thrilled to provide our customers a chance to enjoy music in this latest downloadable format, too.
The blog posts you mention in your email reflect the experience of some libraries, I believe particularly those who were/are using a pay-per-download model of service that had previously been the only option offered to Libraries. Freegal recently added an option for a subscription-style model of service for providing access to SONY artists which is what our Library is using. This subscription model works more similarly to our other subscription service models for databases and allows us to offer unlimited system-wide downloads to users rather than rationing out a certain number of downloads per week or year. The new subscription service model from Freegal has generated quite a bit of additional interest in the Library community with hundreds of libraries across the country now offering the service to their users.
Other Libraries of similar size to our Library have realized up to 9,000 downloads a week after introducing Freegal. If we follow this pattern of use, we anticipate our cost per download to be a little less than $.40 (40 cents). To offer context, our current average cost per circulation of our physical items is approximately $.42 (42 cents). Unlike physical items that require additional processing that increases costs, Freegal downloads do not incur additional processing costs – as you know from using the service you simply enter your card number and download your song!
Since you clearly have an interest in the downloadable format, I wanted to mention that we also offer books and audiobooks for downloading (through a different service) – details are available at: http://www.cincinnatilibrary.org/downloadables/ebooks.html
Again, thank you for your feedback and for using your Public Library!
Paula Brehm-Heeger Library Services Manager-Central Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County
Sounds perfect, right? Free downloading from my computer via the library's site. Well, sure, that's frickin' cool.
There are a few drawbacks, however. First, it's only music from Sony's catalog, and it's not the full content of Sony's catalog. For example, Cake has albums available through Freegal, but it's not their newest album yet (even though it came out two months ago.)
Secondly, you can't download a full album. The limit is three songs per user per week (the count resets on Monday morning), so that means you'll have to schedule your downloads for the next month or two if you want to get the full album (which is what I'm doing, trying to get the entirety of 7 Worlds Collide's The Sun Came Out disc).
Thirdly, the service isn't apparently popular with all the librarians out there in the blogosphere. Check out these two posts in particular that show pretty strong criticism for Freegal's service in a number of areas...
Changing from a library that purchases and lends to one that purchases and gives to its patrons is a fundamental change for libraries.
The cost per download is in the range of $1 to $1.10 (I don't know the specifics of the PLCH contract with Freegal) - as much as it would be for me to purchase those same songs from Amazon or iTunes directly.
Freegal asked the second poster to remove a post about libraries and digital music. Not a library-friendly thing to do.
It looks like Freegal isn't a perfect system by any means, but PLCH has signed up, and I'm going to do my part to see that they get their money's worth.
