OIT’s Digital Media Services (DMS) and UT Libraries work together to acquire and provide access to videos in various media formats to support instruction. These materials must be used in courses in which UT students are enrolled and are receiving credit toward a degree.

Instructors may request a new purchase or request digitization and locally hosted access to materials owned by UT Libraries. To suggest a purchase for the Libraries’ collection in general, please use the Libraries’ Suggest a Purchase form or contact your subject librarian.

How to submit a request

Collect the following information for your request.

• General information about the course
  • Course name and number
  • Number of sections
  • Number of students registered for the class
  • Type of instruction (in-person, hybrid, online synchronous, or fully online asynchronous)
  • Duration of request (current semester or future semesters)
• Videos and Library Call Numbers
• If requesting a clip, include start and end times. If you need more than five clips, complete this spreadsheet to attach to your request.
• Decide if this video be shown in class by the instructor only or available to class participants.

Submit your request: Videos for classroom use

Video Clips vs Entire Movies

Consider Clips instead of entire films.

When appropriate, faculty are encouraged to select clips to supplement their instruction instead of requesting full videos be available for the class. Movie clips should not exceed five minutes per movie.  

When full movies are required

The Office of Innovative Technologies and UT Libraries will review each request. For some courses, such as Cinema Studies, full movies are required as part of the curriculum. In these cases, multiple criteria must be met before the film will be digitized by DMS.

1. If the video is already available in the UT Libraries’ Video Streaming Collections, then the instructor will receive a permalink to the video.
2. If a title is not already held or licensed by the Libraries, streaming options will be explored first.
   • If the video is available through modern streaming solutions such as Netflix, Max, and Amazon Prime, the students must subscribe to the paid streaming service to view the film.
   • If the Libraries already owns a DVD/Blu-ray and it is available through modern streaming solutions, instructions must choose to show the DVD/Blu-ray during face-to-face class time or have their students subscribe to the paid streaming services.
   • UT Libraries will carefully consider each request and communicate with the instructor. Instructors may want to consider an alternate selection when presented with this option.
3. If no streaming options are available, the Libraries will attempt to purchase a DVD/Blu-ray, if available.
4. If the video is not available via the UT Libraries streaming archives or other streaming solutions, the Library owns a copy of the media, and it’s capable of being digitized, then DMS will provide access to the full movie. Digitized videos are hosted on secure, OIT-supported hosting solutions for a limited time.