Your library card may provide access to more than just free books. Kanopy is a streaming service that offers a wide range of films and educational videos. This content comes with a low price tag, either being a reader with a library card or being a college student. Kanopy offers a lot of helpful content, so here’s what you can get and how you can use it.
What Does Kanopy Offer?
Kanopy has frequently been compared to other streaming services, such as Netflix. Kanopy offers a different array of content, however. It’s more focused on educational resources as well as shows purely for entertainment.
Find movies, documentaries, foreign films, classic cinema, independent films and educational videos that inspire, enrich, and entertain.
Kanopy Homepage
Kanopy has a specific goal with its content and wants to bring a certain level of quality to its streaming service. Since it’s offered to libraries and colleges, it makes sense that they tailor to more educational content than other streaming platforms.
Is Kanopy Free?
Kanopy partners with libraries and colleges to support its platform. This means the cost of the service falls onto the libraries and schools that wish to provide access. So it’s not a guaranteed service to anyone with a library card or any college student. Your particular local library or your school must buy the subscription for it to be accessed. Kanopy doesn’t publicly provide how much it costs for such businesses to buy the subscription, it only provides quotes when asked by interested partners. However, it seems that most libraries and schools are charged per stream. Some colleges and libraries have had to drop their subscriptions to the platform when the pricing became too high.
So while the platform is a great tool, it may not be available in a certain region depending on what a library or school can afford. To see if your school has access to the platform, search here. Or check if your local public library has access here.
Does Kanopy Offer Individual Subscriptions?
Unlike other streaming services, Kanopy doesn’t have a subscription fee for each individual user. In fact, it’s impossible to access the platform through an individual subscription at all. The only way to do so is either with a library card or a student email. It’s also important to note that while the service is free when provided through these resources, there is normally a streaming limit. But how many movies or shows you could watch is dependent on the deal that a specific library or school has with Kanopy.
If you’re not a student, and your local library doesn’t offer it, there’s no alternative way to access Kanopy. The best you can do is fill out Kanopy’s form to let your local library know you’d be interested in the service. Or reach out to your library directly. But most likely, it’s a funding issue for the library and not something they can afford if it’s in a smaller town. If libraries could get more funding, however, they may be able to provide the service.
So next time you’re thinking about getting a library card, remember it’s good for more than just books. Support your local libraries when they need funding, and then they can offer better services like Kanopy to the public. Libraries offer all sorts of resources, so make sure to check with your local library to see what they can provide besides books.
Want to learn more about how you can help local libraries provide services like Kanopy? Check out this article.