Streaming video database features: What do faculty and students really want?

The adoption of streaming video by academic libraries is widespread, yet little is known about the experiences of faculty and students who use streaming video. This article describes a usability study of three popular streaming video databases. Faculty and student participants completed a series of tasks in each database and answered questions about their use of streaming video. Faculty liked complete and accurate metadata and text descriptions, the use of thumbnail images, accessibility, ease of use, the availability of film segments, the ability to easily share content, and the availability of time-stamped, hyperlinked transcripts. Students liked easy-to-use, intuitive interfaces.