A free student-founded, library-sponsored DVD rental program that has grown to more than 1,100 titles during the semester will allow users to search, rate and reserve movies on an interactive website due in the fall.
Last semester, two seniors launched UMDVD — whose discs in Hornbake Library are available for three days to all students, faculty and staff with a university ID number — in November with $12,000 from the Student Government Association, the University Library System and other sources, compiling the program’s collection of used DVDs from CDepot and other outlets.
“It serves academic purposes as well as entertainment,” said senior history major Dylan Winslow, one of the program’s founders. “There are definitely certain things Netflix [and other online movie players] have and vice versa. It’s just really important for the university to have a collection like this. Once people see the program is really cool, and how awesome the technology we use for it is, it will really expand.”
After the new UMDVD website is up and running, Winslow and co-founder Patrick Portugal, a senior English major, hope two touch-screen monitors can be installed between the two racks displaying DVDs in Hornbake, at which students can search for movies interactively. Library officials are considering adding a paid position for a student to oversee UMDVD, but said they hadn’t nailed down the program’s future for after the founders graduate.
This semester, a group of four sophomores in the Science, Discovery and the Universe Scholars program began creating the online database with more than 700 movies that all link to their respective pages on IMDb.
Despite some glitches, disorganization of movies and other minor problems, the website will be entered into the library system and accessible to students across the campus, and Portugal said he is looking forward to starting a marketing campaign with the library to spread the word to students.
“We are working toward a faster and more secure website that allows students and faculty to rent DVDs from the library system for free,” said sophomore mechanical engineering major Ryan Zhang, who is helping create the website. “We have now provided a platform for all faculty and students.”
The students are also looking to circulate the thousands of DVDs in Hornbake’s Nonprint Media Services collection — which are available for viewing only in the library — but have not worked out a deal with library officials, they said.
The DVD collection — which was launched with about 400 titles but has nearly tripled over the semester — includes the American Film Institute’s Top 100 titles and full seasons of television shows, along with documentaries, art films, indie films and more. About 40 DVDs were checked out by students yesterday.
Some students said this new website would ensure more students use the collection, since streaming movies online is commonplace, and this will help the collection compete with services such as Netflix, which generally charge about $10 a month.
“It sounds pretty cool because it’s free,” said Eric Fagan, a sophomore secondary education major. “It sounds like a much better option than Netflix. [Netflix] doesn’t cost a lot, but I’m poor.”
But senior government and politics major Romy Solomon said in the age of instant access to movies, many students will be disinclined to travel to Hornbake.
“I just [stream] movies for free online so I wouldn’t want to walk to Hornbake,” she said. “The online search would definitely make me more likely to use it though.”
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