Move over Netflix and Amazon Prime: Wichita Library’s streaming 30,000 movies free

As libraries shift from the printed word to digital content, the Wichita Public Library has launched a free streaming service with access to more than 30,000 videos, library officials said Wednesday.

The service, Kanopy, offers a broad menu of movies, shows and classes for all age levels, said Sarah Kittrell, the library’s collection development manager.

“They actually have some different options than you might find on Amazon or Netflix,” Kittrell said.

While the service is not the place to go for the latest Spiderman blockbuster, there are a lot of quality movies from the past and present, she said.

“It does focus on mainly the independent films, the foreign films, the classics,” she said. “There’s not going to be a huge number of things that are just out of theaters, but definitely things that have been popular.”

For example, shortly after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the library got many requests for RBG, a documentary about her life and career. They had the DVD, but at the time, the only streaming services carrying it without a rental charge were Hulu and Kanopy.

“When they tried to use the (Kanopy) service, it said ‘offered through your public library,’ so then they would ask us and it was not something we subscribed to at that time,” Kittrell said.

One newer offering popular on the service now is the 2020 Mark Wahlberg film “Joe Bell,” about a father who walks across the country to draw attention to the issue of bullying after his son is subjected to it in school, Kittrell said.

Kanopy has a wide range of children’s movies, storytime videos, “Sesame Street,” in English and Spanish, and videos by Highlights, which many will remember as the children’s magazine that was once ubiquitous in doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms.

The streaming service also includes access to The Great Courses, which offers online classes ranging from casual cooking and music lessons to college-level instruction in subjects including math, science, history and philosophy.

Other libraries have been streaming Kanopy and Wichita considered subscribing for years, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it over the top, said Library Director Jaime Prothro.

“We definitely have a lot of great DVDs and BlueRay discs in our collection,” Prothro said. “But as COVID has impacted so much about library services . . . we were looking at ways we could strengthen our digital offerings so that people aren’t necessarily required to come in.

“We’ve had a lot of customer requests over the last couple of years, just to be able to have easy access.”

The library pays for the service on a per-view basis. The library has set aside about $15,000 saved from last year’s budget to pay the bill this year, Prothro said.

To keep costs down, patrons are limited to seven general-interest movies and two Great Courses classes a month.

Kanopy Kids is being offered on an unlimited basis.

To stream movies, the Kanopy app is available on popular home-TV streaming devices including Amazon Fire Stick, Chromecast and Roku; mobile and tablet apps are available through Google Play and the Apple App Store.

The service is accessible through the web on computers and laptops at www.wichitalibrary.kanopy.com.

To access the service, you’ll need a library card and an e-mail address.