St. Thomas students and faculty now have access to stream more than 1,000 feature films thanks to a new database, Criterion on Demand, in the university’s libraries.

St. Thomas libraries recently purchased a subscription to Criterion on Demand, which gives access to feature films, as opposed to documentaries and educational films offered by the eight other St. Thomas film databases. Cindy Badilla-Melendez, the media resources librarian at the O’Shaughnessy Frey Library, said the database is increasing access to resources.

“We want to give more access to students and faculty,” Badilla-Melendez said. “We try to do the best we can with providing all the access to students for homework, to learn … You can learn a lot from a movie.”

Criterion on Demand adds to the St. Thomas libraries’ collection of more than 30,000 online video options. While many of the feature films will be available online, Badilla-Melendez said the 7,000 DVDs currently in the libraries will still be available.

“We are still going to be seeing DVDs for a long time,” Badilla-Melendez said. “Streaming for the producers and for the distributors is very expensive and requires a lot of equipment.”

She added that copyright concerns also play a role in this, as not all directors and producers want to leave their work readily accessible online.

The number of films on the database is expected to grow with time. Criterion on Demand’s vendor will add new titles each year to counteract the films taken down by producers due to copyright concerns. According to Badilla-Melendez, more films will be added than withdrawn and about 20-30 new titles will be added each year.

Junior Kryzsztof Walczak, co-president of the film club on campus, said the club will take advantage of the database and encouraged all students to use it.

“(It’s beneficial) for students in general who may want to see the movies they haven’t seen yet and they should see because it’s like a classic,” Walczak said. “If the library makes it important enough to everyone and they advertise that there is such a thing, then people are going to use it for sure.”

The new database will also benefit students who are minoring in film studies, including senior Lizzy Dougarian.

“A lot of the movies we watch in film class aren’t readily accessible, or they’re not available on Netflix, which most students have,” Dourgarian said. “Especially since the database allows you to stream from your own computer, that would be really useful because then you wouldn’t actually have to come to the library to watch everything.”

Access to Criterion on Demand is available through the library catalog CLICnet with student login information.

William Faust can be reached at faus5612@stthomas.edu.