Kanopy: How to Stream Thousands of Free Movies Using Your Library Card

Kanopy is a source of some 30,000 streaming movies that you can access for free, using your library card. The movies Kanopy offers are mostly international and independent ones: classic cinema, art-house films, documentaries. Many of these come from the Criterion Collection. Criterion offers close to 400 of its numerous films via Apple's iTunes for a price, and I suspect the same films are available on Kanopy for free!

A New York Times article telling about Kanopy is here. The basic idea is that many, but by no means all, library systems offer Kanopy for free to their patrons.

Want to know if your local public library or your college/university library offers Kanopy? Go here to find out. All you need to do is type in the name of your library. If it's on Kanopy's list, it will show up immediately. You can then enter your personal library card's identifying information. You will also need to create an account with Kanopy, by clicking on the "Sign up" button at the upper right of the browser tab. You'll specify a permanent email address and password for your Kanopy account at that point.

Once you have specified your local library account information and your Kanopy email address/password combination, you'll see something like this:

You can go ahead and find a movie you like and start watching it in your browser.

Don't want to watch it in a browser? You can also get the Kanopy app for Apple's iOS devices, such as iPhones and iPads, or for Android devices.

Want to watch the movies on a regular TV? You can do so by means of a Roku streaming player connected to the TV.

No Roku? If you have an Apple TV and one of Apple's iOS devices, go here to learn how to use Apple's AirPlay technology to “cast” videos from your Apple phone or tablet directly to your TV.

I bid you good streaming!