Enjoy free movies with your library card

Have you tried Kanopy? It’s an online streaming service you can access at no cost, using your library card.

With Kanopy and a library card, you have a front row seat to 30,000 films without ads – Oscar winners, nominees, and cult classics – along with television and kids programming, all for no cost. It can be found at peclibrary.org There’s truly something for everyone.

Looking at some of the most frequently viewed videos by our patrons this year, I noticed that Prince Edward County patrons seem to enjoy British media.

Popular BBC watching includes the 1994 BBC adaptation of George Eliot’s Middlemarch; Death in Paradise, In the Dark, which is an adaptation of Mark Billingham’s novel and is a tense and twisty mystery story.
Other popular BBC series available for streaming include Kingdom, starring the iconic Stephen Fry, the adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, and the David Attenborough-narrated The Life of Mammals. This comes as no surprise, as the library’s collection of BBC series on DVD have been popular for many years.

If you’re interested in browsing beyond just BBC productions, Kanopy won’t let you down.

There’s a broad selection of world cinema and many of the films are from the well-regarded Criterion Collection and are thought-provoking and classics.

If documentaries are of interest, be sure to browse the selection. The Ken Burns series, including Leonardo da Vinci, The Dust Bowl, and Jazz are just a few examples of the topics available.
When you log in, you’ll see you have a set number of “credits”, with different formats (television, short films, documentaries) using varying amounts at each viewing.

This is because the library pays for each film you view. It’s similar to the way we buy DVDs for the physical collection, but for Kanopy we are only charged if the items are actually used.

If you are interested in giving it a try, visit the library website at peclibrary.org and use your library card to get registered for an account.

No card? No problem. Drop into any branch of the library to get registered.

From there, you can view the films on your own choice of device – from your mobile phone to smart TV. Many newer smart TVs have a Kanopy app, or you can use a Chromecast or connect your computer to your TV with an HDMI cord.

And don’t worry – friendly help is available at (613) 476-5962 if you have questions about how to get it all set up.