[Publib] Television Series DVDs

[Debbie Mesplay]

This is my first time posting to PUBLIB, so please bear with me.

I do most of the DVD selection for a medium-sized library serving a
community of 92,000. We are the only public library in the community;
there are no branches. Our DVD collection currently consists of around
2000 titles. 

Television programs on DVD is becoming a big thing at our library, as
I'm sure it is at other libraries across the country. About half of all
DVD requests for purchase from the public are for television programs.
Now the customers are going back in time and requesting old TV shows
such as Doris Day, the Munsters, Knight Rider, and the A-Team. And of
course, once we purchase one TV show season, customers want us to get
all of them. For certain long-running series this can become very
expensive and overwhelming.   

I am concerned about this. We are beginning to spend a very large
portion of our AV budget on these boxed sets, and we are getting fewer
titles to circulate (as they check out together as a set). This is
causing a slight dip in circulation statistics. Also we are having
problems with many of these sets (particularly Oz and the Sopranos)
being checked out and never returned. It is thus possible for a customer
to check out about $400 worth of material from our collection and never
return it. (Our current policy is 7 DVDs, which can include 7 TV series
boxed sets.)

A possible solution seems to stop purchasing most TV series boxed sets
and focus on purchasing more copies of popular movies (we tend to get
only 2-3 copies of most of the popular, new release movies). This would
certainly increase our circulation (if we can purchase 4 DVDs of new
movies for the same cost as one DVD set, we'll see 4 more circulations
per week). If one disc is stolen, we don't lose a $70 set. 

How do your libraries handle TV series? Do you circulate them together
or separately (or possibly do sets count as more than one check-out)?
How do you determine which ones to add to the collection? What are good
review sources and criteria for purchase? Has anyone limited the
ordering of these sets? 

Ryan Henry
rhenry at dcplibrary.org
Daviess County Public Library
Owensboro, Kentucky 42301



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