[Publib] Television Series DVDs

[Reed, Liz]

Our DVD's of TV shows are very popular and our patrons request specific titles they would like added.  I try to balance the purchase of  TV shows with the the purchase of movies and explain that we will, over time, add additional seasons but that we can't add them all in one year due to budget considerations.  I find Midwest Tape's lists very helpful in selecting titles to add.  As a branch of a county system I do have the advantage of being able to pull in titles that I can't afford but that are purchased by our Main library or another branch through our holds system.
 
We do not circulate the TV shows as sets.  Each case (some have two in a case) circulates on its own and our limit is 5 cases.
 
 
Liz Reed 
Manager, Richfield Branch 
Akron-Summit County Public Library 
3761 S. Grant St. 
P.O. Box 287 
Richfield, OH  44286 
330-643-4742 
ereed at akronlibrary.org 
www.akronlibrary.org 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Debbie Mesplay [mailto:dmesplay at dcpl.lib.ky.us]
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 2:43 PM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] Television Series DVDs



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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