[Publib] Television Series DVDs

[Tom Cooper]

This is where the criteria established in your collection development
policy kick in. Such criteria as public demand; availability elsewhere;
cost; and more should help you decide. So half of your requests for
purchase are for television shows. But exactly how many people want the
Doris Day show? One? That person's request should become an ILL request.
If the choice boils down to whether you buy a fifty year old TV show or
last year's hottest movie, it's an easy choice. On the other hand, if it
was a very popular TV show, and it would circulate more than a dog of a
movie that died at the box office, but the vendors are all pushing, your
choice would swing the other way. Also, if it's a show that anybody in
town can still catch in reruns at three or four times of the day, then
it's available elsewhere, and your need to acquire it is lessened. 

            And yes, by all means split the sets up. This has two
effects: one, it reduces the chance that one patron can check out and
keep a whole season, and two, when the volumes are all split up and
checked out, it may take any single patron a few months to finally see
all of the episodes of season one, and it will be next fiscal year
before you need to purchase season two.

            But most important, keep fair, responsible, but specific
purchasing criteria in mind. It clarifies things, and gives you
something to fall back on when explaining these decisions to patrons or
your board of directors.

 

Tom Cooper, Director

Webster Groves Public Library

301 E. Lockwood

Webster Groves, MO 63119

 

(314) 961-3784

tcooper at wgpl.lib.mo.us

 

________________________________

From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Debbie Mesplay
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 1:43 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 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20060801/92f9ceae/attachment.htm