Re: weeding vs. shelf space

Charles Timberlake (ctimberl@sjvls.lib.ca.us)
Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:38:17 -0700 (PDT)

We are a county public library system. A few months ago, we changed our
video loan period from 2 days to 1 week. Very quickly, circs. increased
50%. We have more room on our shelves, we take in more revenue ($1 per
video loan), but we see fewer fines. We also increased the number of
videos that could be borrowed on a library card at one time for 3 to 6
which may have been the major factor in the increased volume we are
experiencing. A year ago, we changed another policy which had limited
video borrowers to patrons aged 18 and up. We began permitting children
to borrow videos, and they do. By the way, so far no complaints from
parents, though we're waiting.

On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, Barb Bergman wrote:

> Karen,
> I see that you're a public library. Have you tried increasing the checkout
> period? The longer they're out, the less shelf space is needed to hold the
> ones that are in...
> I recall that the Iowa City PL only had shelves for 2/3 of its collection
> because 1/3 was usually checked out. Reshelving carts would be placed near
> the shelves rather trying to shelf immediately --by the end of the day,
> many of those titles had been checked out again.
>
> Barb
>
> At 08:07 AM 4/11/2001 -0700, you wrote:
> >I would also make sure you had more than enough space to hold the collection,
> >with space for emerging formats/technology.
> >I'm in the position of weeding perfectly good videos that are still
> >circulating or weeding videos on subjects that have more limited interest
> >(i.e. less common diseases, grief/grieving, certain historical or
> >geographical areas) because we've totally run out of room for videos. It's
> >either pitch good videos or not buy new ones.
> >I'm out of room for DVDs already too, which means weeding more videos to make
> >more space for DVDs.
> >Karen Fischer
> >AV Librarian
> >Mansfield/Richland County Public Library
> >Mansfield, OH
> >
> >
>
> *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-**-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
> Barbara J. Bergman Porter Henderson Library
> Media Librarian Angelo State University
> ph: (915) 942-2313 Box 11013, ASU Station
> fax: (915) 942-2198 San Angelo, TX 76909
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