RE: [Videolib] open/vs closed stacks

Konkel, Mary (Konkel@cdnet.cod.edu)
Thu, 19 Feb 2004 08:50:05 -0600

The College of DuPage, a Illinois community college of some 34,000 students
has had open stacks for nonprint materials for many many years. When I
worked in a neighboring institution some 12 years ago, I used to take my
staff on field trips to visit. We integrate our media into our general
stacks along with audiobooks, spoken recordings, kits, and books, with the
exception of the $250+ titles, which are housed in our classroom (CIRCDESK)
collection. Our popular video rental collection of VHS (5,000+ titles) and
DVD (1,000+ titles) are also in an open stack environment and go out for 1
week at $1.00 per title. We moved the popular video collection from our
CIRCDESK to an open stack environment 2 years ago and not only has the
circulation gone through the roof, but the revenue has been astounding.
General stacks titles survive quite well with very minimal problems with
damage and theft. Our popular collection suffers a little, but generally in
the area of DVD, which is prone to breakage and scratches. Replacements in
this area are quite inexpensive. We do not InterLibrary Loan our AV
collection and take a little extra care in ensuring that physical processing
for nonprint materials are adequate to withstand circulation and shelving in
the general stacks. Being an audiovisual cataloger for some 20 years, I was
quite skeptical of open stacks environments for videos, but COD has made me
a believer. It really works and library users are most greatful for the
opportunity to browse for all types of materials in their subject area. It
many cases, we forget that AV is often the primary source material for
research. If interested in our collection, check us out at:
http://lrc.cod.edu/

--MARY
======================
Mary S. Konkel
Assistant Professor
Head of Technical Services
College of DuPage
Library SRC 3038A
425 Fawell Blvd.
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137-6599
Voice: (630) 942-2662
Fax: (630) 858-8757
E-mail: konkel@cdnet.cod.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Albrecht [mailto:albrechs@wabash.edu]
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 7:44 AM
To: videolib@library.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: [Videolib] open/vs closed stacks

From a fellow Hoosier, I respectfully disagree with Lisa. Granted, we're
a small institution with only 2500-3000 items in our VHS/DVD collection,
but we made the move to open stacks for VHS about 3 three years ago, and it
has been wonderful to see the use of these materials increase. When new
VHS materials come in, if they are extremely expensive or a valuable
out-of-print title that I've obtained used, I have the cataloger mark this
as a "Circ Video" and it's housed behind the circulation desk. All of our
DVDs are also kept behind circ., though I don't think that will last much
longer. I figured The Godfather boxed set would be gone w/in 2 weeks, but
surprisingly, it's still here after a year and a half.

In short, I think you do what you can to protect the "biggies" and the
irreplacables [our copy of Sunrise on laserdisc, for instance], but for the
largest part of the collection, I say let the folks see what you've got and
enjoy it.

Videos circulate to students for 7 days, for faculty & staff for 14
days. Like Barb in Mankato, we also ILL videos/DVDs to institutions who
will reciprocate.

Susan at Wabash College

At 05:59 PM 2/18/2004 -0500, Lisa at Notre Dame wrote:

>Unless you have electrical barbed wire on your videocassettes/DVDs--I
>WOULD DEFINITELY NOT ALLOW THEM ON OPEN STACKS. Consider the fact that
>you will not be able to the replace the $200-250 independently made
>production that was stolen from the shelf, and that the students and
>faculty will suffer for that loss.

Susan Albrecht
Acquisitions Coordinator
Wabash College Lilly Library
Crawfordsville, IN
x6216
albrechs@wabash.edu

****************************************************************************
*****
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."--Neil Peart
****************************************************************************
*****

_______________________________________________
Videolib mailing list
Videolib@library.berkeley.edu
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/videolib
_______________________________________________
Videolib mailing list
Videolib@library.berkeley.edu
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/videolib