Thursday, December 28, 2006

For the Zillionth Time

Here we go again, ad nauseam. My collection development policy for DVD's. The Library cannot spend its energy and its resources by concentrating on collecting current release movies. IT IS A BAD USE OF TAXPAYER MONEY! I hate to shout but let me repeat. I cannot use taxpayer money to compete with local business. That would be unethical.

Secondly there are limited funds available for DVD collection development and it would be gross negligence for me to concentrate on adding materials to the collection when they are available elsewhere in the community. Blockbuster does it better, they have a bigger budget, it's what they do. The Library is not a welfare DVD provider. We do not collect materials just for people that cannot afford Video Stores so spending taxpayer money to duplicate materials readily available elsewhere would be a waste of time and money!

Third the DVD collection is relatively small. I have a lot of catching up to do. Just this Christmas I discovered our lack of Christmas themed DVD's. I know many of you are salivating for Jessica Simpson in the Dukes of hazard but I need Scrooge, A Christmas Carol and Scrooged in the collection so even more than usual I will be concentrating on retrospective purchasing until I build up the core collection.

I have worked in Libraries with a two year rule. A general release movie had to be at least two years old before the Library would purchase a copy of it. Thankfully we do not have this rule and I do buy some new and recent movies. But I will do so only if they meet standard Library selection criteria. (ie top grossing, award winning, critically acclaimed etc.)

The DVD/Videocassette collection is unusual in that there are businesses that do exactly what a Library does. That is they build a collection and loan them out, but they are purely profit motivated while the Library collects materials for educational and historic purposes as well as recreation. Because of this the DVD/Videocassette collection will always be skewed more towards a "classic movie/educational" collection and less towards a high turnover popular collection.

Finally, this is the way I typically build Library collections. I start with building the 'core' collection and work my way forward. This way I learn a collection at the same time I build it. Only in this case building the 'core' collection is the primary goal in building the Library's DVD Collection. This is the best way the DVD collection can help the Rogers Public Library achieve its mission.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Most Movies

Yesterday we were clowning around at the Reference desk. It's Christmas and we're short staffed while people are on vacation. Normal Library traffic patterns are all whacked out so I was joking around about my Henry Wilcoxon Film Festival and how this guy almost nobody ever heard of made all these movies. We got to wondering which actor made the most movies. Google was no good. Guinness was a washout, but considering the history of Movies in America it seemed a good question. So we ended up randomly looking up different actors on IMDB.com For a while John Wayne held the record at 172. But that got me to thinking. The Three Stooges made over 200 shorts so we looked up Moe Howard and he had 220. That led us to Edgar Kennedy. Edgar Kennedy also made one reel shorts but I mainly remember him for doing a scene with Harpo Marx in Duck Soup. He's the Lemonade Vendor. He made 408 movies. From there we looked up several of the Keystone Cops and 'Snub' Pollard has 462 credits to his name. Of course this isn't definitive. What's a movie? How many of these credits were actually television. Should we be counting one-reel shorts? Or only Feature length movies. Still 462! Way to go Snub!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Getting ready for 2nd Saturdays

I have developed a real appreciation for bloggers who can pen interesting blog entries every day. This is my job and I have trouble finding the time. Most of the past two weeks I have been planning and working on my Saturday Matinees. I am going exclusively with films from the thirties. I think I've done a respectable job so far of building a classic collection and this is a chance to show it off. Finding the main features was easy, finding B-features and shorts has been a lot harder. B-features by their very nature were cheaply produced and have not survived.

The Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, Edgar Kennedy, Our Gang/Little Rascals are some of the one reel shorts that are available. I have run across Tex Ritter but haven't bought any. I have found some gems that Cinema affectionados may want to catch at our Matinees. The Bridge Wives directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and How to Sleep, which won the Academy Award for the Best Short in 1935 will be worth the price of Admission (FREE).

I'm rather proud of the cartoon collection the Library is building. We should have nice variety of 1930's cartoons. I finally found the 2D two reel double feature length Popeyes. So don't miss Popeye Meets Sinbad, Popeye Meets Ali Baba, and Popeye and the Magic Lamp. These are the three best Popeyes ever made. And speaking of Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop (didn't I mention them?) there was this guy named Ub Iwerks who had his own cartoon studio in the 30's. He got his start as the lead animator for Disney and later hired a lot of the animators from Betty Boop. His stuff is supposed to be amazingly surreal. I'm Going with his New Car on May 12. I will also use some of Ub's stuff in October in honor of Halloween. So don't miss it.