What are you doing about DVD thefts in public libraries?

socialwerq:

thecardiganlibrarian:

We separate the covers from the cases and put the covers on display and the cases behind lock and key. It’s a pretty time-intensive process that, I’m afraid, treats the patrons as potential criminals and sometimes doesn’t lend itself to organization.

I’ll be interested to see how it plays out at the new gig.

The library I work at has little cards that correspond to the DVD. The DVDs are #ed and you take the card to the circulation desk and the staff member gets the DVD for you.
The artwork for the cds, DVDs, etc. are displayed along with the cards in a binder with the artwork laminated and there are little pockets for the cards that patrons take to the circulation desk. I hope that this is making sense.

The library I USED to work for just had lockable DVD cases. DVDs were still stolen but obviously the # stolen wasn’t large enough to warrant putting them behind the desk. Plus, people can still steal them by just not returning them.

Oh yeah. We still have tons of DVDs stolen (or at least “bought”) by patrons who fail to return them. We lock people out of the system at $10 in fees, though, and each DVD is billed at $30 (plus you can have four out at once), so those people end up being blocked from libraries throughout the western part of the state until they come clean. Mostly we don’t reorder when a title is stolen, but just start making ILL holds on it through the consortium. It means a very high turnover in DVD titles, but even when our collection development librarian just buys from the $5 bin, nearly every title gets enthusiastically checked out.

Source: thecardiganlibrarian