hi guys
Still plugging away on the Mellon grant I've been alluding to for a number
of months now (identifying out of distribution/at-risk materials in
library video collections)
The task is going to be to develop a methodology to identify potential
candidates in library video collections. The project lead is NYU and the
investigators there are looking at scarce titles in the collections of
each of the three project partners (i.e. held by one library only) as a
test universe.
I'm developing a considerably different approach. My sense is that scarce
titles aren't necessarily the titles that require most urgent attention
(primarily because they don't circulate much, and because a lot of these
tend to be stuff that wasn't commercially distributed in the first place).
Instead, I want to focus on a model that identifies broad groups of
commercially distributed titles that are likely to be out of distribution
in any format. Once done, I want to use circulation stat and/or anecdotal
info to make decisions about which to deal with first. ("Deal with" means
invoking Section 108 to digitize)
I put a list of belly-up distributors and other suspects earlier. Here is
the list again with a few amendments.
What have I forgotten? Who have I left out? What else should I be
thinking about?
Thanks, as always, for your sage input!
Gary
I. Identifying Vendors/Distributors know to be out of business
Using Berkeley’s OskiCat local OPAC and/or the Millennium ILS, identify
videos distributed by the following:
• American Poetry Archive
• Arthouse, Inc.
• Arthur Cantor Films
• Carousel Film and Video
• Coronet Film and Video
• CRM Films / McGraw-Hill Films,
• Drift Distribution
• Embassy Home Entertainment
• Films Incorporated
• Home Vision Cinema/Public Media Incorporated
• International Film Bureau
• International Media Resource Exchange / Latin American Video Archive
• InterNationes / Goethe Institute
• Learning Corporation of America
• Media for the Arts
• Media Guild
• Mystic Fire Video
• National Latino Communications Center (NLCC)
• University of California Center for Media and Independent Learning
II. Identifying portions of currently in-business vendor catalogs likely
to be out of distribution
• ABC News / ABC Wide World of Learning
• PBS Home Video/PBS Video: films with release dates before 2005
• Annenberg/CPB Project pre-2050
• Time-Life Film and Video (pre-2000)
• History Channel (pre-2005)
• A&E Home Entertainment (pre-2005)
III. Feature Films
List of US and foreign titles not currently available on DVD, assembled by
members of the VIDEOLIB listserv.
Also: titles initially distributed by New Yorker Film and Video, and
Center for Cuban Studies
Gary Handman
Director
Media Resources Center
Moffitt Library
UC Berkeley
510-643-8566
ghand...@library.berkeley.edu
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC
"I have always preferred the reflection of life to life itself."
--Francois Truffaut
VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues
relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control,
preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and
related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective
working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication
between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and
distributors.
