A unified search portal that offers preview clips would be ideal, though
it probably would never include all the independent filmmakers and
distributors. We do have some tools at hand though. I'm always surprised
that more librarians don't use worldcat.org to identify potential
titles, and find distributors for known titles.
Deborah Benrubi
***************
Technical Services Librarian
University of San Francisco
Gleeson Library|Geschke Center
2130 Fulton St.
San Francisco, CA 94117
ph. 415.422.5672
fax 415.422.2233
On 5/15/2013 11:40 AM, Jo Ann Reynolds wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I thought the vendors out there might like to hear our (the buyers)
stories about how we go looking for films. It might help them to
understand what we go through and that would hopefully help them
better understand the need for a centralized place to search.
So here I am, reserve services coordinator for a fairly large
university. I used to put over 1000 books on reserve every year and
now it's about 300. Instead of putting books on reserve I put links to
full text articles, some 3000+; ebooks, small but growing as
availability grows; and video, both DVD's and streams. Video is the
second largest medium I put on reserve and is the fastest growing
medium I put on reserve, about 1000+ per year.
How do films get chosen to go on Reserve? Some faculty talk to other
faculty and learn about them, others watch PBS or see a popular movie
that will make the point they want to make, while others say to me, "I
need a film(s) on /X/ topic, can you suggest any?" So now I reach into
my memory and might manage to retrieve one or two, I search the
database of material I put on course reserve and see what other
faculty are using and might come up with a few more. Beyond that, IF I
have the time, I'm faced with a website to website search by vendor to
see if I can find something they might be looking for. It's a
cumbersome process and I tend to gravitate toward known vendors who've
proven to provide quality films in the past and who have good search
engines. I keep a list of those vendors in my media guide (see the
Shop for Videos tab here:
*http://classguides.lib.uconn.edu/mediaresources ). *By the time I've
gone through some or all vendors on that list I'm done, no more time.
So whether I've found anything or not I let the faculty member know.
You might argue that there's a whole lot of filmmakers whose work is
not represented here and you'd be right. The result is we both lose
out on an opportunity.
Think of Amazon where multiple vendors sell the same thing and make
money. The benefits of having a unified database far outweigh the
perception of customer loss via competition with other film vendors. I
think if you continue on this same path you will be committing market
suicide in the long run and you will sell less, not more, which means
you message will reach fewer people.
I invite other librarians to share how/why a unified search for
video/streams would be useful to them.
Best,
Jo Ann
Jo Ann Reynolds
Reserve Services Coordinator
University of Connecticut Libraries
369 Fairfield Road, Unit 1005RR
Storrs, CT 06269-1005
[email protected]
860-486-1406
860-486-5636 (fax)
*http://classguides.lib.uconn.edu/mediaresources *
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.
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.
