Comments on: Loan Period: One Guilty Conscience

By: Cool Dvds images | DVD

Cool Dvds images | DVD — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 15:06:17 +0000

[...] Returned DVDs Image by herzogbr Someone’s guilty conscience prompted the return of these "not checked out" (a.k.a. "stolen") DVDs. Read more on my website. [...]

By: Swiss Army Librarian » Watching Movies on Netflix and Copyright Issues :: Brian Herzog

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:49:44 +0000

[...] addition to the movies we missed purchasing, another source of holes in the collection is always theft. Tags: collection, collections, dvd, dvds, libraries, Library, movie, movies, netflix, [...]

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:09:44 +0000

@Liz: no, sadly - we have season two, but season one wasn't one of the items that got returned.

By: Liz

Liz — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:42:55 +0000

Wow… Call me naive, but I like to think maybe the thief had a change of heart in the New Year and wanted to return what he had “taken w/o checking out,” and not just that his mom found them.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad you got some of your missing movies back, and hopefully they’re still in playable condition.

So does this mean you have Hamburger Time again?

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 12:30:01 +0000

@Oleg: I completely agree – and I think this sentiment is the same reason why there was such uproar over the TSA’s backscatter machines and other invasive search methods at airports. From birth, Americans are ingrained with the phrase “innocent until proven guilty” – and yet now when we go to airports, we are all considered terrorists until proven innocent. It’s bad enough at airports, and libraries certainly should not view people this way. Our collections don’t belong to us (the staff), they belong to the community – it’s our job to make it as easy as possible for community members to use the collections.

By: Oleg K.

Oleg K. — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:01:59 +0000

This illustrates a maxim of customer-service professions perfectly: Most of the really insidious occurrences stem from a very small percentage of the customer population. In the case of your library, this happened to be the “stack”er.

I’m glad you decided that staff vigilance was key since there really isn’t a purpose in making the mostly innocent population feel like thieves who require monitoring.

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:44:27 +0000

@Brandy: We considered this, and I do think it is the most workable solution. However, we haven’t implemented it because of the extra burden on the Circ staff, and we also don’t have room behind the Circ Desk for all the disks. But if the theft problem does escalate, this is probably what we’ll do – at least with the high-risk disks.

By: Brandy Stillman

Brandy Stillman — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:26:07 +0000

What about taking the DVDs out of the and putting them back in when the box is checked out? This leaves the case empty on the shelf already. They do this at video game stores. Buy some paper DVD sleeves and write the barcode on the outside of the sleeve and file by barcode number (or your own method). It adds a bit to the circ duty, but seems like a cheaper way to protect them.

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 23:06:58 +0000

@Gretchen: we played with relocating the DVDs closer to the Circ Desk, but it didn’t seem to do much good. Staff couldn’t keep a constant eye on the area, and anyone wanting to steal something would just take the DVD box to another part of the library.

@Lisa & @Carolyn: We occasionally find torn-off barcode and other empty cases around the library too – some people will do anything to get something for free. I wonder if they ever thought of checking it out for free – sigh.

By: Gretchen

Gretchen — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 04:20:50 +0000

This has been my experience also – it always costs more to secure the collection than it does to replace the few items that go for a walkabout. Library staff tend to go a little bit ballistic at the thought that management sits back and LETS the items walk out the door. It’s those darn gold plated editions of Star Wars and Anchorman that we keep buying. Our solution has been location of the collection and increased staff vigilance as well, and it works pretty well.