Movies on Hold at the Library
Submitted by spoky on Sat, 09/13/2003 - 03:09
Tags:
Picked up but not yet watched
- Farscape. The complete season one. [Vol. 2]
- Farscape. The complete season one. [Vol. 3]
- He loves me, he loves me not
- Hidalgo
Ready for pickup
Still on hold
- 3 women: 36
- Absolutely fabulous complete DVD collection.: 17
- Angels in America: 3
- Anything else: 25
- Les invasions barbares: 2
- Barbershop 2 back in business.: 4
- Beijing bicycle: 18
- Being Julia: 108
- Blazing saddles: 43
- Born romantic: 5
- Boxing Helena: 1
- Breathless: 5
- Bridget Jones the edge of reason.: 229
- Bringing down the house: 8
- The butterfly effect: 5
- Catwoman: 127
- Cellular: 76
- The Chaplin collection. City lights: 2
- The chronicles of Riddick: 51
- The circle: 3
- The clearing: 75
- Closer: 197
- Coffee and cigarettes: 40
- Connie and Carla: 2
- Coupling the complete second season.: 6
- The court jester: 3
- The cuckoo: 2
- The day after tomorrow: 3
- De-Lovely the Cole Porter story.: 63
- Dead like me - Season one.: 4
- The delicate art of parking a comical investigation.: 1
- Deliver us from Eva: 5
- Dersu Uzala: 14
- Dickie Roberts former child star.: 3
- DodgeBall a true underdog story.: 55
- Dogville: 72
- The door in the floor: 73
- Elephant: 2
- Envy: 4
- Exotica: 30
- Fahrenheit 9/11: 84
- Farscape - the complete season one(vol 4): 1
- Farscape - the complete season one(vol 5): 1
- Farscape - the complete season one(vol 6): 1
- Fear and loathing in Las Vegas: 9
- Flight of the Phoenix: 191
- Freaks and geeks the complete series.: 1
- Friday night lights: 91
- Friends the complete second season.: 6
- Futurama. Volume one: 51
- Gangs of New York: 6
- Gilmore girls the complete first season.: 2
- Godsend: 2
- Good bye Lenin!: 5
- A guy thing: 9
- Harold & Kumar go to White Castle: 79
- Hellboy: 6
- Hollywood homicide: 10
- Homicide--life on the street. The complete first and second seasons: 1
- Hope springs: 7
- The human stain: 10
- I [heart] Huckabees: 100
- I, robot: 100
- The in-laws: 11
- The insider: 41
- Intermission: 95
- Irreversible: 8
- Jackie Brown: 20
- Japanese story: 30
- Jersey girl: 3
- Just married: 14
- King Arthur: 139
- The L word. Season one: 10
- Ladder 49: 251
- The last samurai: 4
- Laurel Canyon: 6
- Laws of attraction: 1
- Le déclin de l'empire Américain: 2
- Levity: 5
- Lexx. S2. V1: 2
- Lolita: 21
- Lost in La Mancha: 1
- Mac: 2
- A man apart: 9
- The Manchurian candidate: 92
- Maria full of grace: 58
- The matrix revolutions: 3
- Mean girls: 15
- Midnight cowboy: 4
- Millennium actress: 2
- Miracle: 2
- The missing: 4
- The motorcycle diaries: 85
- Mulholland Dr.: 46
- My baby's daddy: 20
- My life without me: 6
- Mystic River: 35
- Napoleon Dynamite: 79
- Northern exposure. The complete first season: 10
- Notorious: 8
- The office the complete first series.: 3
- Open water: 26
- Oz. The complete fourth season: 15
- The passion of the Christ: 13
- The perfect score: 129
- Peter Pan: 2
- The Pink Panther film collection: 3
- Poolhall junkies: 7
- The prisoner. Vol. 1: 19
- The punisher: 37
- Raising Helen: 2
- Ray: 221
- Rebecca: 3
- Roger & me: 5
- Rosewood: 3
- Rush hour: 2
- Saved!: 21
- Secret ballot: 2
- Secret window: 2
- Seducing Doctor Lewis: 2
- Seven samurai: 3
- Sex and the city the complete fourth season.: 12
- Shaka Zulu: 6
- Shark tale: 288
- Shaun of the dead: 67
- Shogun: 2
- Sky Captain and the world of tomorrow: 236
- Solaris (1972): 5
- Solaris (2003): 7
- The Sopranos the complete second season.: 9
- Spartan: 2
- Spellbound (1945): 6
- Spring, summer, fall, winter-- and spring: 1
- Stark raving mad: 2
- Starsky & Hutch: 2
- The station agent: 3
- The Stepford wives: 13
- Straw dogs: 70
- Strawberry & chocolate: 2
- Sunshine state: 4
- Super size me: 80
- Taken: 4
- Taking lives: 5
- Taxi: 157
- The terminal: 4
- The third wheel: 37
- The trailer park boys big plans, little brains : the complete 1st and 2nd seasons.: 11
- The United States of Leland: 31
- V the original miniseries.: 4
- Van Helsing: 36
- Vanity fair: 175
- The velocity of Gary: 24
- The village: 5
- Walking tall: 64
- Wasabi: 1
- Waydowntown: 25
- The whole nine yards: 2
- Wimbledon: 193
- Win a date with Tad Hamilton!: 4
- The wire. The complete first season: 34
- Without a paddle: 67
- The X-files the complete first season.: 7
- Zorba the Greek: 15
Author Comments:
The numbers are our position in the hold queue.
I discovered a new trick where I can continue to stay in the hold queue but state that if my turn comes that I will let the person behind me take the movie. This means that if too many movies start coming at one time I can tell the library to stop giving movies until I catch up with what I already have. This also means that I can have a lot more movies on hold without worrying that to many will show up at the same time. I quite like this feature, I wish I discovered it sooner.
I had noticed the lag, but I wasn't sure if it meant you were watching fewer movies, or writing about fewer of them here. Nice to hear your library has a program. Sadly, none of my libraries do DVDs.
I have actually known that my library has had DVDs for quite some time, I just never had the time to go there and search through their databases to put things on hold. We were really only checking the library website to find out what the hours of operation were, so finding out I could do holds from home makes a big difference.
Have you asked anyone at your library if they plan on getting any DVDs in the future? If enough people showed interest I am sure they would start getting some.
I've only asked if they've have DVDs, not if they *will* have DVDs. Good point about showing interest; I'll do that.
Is Kiki's Delivery Service by Hayao Miyazaki? Post after you see it and tell if it's good or not. I recommend "My Neighbor Totoro."
Yes it is, I will try to get some comments written up after I watch it (They will be on my Movies seen 2003 list). I quite like what I have seen of Miyazali's work so I will try and get a hold of a copy of "My Neighbor Totoro."
Believe it or not I believe DVDs are a money opportunity for libraries. Here in our town you can take a DVD out of the library and keep it for 4 days. If you retutrn it late it's $1.00 per day compared to books which are 10 cents a day when late. I typically only go to the library once a week so if I see something on DVD that catches my eye and take it out, I undoubtedly keep it late, and then end up paying more in late fees then if I would have taken it from the video store. Plus since it's a "free rental" you don't rush home and watch it right away like the video store and you end up keeping until you have a chance to watch it making it late to return still. Of course, I'd rather pay late fees to the library then to my local video store.
Your library is a bit more lenient then mine. We can keep the DVDs for 3 days and the fine is $2.00 a day, which even after two days late would still be less then renting from a video store. Also library patrons seem to be a bit more gentle with the DVDs, all but one of the nine titles I have borrowed little or no scratches on them. At the video store it seems that every third DVD is unwatchable.
Oh, Gee Whiz! You're getting close on some of them!
Some DVD collection! Where is this library, if you don't mind me asking?
Not at all. It is the Halifax Public Libraries in Halifax, Nova Scotia. If you do a "Subject Words (List Titles)" Search on DVDs you get a list of over 2000 results. Some of these are books about DVDs and there are a lot of exercise DVDs, but overall I am very impressed with the selection. They also seem to be adding about 30 or 40 DVDs each month, which is also very impressive.
Very impressive indeed. I wish I could say the same about my local library. It seems they have more DVDs that haven't been returned, or may have accidentally become "lost". Too bad; I've been dying to get my hands on "The Decalogue" but it's already 2 months overdue.
I have only found one DVD (The French Connection) that I wanted to see where all the copies where either lost or damaged. I am sure that I will come across more in time, but I am hopeful that they will be few and far between.
Geez, what library do you have that allows you to do all that? My library requires 50 cents for every video checkout, and only 10 items on hold at any one time.
I have to admit that I am very happy with the service that my library provides. I have been using it for almost a year now and have only paid about $10 in late fees, which is a very big difference from the $5 something it was costing to rent a single movie at a video store. I was probably spending about $50 to $70 a month when I was renting. Still 50 cents is a good price and if everyone is limited to only 10 holds you probably would not get the build up of hundreds of people in the queue all at once.
Another service of my library that I am very very happy with is my ability to suggest titles for them to purchase. Princess and the warrior, Ran, and the Whole wide world, are all titles they are ordering because I put a request in.
Damn, that's awesome.
Neato, I just found a nearby library that doesn't charge anything for checking out videos and DVDs. Alas, they have a terrible selection (even in the entire library network they're a part of), and they only let you have 2 out at a time. But I should be able to get about 30 good flicks from them over the months. For my first set, I got Harvey and The Big Parade. Yippee!
I suggest that you ask them to get any titles you might be interested in that you would be willing to wait for. You might also tell some friends about it, if more people show an interest then they may start improving the selection.
Yeah, I'll ask... don't know how open they are to purchasing new motion picture titles. I don't have any friends who live in the area, so I can't bring more traffic to them :-)
Now I have to find out if they have a neat system like your library does where I can queue up movies. Does your library also only allow 2 movies out at a time?
My library has a web page interface to their catalog now, but I think it used to be accessed through a telnet connection in the past. If your library has a web page you can probably find out there. You may be only able to set holds if you are actually in the building.
My library's limit is 10 movies out at one time. I think I have had as many as 6 out at once but with most movies only allowed out for 3 nights, I find any more then 4 at a time to difficult to manage. Unless I pick them up on a Thursday, my library is closed on Sundays and Mondays so any three day loans that are taken out on Thursdays really aren't due back until Tuesday so 5 or 6 movies at a time isn't too bad depending on my plans for that weekend.
They weren't very receptive to the suggestion of buying new videos (or rather, new videos of old movies). Just budget concerns.
And so, I've already exhausted my library system's catalog of films that I haven't seen but want to. Because I've also exhausted my video store's collection, it's up to Netflix and TCM to satisfy me. They'll probably do just fine. :-)
I am sorry to hear they were not willing to expand their collection, but have no worries in your ability to find all the movies that you want to see.
My new library system has a wealth of titles that I want to see so large that I'm cancelling Netflix at the end of the month. Do those numbers after every title indicate your place in the queue? If they do, then I think you're right: it is better to have a limit of 10 holds per person. "57 in queue" probably means you wouldn't get the title for years.
Those numbers are my position in the queue. A high number could take a while depending on the number of copies of the film the library has, if there are ten or fifteen copies a number like 50 or 100 or even 200+ drops at a fairly quick rate, but when there is only one or two copies anything over thirty takes forever. Fortunately as I mentioned before due to the suspend function any title that is less then ten will most likely be sent to me in less then a week after reactivating it which means I currently can have about half (or at least a third) of these titles as soon as I want them, which is quite nice.
wait if the numbers show the place in the line,why do some have the same number?
The position in the queue does not always change because my library has (what I believe to be) a very great system, where you can stand in the line but still let the person behind you get the movie or book or CD, if you are not ready to get it when it is your turn. Right now I set this flag for everything as soon as I put it on hold, and I take the flag off about two to five movies a week depending on how busy I am. Pretty much any movie that is under ten will probably show up within a week if I turned the suspend flag off, and some of the more popular titles would probably show up within days if under twenty. I think the system was originally designed so people could go away for a few weeks without something showing up and then being put back in circulation before they return because they only give you a week to pick stuff up . But I am sure just about everybody abuses it the same way I do. It lets you but lots of titles on hold without worrying about getting ten or fifteen all at once.
This post is deleted due to the poster's stupidiity.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Man, you seem to be in a bit of a rut! :-)
Nah... I just posted something, realized my post only made sense if you misread the list the way I misread it, and deleted the senseless post.
I was a bit bummed late last week, but I am actually quite chipper today!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs