Hurry Up and Solve the Problem

The other day I had a discussion with a fellow staff member about the wisdom of sinking money into television shows on DVD. It’s easy to say, “Because that’s what patrons want,” but do we really know what they want? With numerous underserved populations in our publics: immigrants, small businesses and teens, for example, does the money pit that is buying expensive television shows, buying the spinoffs to those shows, replacing whole seasons when one disc goes missing and then buying more shows really serve the public?

That’s why when I saw this article (via) I was intrigued. One of the problems with all this Library 2.0 stuff is a distribution problem. In a recent Talking With Talis podcast, Tim Spalding referred to this problem as “hurry up and wait.” That no matter how accessible we make our data, getting the physical into the customer’s hands is still the biggest issue we face. Much has been said on Netflix for books, but I’ve never thought about, well, Netflix for DVDs. At 19 dollars a month for the most common Netflix membership (there are cheaper ones) how many Netflix memberships can we get for 18 seasons of The Simpsons at 50 bucks a pop. Hold on, let me do the math… about 47. Doesn’t look so stupid anymore, does it?

One of the frustrations I feel with libraries is that no one ever bothers to say “How can we solve this problem?” Rather than, “We can’t solve this problem because it’s always been a problem”

Of course there are problems with this model, those 18 seasons serve more than just 47 people, most notably, but if we get a bulk discount for books, can we get one with Netflix? Has anyone bothered to ask?