Library reworks DVD, genealogy policies

For the past few months, the policies at the Gibson Memorial Library have received a major overhaul, modernizing and fact-checking previous rules. This work continued Monday as the library board approved a new video and DVD policy and offered edits on a genealogy data policy.

The DVD policy was first brought to the board in February. Assistant Director Jordan Foote shared a number of issues the library was having with the policy, including short checkout times and number of checkouts at a time.

In the draft brought forward Monday, households were able to have five checkouts at a time rather than the previous three. However, only one of those five checkouts can be a TV series.

The new policy draft also has a checkout period of 10 days with no renewals for movies, rather than the previous checkout period of three days with two renewals. This adds an extra day to the total checkout period while also putting an end to a patron annoyance.

“The one thing we had complaints about with the three days with two automatic renewals is, if they were signed up for text messaging, they were receiving constant text messages saying ‘we’ll try to renew this in three days’ pretty much as soon as they were checking out the DVD,” Foote said. “We’re hoping this will also confuse people less with the no renewals so they can just receive those 10 days, that’s it.”

While movies have a 10-day checkout period, TV series have been upped to a checkout period of 14 days with no renewals. The time period for both of these kinds of checkouts is even longer for members of the Friends of the Library. As a perk of membership, Friends will have a checkout period of 14 days for movies and 21 days for TV series.

Before approving the new policy, board members asked for a specific cost to be added when the lock box for a DVD needs to be replaced. Foote said while it doesn’t happen often, sometimes a DVD is brought back without the case or lock box.

Lock boxes are purchased from school supplies business Demco through the state library at a discounted rate of just under $3 per box. The board proposed a replacement cost of $3.50 in order to cover the cost of the box and as a processing fee for the work of the library staff. The policy was approved with the addition of the $3.50 replacement fee.

The board also took a first look at the library’s policy regarding genealogy data and how to request it. Compared to other policies reviewed in the past few months, the genealogy policy had very little changes to be made.

Foote spoke with genealogy and library assistant Terry Madison about any changes she’d like made to the policy, since she uses it more than anyone else at the library.

“There were a couple notes that she had. We have not charged $3 for looking for genealogy materials,” Foote said. In the previous policy, patrons were charged when asking Madison to search for them, not their own searching. “The only time Terry has charged the $3 is for specifically finding an obituary that we have somewhere. If we do need to make copies for someone for something, we do charge for that.”

In addition, the previous policy states all genealogy request forms will be kept and categorized by month, with no ending date stated. Since Madison receives many requests and most people do not come back for the request form, an ending date will be added.

“You should be tracking how many you’re doing in a month just because, and I don’t know if we’ve ever seen that kind of data before,” board president Ann Coulter said. “Maybe you’ll choose to do two months so you’ll always have something in the book.”

A draft with these edits will come back to the board at their April meeting, scheduled for 5:15 p.m., April 7.