Media Madness

Lists, Lists, Lists!!!

Many of our Henrietta Public Library media patrons find the Libraweb on-line catalog to be “somewhat unfriendly” when searching for DVDs, videocassettes, audio books on compact discs or instructional media.  Because of lack of wall space most of our non-fiction audio-visual materials are shelved with their book counterparts in the non-fiction section of the library.  Recently, our audio book staff person compiled many new lists to help our patrons know what we have in various formats.  All of the lists are located in folders on the northwest corner of the circulation desk across from the reference desk.  The lists include: 

• Videocassettes – alphabetical by title and lists genre (Romance, Children’s, Comedy etc. and whether VHS is closed captioned or not. Non-fictional/instructional VHS tapes are listed at the end of this folder with the call number for the item.
• DVDs  - same as above
• Music on compact discs – These are listed by ANSCR catagories. The “ANSCR Classification Scheme” is the first page of this folder. The ANSCR classifications are used for most large music collections in libraries. Once one gets used to them they are relatively easy to understand. After the top accession number the next line in the call number refers to the genre of the work, line two is the performer/composer of the album, and the third line a abbreviation or beginning of the title of the CD. For example, #2513 MA BEAT AR is the Beatles’ Abbey Road which is filed in the MA or Popular category in the music CD section. The music CD folder is divided by each ANSCR category and then by title, performer and call number.
• Audio books on cassettes and compact disc are perhaps the most popular item in our library. Unfortunately they are also the most expensive as we buy only unabridged titles. This folder is arranged by author, title and Call number of each audio book. There are sections for each reading/interest level and for fiction and non-fiction works.  Coming soon we will also be providing the titles added by the Henrietta Public Library to the Monroe County Library System’s “Overdrive” digital book collection

Finally, some of you may have noticed we have shifted our DVDs onto a side of the “Multi -disc Videocassettes” displayer. The DVDs with titles at the end of the alphabet are on this rack. As we continue to add more DVDs to our collection we will continue to shift DVDs to this end unit.

As always we hope to see you in the library – come “check us out” soon!

Nancy R. Maxwell
Audio-Visual Librarian