Library reviews DVD policy

Gibson Memorial Library’s board is continuing to update various library policies in 2025, most recently looking at DVD checkouts. Assistant Director Jordan Foote said patrons have experienced a number of issues with the current policy, which he says is limiting.

“One problem we’ve had with patrons checking out TV shows is, it’s pretty much impossible to watch a full TV series in three days, which is our current checkout time for patrons,” Foote said. Friends of the Library are able to check out DVDs for an extra day, bringing the total checkout time to four days.

Even if a patron is only renting a film rather than a season of a television show, three days doesn’t always give them enough time.

“We do have a lot of people that may only be able to make it in maybe on a Tuesday and are maybe only able to watch the DVDs on the weekend,” Foote said. “That kind of creates a tight turnaround, especially when we have a large population living outside of Creston that can’t get in that frequently.”

DVDs can be renewed. However, even with the renewal period, patrons have less than a week to return the DVD. Foote said this time span was originally put in place to mirror the time video rental stores such as Blockbuster or Family Video.

Board member Connie Maxson suggested changing the checkout time frame to a week, while giving Friends two weeks. Even with the extended checkout period, patrons would still be able to renew the media if a hold has not been placed on it by another patron.

Along with checkout timeframe, some patrons have run into issues with how many DVDs can be checked out at once.

“Another kind of issue that’s popped up is, we have patrons that live in the same household but are not family, so for example group homes or assisted living,” Foote said. “We have in our current policy a max of three DVDs at a time per household. When you have multiple people who aren’t in the same family but are living in the same household technically, it makes things a little difficult for them.”

Board members gave suggestions to increase the amount to a maximum of five checkouts while also changing the maximum amount of checkouts to each patron rather than household. Board president Ann Coulter worried that doing both would lead to a drop in returns.

“I think you’re going to see them not come back. By upping the number, we up the time because they don’t have time already to view the ones they have, and they still don’t have the time. They need to do that on the next trip,” Coulter said.

Other suggestions for changes to the policy included the price of replacing the DVD case, currently set at $1, and having different checkout rules for movies versus television seasons.

The DVD policy will come back to the board on March 3 for final edits and approval.