Every time I go there, and every time everybody else goes there, the TRL Browsery presents the same irrelevant oldies, B‑ and C-tier catalogue items, and home-renovation shows. Meanwhile, the rare new, interesting, or special DVDs are mixed into the dross. (I told you this already.)
This is no way to run a railroad.
Don’t believe me? Cue up your “There’s no accounting for taste” argument, look through my photo set, and try to make a serious case that the most valuable real estate in Canadian libraries does even an adequate job sorting, weeding, and presenting its DVDs.
Most of these discs are plunked onto trucks in the middle of the floor. They provide the misleading impression of a bounty of cinema. They’re mostly crap (and you know it!), and it’s the same crap every day. Most of these should be simply withdrawn, with a few of them sent to other branches (like oldies to Beaches). If you’re a regular there, you see the same lousy discs over and over again as you plod through the collection trying to find something remotely interesting. The wooden display case – with what should be high pride-of-place – holds the worst of the worst, many of which find their way face-front. It’s a disaster.
Basically the Browsery head agrees with me on every point listed above. But since I’m the one suggesting changes, no changes have been made – anywhere, at all. The Browsery head, and TPL in general, would prefer to keep making mistakes, to keep making life worse for library patrons, than to take my advice and improve.
