DVDs with audio description at Toronto Public Library

If you’re blind or visually impaired, or if you’re just keen or these sorts of things, you can watch DVDs with audio description – additional narration that talks you through the movie, telling you whatever’s happening that you can’t figure out from the the main soundtrack.

I could go on a big diversion here about what a total nightmare it has been over the last decade just to make sure the description track from the first-run theatrical release actually makes it to home video. I could also describe how I actually maintained the master list of DVDs with audio description for years until I realized that threatened to become a lifelong unpaid (and unappreciated) task.

Anyway. TPL has a couple of hundred DVDs with audio description. The problem is they are really hard to look up in the catalogue. You have to use exactly this subject heading:

Video recordings for people with visual disabilities

You must also know to search by subject. A seemingly simple step like that is actually way beyond the capacity of most users, nor should it be their problem, nor does the new catalogue make subject searches easy.

Yes, there’s a link to that search on an accessibility page. But had you ever heard of that page? Did you know TPL had DVDs with description? Did you know how to find them?

That’s a lot of problems. But one of them has been solved.

Easy ways to tell people how to find described DVDs

At my suggestion, the crack TPL Web team (that is not an ironic statement) added a bunch of shortcuts. They’ve been set up so you can tell people how to search for DVDs when you’re just talking to them, or are running a radio show, or are using something other than an online medium where somebody can click a link.

It’s real simple. Just tell your friends to go to any of these:

• TPL.ca/describeddvds

• TPL.ca/audiodescription

• TPL.ca/descriptivevideo

• TPL.ca/moviesfortheblind

Nice easy-to-remember phrases. Tell all your friends.

(If you want to write out TorontoPublicLibrary.CA instead, you can.)

A week later, TPL says the same thing

…on the little-known TPL accessibility blog.

TV shows on DVD

TV shows on DVD: TPL can’t quite get its story straight ☛

Disposition of Blu-Ray discs

Since the library doesn’t lend Blu-Rays, yet some films are available solely as DVD/Blu-Ray combo packs,

1. doesn’t that leave a small pile of orphan Blu-Ray discs?

2. couldn’t they just be shipped to Calgary, which does lend Blu-Rays? (They’d have to print out their own jackets and so on to be inserted in cases, but TPL does that for its own items, so I don’t see that as a barrier.)

I asked Susan Caron about this and, not atypically, got no response.

Classic television series

The library’s policies for collecting TV shows on DVD are incoherent and underspecified in the first place and simply are not followed in any event. The notorious blue suggestion form merely states that “TV series are purchased selectively due to the volume of requests and cost for each set/season.” They mean due to the number of TV shows on DVD, which I submit is lower than the number of feature films on DVD. Cost is an argument I just do not accept given that the library typically buys 112 copies of the most popular movies (the infamous Pirates of the Caribbean coefficient).

I’ve also been told – second-hand, during Collections Development’s failed shaming process – that TPL only buys new and “really popular” series.

All this is false. The library buys TV series more or less randomly. Just as examples:

• Warehouse 13
• The Big C
• Call Me Fitz
• Breaking Bad
• Mildred Pierce
• Countless anime series only Sam at QS and legions of teens can tell apart

Are all of those new and “really popular”? Don’t be silly. Where are “really popular” shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy? And I was the one who had to donate Futurama (Seasons 5 and 6 only, DVD generic no-hold at Jones).

I have elsewhere shown that the library considers British shows classy and desirable by default and pretty much accepts everything that comes through the door. Sherlock? Absolutely. But the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special? What the hell is that, and why is it in our library?

TPL bought Being Human (U.K. and “U.S.” versions). Fine. It bought the U.K. Wallander, but then, just in the last week or so, the original Swedish Wallander showed up. Also fine. Except the library bought the entire run of the Swedish version. That’s 100 discrete pieces.

So “cost” is an issue? Please don’t patronize us. Cost is not an issue. The collections budget has not been reduced (yes, inflation eats into it, but the Board does not govern inflation) and the library has all sorts of money for a few TV shows on disc.

Here are some series the library also owns (bits and pieces only, in typical cases):

• Angel
• Buffy
• Abbott & Costello
• The Apprentice (but we “won’t purchase reality series”)
• Barney Miller
• The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
• Homicide
• Kids in the Hall
• Perry Mason
• Get Smart
• Frasier
• Gilligan’s Island
• Six Feet Under
• “U.S.” Queer as Folk
• Twilight Zone
• Roots (!)

Given this list, don’t you think there is at least a half-assed effort underway to collect “classic” TV series? I do. What, then, could we add? Here’s a starter set.

• Twin Peaks
• Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
• MASH
• My So-Called Life
• Family
• Thirtysomething
• Space: 1999
• Intelligence (my sole Canadian title)

I see some issues here.

• Buying the full series. MASH has 300-odd episodes. That’s just an example, but I can see how the library would hesitate to buy certain titles because of the implicit expectation they’d buy the whole run. (But Swedish Wallander? No problem.) The full series of MASH runs $115. It’s affordable given the fact I have a library book published by Palgrave whose prominent price sticker reads $121. (The library would then give you exactly one week to watch all 36 DVDs.) The full run of Twin Peaks costs less than $50.

• Number of copies. Series like Angel and Buffy are most easily found at the North York Central Library Browsery. For classic titles, I could see how we could squeak by with three or four copies – two no-hold copies at the respective Browseries and one or two holdable copies. That makes the project affordable.

The way I see it, the proposal I am making here respects the actual scattershot collection habits of the library, adds TV series that the biggest public library in the country needs to have in stock, and stays within budget.

So! What other series should we suggest?

This may be the only time I actually solicit comments. What other classic TV series should be collected? (But be a pal and don’t waste our time with Diff’rent Strokes or The Trouble with Tracy or similar ringers.)

Feelings

I am oversensitive and I take the weather personally, but even correcting for that bias TPL management has a devastating talent for poisoning the well.

In its latest impotent tantrum, TPL management tried to lean on my friends at Jones to induce me to stop submitting blue suggested-title forms. I witnessed great discomfort and embarrassment among staff there as they conveyed this news down the chain of command. They chalked it up to TPL’s feudal labour relations, as I call them, and thought it par for the course. But I have not forgotten that petites fonctionnaires at the district-manager level and above tried to throw their weight around. I think I am well overdue for a chat with the Pape District head.

Jones delivered this diktat from on high just as I was checking out a title I had suggested – Life on Mars, the well-reputed BBC series from five years ago. As such it doesn’t meet TPL’s claimed selection criteria for TV shows (brand new and really popular), but they bought it anyway. (Cynical explanation: Because it’s British – classy by default. Preferred explanation: Because it’s good.)

Life on Mars stars Mr. JOHN SIMM, one point on the Hart/Freeman/Simm Axis of highly sympathetic British character actors. I dearly love them all.

I knew the ending of Life on Mars before I even started watching it. I’d seen the final episode on TV before, plus I had looked it up. I support the ending, which, like that of Being Erica, respects the logic of the series. And the soundtrack is just smashing.

You can see that I had a host of reasons to invest my viewing of this series with a great deal of feeling. But actually the whole experience was tainted because Toronto Public Library managers went out of their way to shame me and my friends at Jones. I found out about all that just as I came to check out the series I myself had suggested.

I am oversensitive and I take the weather personally, but TPL management tainted what should have been a triumphant and rewarding experience.

And for what?