l-r: Ed Hill, Cara Stone, Evren Bay Sengul
In summer 2010 the SLIS collection development class did an exercise to assess movie collections in medium-sized public libraries. As an extension of that project, six students and the instructor re-ran the data collection, analyzed the results, and submitted the work for publication. Their article was published in Public Library Quarterly (volume 31, issue 4) in December 2012.
The co-authors are Evren Bay Sengul, Sarah C. Emery, Cheryl Torok Fleming, Lacy Hartman, Charles Ed Hill, Cara B. Stone, and Debora Shaw. In his note accepting the article, Public Library Quarterly editor Glen Holt commented “the structure and writing in the body of the paper is excellent and needs no work at all. I’d love to have other pieces from your shop.”
From the abstract of “Movies in Public Libraries: A Checklist Comparison with Internet Movie Database Recommendations:”
• This research compares the fifty top-rated movies for 2000–2009 recommended by the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) with the holdings of ten medium-sized public libraries. The study shows that there was no relation between a movie’s rank in the IMDb listing and the number of copies held. Relationships appeared between number of library holdings and country of production (U.S. productions favored), genre (family, sci-fi, animation, adventure favored), and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating (G, PG, PG-13 preferred). Library holdings seem to reflect preferences of IMDb raters aged 30 and older, not popular movie tastes.
Posted December 18, 2012