DVD Categorization & Shelving

Comment:  "I would love to see the movies divided out by ratings.  It would also be much easier to look through the movies if they had the spines facing out like on a bookshelf. Thanks for considering these suggestions."

Reply:   All DVDs in the Children's department are rated G or are made for young children. All other DVDs are located on the second floor and and are filed by the first letter of the title for fiction or by the Dewey Number for non-fiction. Because every individual has the right to decide what is appropriate for his or her viewing pleasure, it is important to select a movie based on the content rather than a single rating system created by the Motion Picture Association of America. The Sycamore Public Library encourages all our patrons to inform themselves as fully as possible about their viewing options. The rating information is located on the DVD artwork along with the reasons for the rating and the movie description. Ratings are also included in the item's record which you or our staff can access by looking up the item in the catalog.

Our DVDs are shelved in a bin style unit specifically to make the DVD artwork the most prominent feature.  Library best practices and several studies have shown that shelving DVDs face-out appeals to the majority of library users by presenting a large image rather than a small spine label with numbers or text.  We understand that many of our users are most comfortable identifying all our items by spine label, but we have had an overwhelmingly positive response to our face-out shelving for DVDs and they will remain this way.