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I moved the most recent posts in this thread from another thread and only just now went back to look at the posts at this top of the thread. I work at a college library, so I had to chuckle at how I would now answer this question:

Gigi M. wrote:Pardon my ignorance Matt, but how much do you regularly charge for renting/lending movies at your job? You see, here in my country we don't have such things as libraries.

Basically, it's like a club where it's free to borrow the DVDs, but the annual membership fee is $40,000.

dustybooks wrote:My dream is to be permitted to actually create and maintain a large A/V collection at my own branch, but that's sort of a pipe dream given our budget.

It's increasingly a pipe dream with any budget. With the DVD market drying up and packaged streaming video replacing it, the role of the selector/curator is on the wane.

Matt wrote:It's increasingly a pipe dream with any budget. With the DVD market drying up and packaged streaming video replacing it, the role of the selector/curator is on the wane.

You're right, and more's the pity. I'm not positive that's the will of the people, either. There's a profound disconnect between what I see at work -- where we possess not a single DVD that hasn't been checked out in the last six months (usually many times) -- and the visible rush to rid the world of physical media. Not to go back over this well-worn subject, but it's depressing.

Just for comparison, in the UK it is standard practice to charge for DVD rental in public libraries. Usually it's around £2.50 for a few days (that's $4), although this can vary. I live in London and have been round a fair selection of our libraries, none of which ever have a good selection, a few random Artificial Eyes is all you can hope for.