The Glen Rock (NJ) Public Library has been hit with a string of thefts from its video collection. More than 25 videos have been removed from their cases and stolen. Librarians say the videos targeted for theft are action-adventure titles.
Since mid-June, the library has lost 29 DVDs to theft, according to Lori Quinn, director of Circulation and Technical Services. The empty DVD cases are being left throughout the library.
“The average price is $22, and it’s really adding up,” Quinn said. The missing videos are mostly action-adventure titles, such as “Blade,” “The Matrix” and “Scarface.” This week the library discovered three more titles missing: “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra,” “Tropic Thunder,” and “The Hangover.”
“The genre we’re finding is mostly action or male-dominated, testosterone-driven movies,” Quinn said. Librarians speculated the thefts were likely being perpetrated by a single individual.
“It saddens me that there’s a person who is doing this for whatever reason. It could be extreme boredom, mental illness, or adolescent arrogance – and it’s adolescent whether or not it’s a young person,” Pelcyger said. “To steal from a community, from a family, hurts the people this person sees every day.”
Theft
I don’t know what Glen Rock is like, but here in FL, our stolen DVDs go straight to pawnshops, thift stores and flea market sales.
That’s the same with DVDs
That’s the same with DVDs stolen from our library. They get sold for money to thrift shops, pawnshops, Mom& Pop grocery stores. lately our library system has had a rash of people taking out new cards, going from library to library taking out as many DVDs as possible at each library then selling them. Since items don’t officially go “lost” for 3 months, the patron can spend 3 months going from library to library checking out DVDs and before you know it they have 50-100 DVDs from various libraries that they have sold. What is more worrying to me is that these pawnshops, etc. don’t report them stolen. They had to have known they were stolen considering most libraries put stamps and labels on the cases and the actual DVD.
Security
Many libraries, like the now-disappearing video stores, have empty, but labelled, video cases in the browsing area. Cases containing the actual DVDs are stored behind the circulation desk. Patrons select the movie they want and bring it to the circulation desk for check it out. Circulation staff then get the actual DVD for the patron and put the empty case in the storage space until the actual DVD is returned, at which point the empty case is returned to the browsing area. The question remains how to secure DVDs in libraries with self-checkout.
re: security
We keep the DVDs behind the desk. For people who use self CKO, they still need to see a staff member to get their DVDs. It has not been an issue.
We do that too but it still
We do that too but it still doesn’t stop our DVDs from being stolen.
for the police
scan the dvds for finger prints and then check every bodys finger print in glen rock and the finger prints that were on the cover then check the finger print peoples house
have no dvds in their cases
have no dvds in their cases and keep them behind the desk in a drawer locked like game stop has their games
Lock up Childrens’ DVDs and Limit Adult content to non-fiction
Due to many thefts, we not lock up the DVDs for children, and only offer non-fiction (documentaries, fitness and educational) DVDs to adults. We lose very few…
solution?
I don’t think the solution is to limit types/genres.