…and it’s the Dixie Chicks “Shut Up and Sing.”
The Day.com’s Editor Jacob Young tried a dozen or so DVD places, both for rental and purchase, but did not luck out until he found a copy at the Waco-McLennan County Library.
Young writes: “The Waco-McLennan County Library has a copy of “Shut Up and Sing”. It will loan you that copy for free if you have a library card. This means I won’t have to rent it to you. That’s a relief. I already had enough on my hands leading various tribes out of the wilderness.
I told reference librarian Sean Sutcliffe about my problems renting the video. We speculated that this might be a problem elsewhere in America’s heartland. Then he did a computer search for the title in other libraries in the country. Publicly supported beacons of free inquiry popped up on his screen by the hundreds.” Here’s the story.
That number again….”0″.
A different story however for Charlie Daniels with those same Texas librarians. Live from Iraq is held in exactly 0 of those same publicly supported beacons of free inquiry in the Lone Star State.
Re:That number again….”0″.
Wildly unfair comparison.
You’re comparing a newly-released (five weeks old) CD that’s languishing on the charts (I mean, #8784 at this point among music items?) and that most libraries wouldn’t even have had time to accession yet, with a seven-month-old DVD that’s still a hot seller (#627 in DVDs) and that libraries have had time to accession.
Show me that patrons have asked for Live from Iraq and gotten turned down by those notoriously left-wing Texas librarians, and you might have a point. Otherwise, this is bull.
Re:That number again….”0″.
No bull here. I’ve been reminded countless times around here that “sales to library holdings” ratios can’t be used to determine collection bias. This a few years old, but I doubt much has changed. You disagree? Then we may both actually share some philosophy with collection building. (You would have to hold your nose with all those popular right wing Coulter, Savage books however)
I’m not sure what library you use Walt, or work in, but had I explained to my Potterheads that accession takes upwards to a month…..well you get the picture. All you need is one good librarian to whip up a bib record, as you well know, the rest is just copy cataloging. So I can’t buy either explanation offered here; popularity (lack thereof) or cataloging time.
Just an FYI. Librarians like myself, I’d like to think others too, take a proactive approach for ensuring balanced collections. I don’t wait for patron recommendations. But that’s just me.
Re:That number again….”0″.
I still call bull. For one thing, those “hundreds of libraries” weren’t mostly in Texas–I see 12 holdings in Worldcat.org. And there are certainly libraries holding the Daniels CD (10 in Worldcat.org, which sounds about right for a CD with such low popularity).
You want a comparison to show how left-wing those Texas librarians are? Look up the “other” Shut Up & Sing, a right-wing Regnery screed ranking around 86,000 on the Amazon charts. Oh look: 33 holdings in Texas libraries. Almost three times as many as the much better known, much more popular DVD. Hmm.
You know, I’m not ready to claim that Texas librarians are pushing right-wing material: I don’t think that’s true. I think they’re responding to reader demand. And I’m guessing there’s just no demand for Charlie Daniels.
Re:That number again….”0″.
Just for fun, I did a little more checking. Charlie Daniels is a 71-year-old who hasn’t had a hit in more than a decade or a really major hit for a lot longer than that. He’s won one Grammy. The Dixie Chicks have sold 365 million records and won 13 Grammies, and continue to be a hot act even with a nicely orchestrated radio boycott of their songs (thanks, Clear Channel, you old left-wing icon you).
Sure sounds like collection bias to me. Or maybe selective reporting. Tell me about the other conservative Country artists, who still get hits, that those Texas libraries won’t buy…
Re:That number again….”0″.
For a little more fun, compare platinum and gold records between old guy and the young chicks. I would think this a better comparison because they are directly related to sales, than Grammy awards. I think this was your earlier contention?
No comment re collection bias of conservative books with high sales?
Re:That number again….”0″.
Was Charlie Daniels a hot item two decades ago? Absolutely. Damn good artist too. (Yes, I used to listen to country music, and still would if I had the time.)
Does that make him a hot item in 2007? Apparently not.
The last Gold-or-better Daniels album was in 1994.
Two of the Dixie Chicks’ five major-label albums went Diamond–that’s 10x platinum level (Daniels’ highest was 4x). No country act has ever done that back-to-back. They’re the best-selling female group in history–regardless of genre.
We could play this game forever, but there’s little point. You see bias because you want to see bias.
Netflix
From the article: One problem is that I no longer knew how to contact my friend Jerry. He’s the one-time convenience-store employee who supplied for me a copy of Martin Scorcese’s “Last Temptation of Christ,†in a brown envelope, back in 1988.
That controversial film was stopped at every port in our landlocked city — not shown in theaters; couldn’t rent it; couldn’t buy it; the cable company blocked it on Showtime.
Unless Netflix starts to censor these type of films then they are an alternative if the cable company and the video stores are blocking the content. And if it is not available at the library.