Content area
Full Text
Abstract
This is a personal case study of the implementation of a Netflix subscription to augment a media collection at a community college. The implementation process is explained against the backdrop of a particular collection development crisis that gripped the college media collection that year. In these particular circumstances, Netflix turned out to be an excellent, cost-effective solution.
The article describes the workflow created to manage the Netflix subscription, how the subscription was used as a tool for collection development, and the limitations of a subscription compared to library ownership of media. Netflix is an instance of a Web/Library 2.0 service that can work in tandem with a standing collection, especially a just-in-time collection, to provide access to a very wide range of DVDs for instructional use. Netflix is a subscription-based DVD delivery service that offers an elegant discovery and delivery system: subscribers queue up a title on the Netflix website and a day or two later, the DVD arrives via U.S. mail to their door, with the prepaid return envelope included. Since it launched in 1999, growth of this service has been steady, and recently it has doubled, "It took the company eight years to achieve one billion shipments, a milestone it crossed in February 2007, and a bit more than two years to deliver the next billion" (Netflix 2009).
While media librarians may not envy Netflix's gargantuan circulation statistics, we should envy the ease with which users can discover content on their site, compared with any OPAC, pathfinder, guide, or searchable list. Along with software such as iTunes, Netflix has helped set high user expectations for all library content discovery and delivery. What follows is an informal case study in which I discuss the experiences of success- fully introducing Netflix into an academic library. In 2006, I was a media librarian in charge of all aspects of managing the collection, including cataloging; reserves; library instruction for music, film, and television courses; shelving; and purchasing. The impetus for exploring the use of Netflix was my experience as an at-home Netflix subscriber: "Let's get a Netflix subscription for the library." So general has been the home use of Netflix that the importance of the idea was at once recognized by my colleagues. In what...