Viewers' Advisory and Staff Training

Viewers' Advisory service depends on library staff who really know the movie and television show collections.  For Readers' Advisory, staff are committed to being well-read and knowledgeable about the genres, authors, etc.  For VA service in libraries, RA staff may not be movie and television watchers, and, are therefore at a disadvantage to provide excellent service.

The question is how to get staff to become knowledgeable.  Certainly, stressing the similarities of both RA and VA is the first step.

Jinni

One of the great difficulties in Viewers' Advisory is to identify the factors of appeal for a particular patron and then provide suggestions.

I just found 'Jinni' which calls itself 'Your Taste Engine for Movies and TV Shows'.  You can search using any or all of following topics (or factors of appeal in VA speak) or on visual collages of each:

Mood

Plot

Genres

Time/Period

Place

Audience

Praise

You can also do general searches.  Searching my man Colin Firth , you retrieve a visual list of his movies with Pride and Prejudice getting the largest ranking and the largest photo.

I am going to play with this more to see how this will work for VA.  If you have used it, please add your comments here.

Oscar Nominees and Winners Releases on DVD

Many of the Oscar Nominees and Winners are going to be released on DVD over the next few weeks. 

Here's the schedule:

March 22
Tourist

March 29
Black Swan
Tangled

April 19
King's Speech
Rabbit Hole

May 17
Blue Valentine

Movies Better Than the Books?

On whole, the consensus is that books are better than the movies made from them. However, some think that some movies are better than the books.

Here is a partial list from the CTV website: The Godfather, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Return of the King, Shawshank Redemption, Princess Bride, Blade Runner, Forrest Gump, The Shining and Frankenstein.

What do you think?

Better Movies Coming?

I heard an interesting comment on CBC Radio Program Sunday Morning that the film companies have decided to invest in higher quality movies, much like the television networks HBO and the BBC have. 

I certainly enjoy many of the quality ITV and BBC television series.

Oscar Winners

What did you think of the Oscar winners this year?

Welcome to the Viewers' Advisory Blog

Hello and welcome to my Viewers' Advisory blog for librarians and library staff.  If your library is like mine, at least one half our circulation is movies and television series.  However, many of us are at a loss on how to help our library patrons find the movies and television shows that they will like to watch.

I will also include other current library issues that will affect all of us.  We in Canada are luckier than our colleagues in the U.K. and the U.S. that our governments are still supporting us financially, however it does not mean that Canadian libraries are not immune to challenges.