When Streaming Fails You, Stream Into Your Library for a DVD

At 22,381 unique titles, the Kansas City Public Library’s collection of movies and television shows on DVD is larger than any streaming service’s offering, except maybe Amazon Prime — though that depends on the website reporting the numbers.

Altogether, the system’s 10 locations house a total of 40,000 discs, with over 25,000 located at the Central Library and 15,000 at branches. 

The Library continues to collect DVDs for numerous reasons, including: many people don’t have access to the tech that’s needed to stream video; streaming services fall short in terms of diversity of interest; need for better inclusion of groups by race and age; and availability of titles.   

That last reason is a big one. Not only do streaming services seemingly arbitrarily add and remove titles from their menus, but some movies and shows are simply never offered, which can be a giant downer. 

And sometimes it's just nice to have that physical copy in your hands.

Collection Development Librarian Cody Wormington started thinking about David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, a 1990 film with Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage. He wanted to see it, so he started scrolling. 

His conclusion? “It was very difficult to find on any streaming platform, but the Library has it,” he says.  

For 25 years, Netflix offered mail-order DVDs from a collection estimated to contain about 100,000 titles – just about anything anyone might want to see. In 2023, Netflix discontinued the service, leaving thousands of titles completely unavailable to viewers – unless those viewers have an excellent library system. 

If the Kansas City Public Library doesn’t have a DVD in its collection, cardholders can request it by logging into their account on the Library’s website or the Library app. This gives patrons the opportunity to help develop the Library’s holdings, so they reflect the interests of the community. 

“We get a lot of requests,” Wormington says. “We usually honor them as long as they're under $50.” He also notes that when a streaming service produces its own content, it’s often unavailable on DVD, so he'll be unable to honor that request as well. 

Many purchase suggestions are for classics that have been lost or damaged and need to be replaced, but others, Wormington says, are for “cult horror stuff,” “strange 80s stuff,” and a whole range of other things he hasn’t personally seen before but is glad to learn about. 

He recalls acquiring the complete original Little Rascals series for a patron a few years ago. The Library had owned parts of it, but it had been incomplete until he tracked down the new set of remastered episodes. 

Sometimes collection is driven by patrons more indirectly. Several of Wormington’s colleagues are interested in anime and have been beefing up the Library’s selection of that popular genre in collaboration with YA (Young Adult) librarians and staff members who directly interact with patrons checking out DVDs. 

For quite some time, collection development staff has been working to broaden the Library’s scope of graphic novels and manga throughout the system.  

But, without a doubt, the most popular titles are new releases. Every effort is made to keep the holds list wait short. 

Wormington bases the number of copies he buys on the number of holds – one copy for every five. “When a Marvel movie comes out, the holds list is maybe 80 long,” so he buys 16 copies. 

…even for patrons who prefer to stream but don’t want to pay for a service. 

The Library has apps for that. Kanopy and hoopla, and Bibliotele (streaming in Spanish) are available to every cardholder in the system; hoopla includes audiobooks, eBooks, and music in addition to streaming video.