Do any of you have a letter to share about DVDs (not) coming back dirty or damaged? On our registration form, there is a line that adults agree to - that children will not be allowed to touch the DVDs. However, our (brand new) children's DVDs are coming back with scratches and spots - it's obvious that care is not being used with handling these. I'm thinking about placing a small note inside each DVD case reminding patrons to handle them by the edge only and that children are not to be touching them. So far I've spoken directly to one family, and now need to approach another. I'm rethinking adding any more kids' DVDs for this reason.
I looked the cleaning procedues up on the Internet and it cautions against frequent cleaning due to possible damage. I don't want the borrowers to attempt to clean them.
Replies
Products for cleaning:
Our volunteer uses Touch of Purple usually, and sometimes uses Eyeglass cleaner from the optometrists' office.
http://purplecleaner.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=2
I hope this helps!
Deanna
At our library we put a label (the kind you use for an address) that has the following on it inside the case.
PLEASE HANDLE WITH CARE
PRESS CENTER TO RELEASE THE DISK
DO NOT TOUCH THE UNDERNEATH SIDE
We still get them back scratched sometimes, but at least we have tried to educate the patrons. Also we have a hand out when they first use the library that has our hours, length of check out time, what we have available, our purpose and that they will be responsible for damaged or lost items. We bring this to their attention and they agree, but they will not always pay. Hope this will help.
Hi, Joanne!
Some discs (CDs or DVDs) come back with scratches and the patron returning them tells us they didn't play correctly. We have a *wonderful, heaven-sent* volunteer who takes them home, carefully cleans them and then plays them to check them. Almost always they play just fine after her cleaning.
I was concerned when we first started buying DVDs and CDs about this issue, but we haven't had nearly the trouble with it that I thought we might.
We don't have any sticker or letter about handling them, just a label warning that duplicating them is illegal. I hope this helps!
I forgot that some time ago I did an internet search on home repairs. I have a pre-schooler and a toddler, so we needed it! Here is one of the links I found. You can google this and come up with a billion different sites, but I found the majority mentioned the toothpaste with some success. It did work to some degree on ours, but as he says not so great on the really deep scratches. Deanna, I don't know what your volunteer uses - maybe you could ask her? My next try is going to be the Brasso; I didn't get that far with my home experiment last time. Good luck!
http://www.wisebread.com/quickly-removing-scratches-from-cds-and-dvds