At 19,091 unique titles, the Kansas City Public Library’s collection of movies and television shows is larger than any streaming service’s offering. In January 2023, Statista reported that Amazon Prime had 7,429, Netflix 7,318, Hulu 6,741, and Discovery+ 6,203. Every other service had fewer. 

Altogether, the system’s 10 locations house a total of 52,340 discs with over 30,000 located at Central Library. 

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 subtract titles from their menus, but some movies and shows are simply never offered, and that can be a giant downer. 

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 and 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 has offered mail-order DVDs from a collection estimated to contain about 100,000 titles – just about anything anyone might want to see. But Netflix recently announced it’ll discontinue this service at the end of September 2023, making 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 that will be a request he’s unable to honor 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 just recently acquired the complete original Little Rascals series for a patron. 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. 

The top 25 checkouts in April were all for relatively new movies, the top five of which were: Top Gun: Maverick; Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody; Nope; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; and A Man Called Otto.  

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. 

Aside from Netflix eliminating itself from the world of DVD rentals, viewers may also be reeling from content lost during the current Writers Guild of America strike.  

If the strike lasts long enough, its effects will be noticeable in cinema, though movies are written and produced many months before they’re released. However, late-night shows like Saturday Night Live (the Library has the first five seasons) and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon are already unable to air fresh content in the absence of striking workers. 



New TV series will be noticeably affected as well if the strike goes on for several months; some already have ceased production. The last strike, which was in 2007, lasted 100 days. The 1988 strike went on for 153 days. 

But whether the strike weeks or for so many months that it runs into Netflix cancellation of its DVD service, the Library will be standing by with entertainment for everyone. 

…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 are available to every cardholder in the system; hoopla includes audiobooks, eBooks, and music in addition to streaming video.