Dear Film/Video Colleagues: I received this question this morning from one of our catalogers: "We got this 20th anniversary ed. of E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial that came in a big, fancy (i.e., metallic finish) box containing a hardcover book (192 p. : col. ill. ; 25 cm.), a fold-out DVD container (also metallicized) with 3 DVDs and a CD of the soundtrack (with a 4-p. (folded) interview with John Williams), a cardboard-encased "Senitype" of a film frame from the movie, and a Certificate Of Authenticity. "There's no copy for this yet, except for an earlier edition of the book. Is there a question of special treatment of this (do we want to put it - boxes, doodads and all - in Spec.Coll.), or shall I put it in the regular collection (DVDs in 3 separate security cases (w/v.#s), CD w/CD call#, book in Main, all w/x-refs to each other), in which case what to do with filmframe and COA - do you want them?" I'm the Film and Electronic Arts liaison/bibliographer/instruction-person and usually my involvement is limited to telling Acquisitions to buy video X. Librarians in my library don't do cataloging, because most of it is copy cataloging from OCLC, so cataloging questions rarely are addressed to us (even if some of us *wanted* to be cataloguers in library school mumble-de-mumble years ago). So, how do you all deal with the Extra-Special-SuperDupper-AllSortsOfExtraStuff type VHS and DVD sets? Do you catalog them as a unit? Or separate out the elements? If they are cataloged as a unit, do they go 'behind the desk' or 'out with the other vids' (most of our non-class reserve items are on open shelving)? I'd love to be able to keep the whole thing together as a unit, and "protect" it in Special Collections since Spielberg is one of our graduates (after 30 years, but still . . .), but that kind of defeats the purpose of buying the thing in the first place as we want people to be able to view the film and all. Thanking you all in advance for any advice, assistance, opinions, etc., Leslie Kay -- Leslie Kay Swigart, Librarian University Library, California State University, Long Beach 1250 Bellflower Boulevard, Long Beach, California, USA 90840-1901 Voice: 562-985-8327 FAX: 562-985-8327 Email: [log in to unmask] ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html