Ruth Sadelle Alderson

Now I'm very curious about who makes DVD purchasing decisions for the system.

Could be that a couple of copies were donated by people who bought the movie on a whim because it was on sale and then got rid of it after watching it once. Libraries will add donations they wouldn't normally purchase if they think the items will circulate enough to make the processing/cataloging worthwhile. I'm currently wading through a large manga donation (from a comic book store; most of the volumes donated are from companies that are now out of business, so the store couldn't send them back) trying to decide what will circulate enough to be worth adding. I already got through the easy decisions (a duplicate volume of the very popular, now-out-of-print Fruits Basket! Sweet! Volumes 1-3 of a series that looks reasonably enticing! All right! Volume 10 of a less-promising series we don't own any of! I don't like to do it, since I read this series myself and found it sort of interesting, but it makes more sense to put it in the book sale than to order volumes 1-9!). Now I'm struggling with the trickier ones, like "Would people actually check out volumes 3 and 5 of a series if we didn't have any of the other volumes and can't get them?" or "Wow, might this series actually be too boring and/or unattractive for even the most voracious of manga readers?"

Alternate explanation 2: Error in the ordering process. Okay, I thought our library could use one copy of Kana de Manga: A Fun, Easy Way to Learn the ABCs of Japanese, but I never ordered two - and yet somehow Tech Services ordered two and took the money for both out of my budget! Argh! (On the bright side, both copies are currently checked out with one person waiting for a copy, so the money wasn't totally wasted. Oh, double argh, that reminds me that I still need to put stuff together for my manga/anime program on Tuesday night. ANYway...)

Alternate explanation 3: Your local library has farmed out their selection process to a jobber like Baker and Taylor or Ingram, some large company that each month sends them what they think the library wants, and in this case the company made a mistake.

Alternate explanation 4: Yeah, it could be a mistake by the selector. But I'd be curious to see how much the movie is circulating before I went with this one. Maybe you've got a lot of hardcore Keira Knightley fans in your area. :)