Hi all I think I need input and/or moral support: for various reasons having to do with space and projected library renovation plans here at UCB, I'm taking a hard and fairly ruthless look at the collection.
We currently have somewhere around 5K international cinema titles, about 96% of which we've re-bought on DVD. As an alternative to sending these out to storage (thereby completely blowing my storage quota), I am very seriously considering...gulp!...de-accessioning them. This makes me nervous and breaks my heart (for which reasons I'm not exactly sure). Have any of you larger academic collections gone this route? Are there compelling reasons NOT to go down this road? I realize that there are certain benefits to vhs (such as the ability to easily cue) and that some faculty prefer the format, still... For a largely non-archival collection, it seems crazy to hold onto fading formats forever. What do you think? Gary Gary Handman Director Media Resources Center Moffitt Library UC Berkeley 510-643-8566 [email protected] http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC "I have always preferred the reflection of life to life itself." --Francois Truffaut VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
