Hi Gary- I feel your pain. Letting go is hard, but also necessary when space is a premium.
I first encountered this format dilemma when CDs came into being and I de-accessioned my LP collection, except for a special jazz gift collection. I felt sentimental about these materials, and we had lots of turntables set up for playback. Shelving space was the prime motivating factor, the new digital world another. It was a long process-some LPS got sold to collectors, some got traded for used CDs, those in bad condition were discarded, and others were donated to the Boston Public Library, which had lost many recordings in a flood. I had anxieties about this, so consulted with music faculty, who even took some. Over time, I replaced the ones most needed for classes and then streaming music databases came into being to help augment the collection. With respect to video, most faculty at Northeastern prefer DVD, particularly for cinema studies classes. As we are also experiencing a space crunch here, (now that the collection is in open stacks) I will be de-accessioning VHS that we have in DVD and selecting DVDS to replace VHS. A special fund is being made available for this. I see no compelling reason to have both a VHS and a DVD copy at this stage. If you have concerns, consult some faculty about particular titles they may want to continue to use in VHS in the classroom or for research. I also sometimes use reserve records to help me make decisions about priorities. I would love to hear other viewpoints about this. Debra On 10/18/10 8:05 PM, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: 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.
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.
