Interesting takes on this question, so far. One thing that hasn't been addressed--and it may be more relevant to large, established research collections than others--has to do with long-term preservation and access to collections. At least 1/4 of our tape collections at UCB have gone out of distribution over the past 20 years. We're finding that a fair number of DVDs have also gone OP in the past decade. If one mission of a media collection is to preserve this stuff over the long term, I'd say that open access and broad circulation run counter to these aims. The physical nature of the media we're talking about, and the commercial markets behind them are definitely more precarious than print or other traditional library media...
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.
