image “The Boulder Public Library is phasing out its collection of VHS tapes, and by the end of this year, patrons no longer will be able to find the fast-becoming antique technology at any of the city’s library branches.” – Boulder Daily Camera.

The e-book angle: VHS was a lot more popular in its heyday than any e-book format. So what will happen if libraries and users stock up on devices built around specific proprietary formats? Even software-based readers can be a hassle to change because of the limitations of operating systems and hardware.

What’s happening at the Boulder library with the VHS cassettes, of course, is hardly unique to it.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t know if you can really generalize from VHS being phased out in favor of DVD to proprietary e-book formats. If you were talking about how Betamax lost out to VHS, or HD-DVD to Blu-Ray, that would be one thing—in both those cases, the two alternatives are roughly analogous to each other, as competing e-book formats would be. But comparing VHS to DVD is comparing apples and oranges*.

    VHS is very low resolution. It is linear instead of random access. It degrades over time, and with each passage through a player. It is bulky—each VHS tape takes up as much room on a shelf as several DVDs. Two competing e-book formats would be much the same as each other in every respect; they would only require different reading devices.

    If anything, a more apt generalization would be paper books being phased out in favor of electronic ones, but that’s not ever likely to happen; VHS has a lot more disadvantages compared to DVD than paper books do when compared to e-books.

    *Actually, people have gotten the whole “apples and oranges” expression wrong (though that doesn’t prevent me from continuing to use it). You most certainly can compare apples to oranges—an apple is smooth and red and you can eat the peel; an orange is rough and orange and you have to peel it. Oranges have more vitamin C than apples and are usually more tart. et cetera. What you can’t do is add apples and oranges.

  2. It can be suggested that growth of screen reading will accentuate attributes and functions of print books. Outright growth of a transmission medium is not that relevant…they all grow; first from a zero base but then from popularization. Television would be an example. But the screen and print reading composite could be construed as a single transmission ecology. In that scenario print will grow in functionality and promise as screen reading begins to claim genres poorly adapted to print. Fruit salad.

  3. Thanks, Chris and Gary.

    C: “Two competing e-book formats would be much the same as each other in every respect; they would only require different reading devices.” That’s a helluva “only,” as I see it—especially if the library has business arrangements associated with a particular format. Also, in the end, not all formats will be alike in terms of capabilities, at least if you care about things such as shared annotations and reliable inter-book linking. One more argument for robust nonproprietary standards!

    G: “In that scenario print will grow in functionality and promise as screen reading begins to claim genres poorly adapted to print.” Even as e-paper keeps becoming more and more paperlike, and more useful for all kinds of books—even those not dependent on linking? What’s more, in portability and various other areas, E will have an inherent advantage. Just MHO.

    Thanks,
    David

  4. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, libraries are culling their collections all the time. If, for example, the VHS tapes they’re getting rid of have all been replaced by DVDs, I’d say that’s it’s no big loss, it’s just a format change. On the other hand, if a majority of the VCR tapes have no DVD equivalent, then maybe they’re being a bit short-sighted.

  5. The real problem I run into all the time is the amount of video that is available on VHS but for which the publisher has no intent (or in some cases, no legal right) to issue on DVD. I run into this sort of problem all the time at work.

    And it’s just not the obscure stuff (in fact, ironically some days it seems the more “obscure” it is, the more likely it is to be reissued as there tend to be less legal issues)…for example, ran across a very popular and critically acclaimed US movie that was released on VHS in the 1980s but has never been re-released on DVD. At first I thought the client just didn’t know what she was talking about when she said it wasn’t on DVD. But it turned out to be a case where the DVD rights are in legal hell thanks to contract disputes (for example, it is weird to see that the 1960s Batman series couldn’t be released on DVD during the Dark Knight hype because of the convoluted way that particular series was licensed and then sold, etc).

  6. I Have mixed feelings (Similar to Bruce) about this.

    I’ve seen quiet a few library’s discard Tapes (VHS & Audio) as less people check them out.

    Unfortunately, a lot of those Older recordings are Not available in Digital Format, and may never be. I’ve gone around to a dozen local library’s to to try and track down a copy of a Documentary which came out in the 80’s and they couldn’t find a single copy. You can’t even buy a lot of them, as many were only sold to library’s and educational institutes.

    In those circumstances, Library’s as a Preserver of Knowledge need to take along hard look at such decisions.

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