Thankfully they never found out I still have their copy of Salo CC....

It all seems rather ironic, considering that books are more expensive, on average, than DVDs.

You miss the point. The act of reading even the most inane potboiler requires more participation on the part of the reader than does watching a Criterion release. Watching is by its nature a passive activity; reading is active. The decline in readership in this country is associated with the continued dumbing down of our culture. Movies are fun but unncessary; reading ios vital to maintaining an educated, aware populace.

Well, if you think that Barnes & Noble is equivalent to Blockbuster, then I give up.

Again, I cry horseshit--you look at words on a page, you look at a screen, both are in that sense passive; I think what you mean to argue is that a book requires you to co-invent the world in your head that the author has crafted, whereas a film allows you little room for your own imagination to flower. It's a fair point, but to imply that there is less inherent educational value, that there is less room for active thinking and deconstruction, in, say, a film like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY versus "the most inane potboiler" is so poorly reasoned and completely, utterly without even the veneer of merit as to make me question whether I should be laughing or crying.

One sells literature and one sells films, the two forms of media we're comparing and contrasting; in that context, they are equal.

That is the worst possible example to choose to get a point across. :lol: The movie had maybe 5% of the book make it to the screen.

We have that here too. It is asinine.

Ignoring the condescending tone, you restate my argument well. As for "poor reasoning," I am not merely airing my own views, but the consensus of neurological researchers who have discovered links between television watching and diminished cognition in adults and children.

DVDs and TV in general are terrific entertainment, but they are not the proper business of libraries.

Are you serious. You sound like my grandmother.

This library was simply justifying their lack of wanting to spend the time and extra personnel to track the DVD losses. In addition, you have a person is biased towards books, which reminds me of grandpas who don't use digital cameras, claiming film has superior image quality. Bull. Shit.

The studies you mention do not deal with scientific material. They deal with cartoons, sitcoms, and movies. So, your info is not correct.

Schools use the television, and have so for decades as to education. If anything, education is INCREASED with visual cues such as a DVD program. Why? Because we don't see the world like a book. We WATCH IT. Your mind intakes much more information on different levels than if you were to just read a printed article. Why do you think news agencies use pictures in their articles? Because we are a visual society. And watching television via DVD or other form of moving-frame medium, is what we are about.

Did you see the Challenger crash live on TV on January 25, 1986? I did. Do you really expect students to READ ABOUT IT versus watching it on an educational DVD?

And just how do you expect us to watch film footage of history? Transfer all the images to a captioned book? Yeah, that will catch on.

Hey, let's transfer the Zapruder film to pure text, and forget about the footage.

[JFK in car goes through town]

[You can see some trees and grass]

[Btw, this is in Black and White]

[JFK smiles]

[Ooops, the film is kinda grainy]

[JFK gets his head blown off]

Now that's a winner! :up:

Please.

-popcorn-

Hmm, we take a interesting, vital turn here. You refer to television, a medium (at least on a major network, non-cable level) prone to programming of a lowest-common-denominator level, designed with a primary goal of selling advertising to perceived desired target markets, with substantial constraints on creativity (in order to acheive highest audience reach possible) and variety (due to time constraints, which aren't nearly as much as an issue for cinema in a world of multiple viewing screens in multiple theaters, not to mention unorthodox distribution methods like straight-to-video and online streaming video), NOT motion pictures. You're comparing apples and oranges, so I daresay your argument continues to have little merit if you're contorting your facts to fit a different medium.

Tragedy of the Commons

why can't you think critically about films, I know every film professor I ever had thought we could. I know you classify them as "passive entertainment," but lots of people engage the films they watch critically. I enjoy reading as well, but watching a movie is just as enriching. Not all movies are as enriching as others, but neither are all books.
Video games are another matter, but they can teach reason and problem solving as well. I read a study measuring the rrors surgeons make while operating were decreased by some crazy number when a percent of the surgeons played video games for a 3 month period and an equal percent did not as a control. After the 3 month period, the test subjects, those palying the games made some crazy percent less errors because they were better able to assess an entire situation after the experience of playing video games.
To say "our society's well being depends on citiznes equipped to reason, research, and think critically about issues, and you cannot get that from watching movies or playing video games" is just plain and simple wrong, and I'm actually suprised I have to defend the format on a dvd formun...

What about subtitled films? Are those somehow "more active"?

Actually one sells literature and the other rents films.

It's not like you can go to Barnes & Noble and rent the new Phillip Roth book if you don't feel like shelling out $20-$30 for the thing. With movies there are many options available (such as videostore rentals, online rentals, payperview, premium cable channels, or even going to the local multiplex) that it seems like kind of a waste of resources for a library to be spending money on dvds.

Conversely, it's not like I can go into Blockbuster and sample the first 15 minutes of a film for free before renting/buying, whereas I can curl up in one of Barnes and Noble's comfy chairs and sample a book for as long as I'd like (I know a few speed readers that read entire novels in the store for free, then walk out with big smiles on their faces and their wallets intact), so the allegation that they are not meaningfully dissimilar still stands.

You are really reaching here.

No I'm not--let's break it down very simply:

Blockbuster sells movies at full retail cost so customers can own a film and watch it however many times as they choose.

Barnes and Noble sells books at full retail cost so customers can own a book and read it however many times as they choose.

Blockbuster rents movies at a fraction of full retail price so customers can, in effect, sample a movie. The customer's viewing time is limited to the rental window; to see the movie again, the customer must either rent it again for another fraction-of-retail fee or purchase it outright.

Barnes and Noble does not feature a rental option, but provides an environment where people can comfortably, without any appreciable time limit, sample any book for free. If it appears to ignite a customer's interest, they can buy it outright. If it does not, the customer can walk away with no cost incurred but also without rights to read the book however many times they choose.

The two models of operation are so similar as to offer no fundamental difference to negate the original argument at hand, so shall we continue with the real debate here?

The library has reduced its circulation staff, replacing them with self-checkout terminals. Probably to move to a locked cabinet behind the desk model would mean hiring 2 fulltime or 5 parttime new staffmembers. Public libraries provide vast resources and services for large numbers of people at an extremely low cost. But to keep costs down, services must be cut.

I agree with posters decrying the library for not noticing this problem more quickly. But from the article, I suspect the library is understaffed and struggling to provide basic services.

I can assure bboisvert that the library cares deeply about its collection - and in all likelihood, the reduced staff due to measures like self-checkout terminals probably permitted and justified the expense of building a digital collection. The library was stretched too thin. It is tragic that the impact of eliminating the film collection will almost certainly result in a decline of circulating materials, which will put the library in a difficult position to negotiate for increased funding in the future. Thus, everybody loses. Public libraries stretch dollars to the breaking point, because their mission is the priority, and their budget is secondary.

Oainnas du akta vel.

For every study of media and children's cognition that has been published in the past 10 years claiming that watching TV or playing video games is essentially passive, there has been a counter-study that claims the opposite. In fact, as ivelostr2 has pointed out above, the vast majority of studies on video gaming (at least within the past 2 or 3 years) has indicated that, far from encouraging passivity, video gaming increases children's problem-solving skills -- not to mention their hand-eye coordination.

The issue is far from settled, of course. But I'm going to have to go with ivelostr2 and Filmmaker here.

Actually, Libraries are not in the business of education, nor are they in the business of helping people to read. Libraries are a public storehouse of media. Books, movies, prints, blueprints, newspapers, music, speeches, plays, in any and all formats and for any and all uses (education, entertainment, even making fun of) are all fairgame.

To be a storehouse would not require open access to the public; that crucial aspect makes libraries not only a storehouse of media, but an educational resource to the population that funds it. Now how broadly you wish to apply the terms "educational", well, that's always subject to debate.

Which is why I used the phrase "public storehouse". :)

Resource...Definitely. Educational...could be. Depends on the person.