- Arik B.
- Monday, December 13, 2021
Those "weird black blocks" known as VHS tapes won't last forever. Use Richland Library's Library of Things to help preserve your precious memories.
There they sat on a bookshelf by the front door for the past several years: six VHS tapes that “I’ll get around to converting someday.”
Four of the tapes were of me in major theatre roles at the University of South Carolina and the South Carolina Shakespeare Company (between 2007 to 2010). The other two tapes were from my travels abroad to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Italy and Greece during graduate school (1996).
My daughter once asked me about those “weird black building blocks” in the foyer. Trying to explain a VHS tape to a child of the smartphone generation isn’t as easy as you might think. “Well, we used to store memories on magic tape instead of MP4s and the cloud.”
My daughter rolled her eyes, “Adults are weird.”
I had priced converting these tapes at a local electronics store—to the tune of well over $100—which is why the tapes sat collecting dust in my entryway for ages. But one day a lightbulb went off in my mind: “Hey, don’t we have a VHS to DVD Recorder in the Library of Things?”
I contacted my colleague Cecil at cdecker@richlandlibrary.com . Soon enough, I was sitting in the Richland Library Main Post Production Lab, spending several hours converting my “magic tape” memories to DVD.
Now, please pay attention. Because here’s the vital archiving “moral of the story.”
Tragically (pardon the pun), the theater performance tapes had deteriorated to the point that conversion is no longer possible. Keep in mind, these tapes were “only” 10 to 15 years old. So let that be a lesson for us all: magnetic tape is a fairly ephemeral medium.
Fortunately, I was able to convert the two travel-abroad tapes just in the nick of time. These tapes were more than 25 years old! While there was significant wear, both the visual and audio components were viable enough to convert.
There are many magical moments captured in these five hours of footage, but the one that is priceless to me is a video of me at sunrise at the peak of Mt. Sinai. Though faded with time, I want these moments to be passed down to the next generation and beyond.
As an added bonus, my teenage daughter actually enjoyed sitting down for several hours with her old man, taking a vicarious DVD tour of the Holy Lands and ancient Greece and Rome.
Many of us have old VHS tapes sitting around that we’ll get around to converting “someday.” Just remember that these “weird black building blocks” have temperamental expiration dates.
Thanks to Richland Library’s Library of Things, you’re also just a few hours away from ensuring your memories survive to the next generation.
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Here’s the text from the richlandlibrary.com entry for the VHS to DVD Recorder in the Library of Things:
This item is for use in the Post Production Lab. Please email cdecker@richlandlibrary.com to inquire about using the Post Production Lab at Richland Library Main.
Transfer all of your favorite VHS family movies and preserve them on a DVD. With the 1080p Up-conversion, you will experience a 1080p HD-picture quality with an HDMI cable and since this is a combo unit, you will even save space! So clean-up all those video tapes, and start your new DVD library.