Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 8, 1990 TAG: 9004080141
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Partly because of disagreement over that issue by localities participating in the Lonesome Pine Regional Library in far Southwest Virginia, the state Library Board had some of its staff members study it and make recommendations at the board's March meeting.
The presentation was made by Peggy Rudd and Tony Yankus, in the form of a point/counterpoint examination, rather than with direct recommendations on how many - if any - tapes should be stocked by libraries.
Yankus, giving the emphasis-on-books side, suggested libraries should stick to the basics of promoting books and literacy and not give way to the latest media fad.
But videos are simply another medium for information, education and entertainment, Rudd said.
"If a public library has a book on plumbing repair, why not have a video on plumbing repair as well? For someone like me who doesn't know an elbow joint from elbow macaroni, I can assure you that a video would be preferable."
Libraries should not compete with private enterprises such as video stores, Yankus said, providing free access to what the stores rent or sell. With video outlets springing up throughout the United States, videotapes are accessible to practically everyone, so this is not a need libraries must fill, he said.
Libraries could stock classic, fine arts, foreign, children's and special-interest videos that stores in business to make money might not have available, Rudd said. As for hurting the business of video stores, the same argument could be made about bookstores.
One of the concerns in the Lonesome Pine region - covering Wise, Lee, Scott and Dickenson counties - was whether money spent on buying videos reduced funds available for books. Besides, Yankus said, buying videos is like throwing money away because a library could never buy enough of them to satisfy the demand.
In Virginia, public libraries own 79,696 videos and 13,031,876 books, a videos-books balance that Rudd said does not seem unreasonable.
Another concern raised in Southwest Virginia, where illiteracy is a problem, was that libraries should encourage reading.
Yankus said videos add to people's television-watching habits, and they already do more of that than reading. Rudd suggested that visual literacy - separating high-quality presentations from "high-demand pablum" - is also important.
Libraries, Yankus said, should be building quality collections to uplift and inspire, rather than investing in the "sugary junk food" of videos. Rudd replied that libraries should not try to dictate public tastes. "Book collections include the steamy novels of Jackie Collins right along with the political treatises of Henry Steele Commager," she noted.
Rudd told the board that the issues raised in the mock debate between her and Yankus are not easy or new.
"Librarians have long agonized about the place of pulp fiction in their collections, for example. I can remember being involved in a rather heated argument over whether a children's collection should have Nancy Drew mysteries in it," she said.
"But as long as libraries are seen as being all things to all people," Rudd said, "without the resources to match this grandiose vision, librarians will continue to agonize over the most appropriate expenditure of precious dollars."
by CNB