The public library comes through again
Wednesday, October 5, 2022 at 09:30AM
VHS conversion station in the iLab at Wescott Library in Dakota County MN
The “hot” technology of the mid-1980s was the VHS camcorder. At least it was for me as the father of a baby son whose grandparents lived halfway across the world and who I felt needed to experience the joy of his arrival. Using a camcorder I purchased in Hong Kong, I taped my son Brady’s antics and mailed a tape back each month from my home in Saudi Arabia to his grandpas and grandmas in Iowa.
Over the five years I taught for ARAMCO schools, I accumulated over two dozen VHS tapes. For the past 30 years or so, they have quietly languished in a box buried in a closet. But I ran across them a few days ago and felt both curious about what they contained and guilty for not making them accessible to others.
I knew that to convert these tapes to a digital format, I would need a VHS player, conversion software, and a place to store the digital conversions. It’s been a while since I’ve owned a VHS tape player. I don’t own the conversion software. I’d need a computer with fairly fast processing power to do the job as well.
As a supervisor for many years, my first inclination was to find someone else to do the work for me. A quick stop at a local business that does such work eliminated this option. They wanted $30 a tape to make the conversion (Hmmmm, $30 x 30 tapes - there goes my wine budget for this month.) I could buy the equipment for a third of that cost and, being retired, my hourly pay rate is zero.
Next I stopped back in my old tech department at the school district. None of the staff there remembered us having the equipment to convert tapes (although a couple kind folks offered to let me borrow the VHS tape players they still owned.) My sister also remembers a VHS player among the lovely stuff inherited from one of our aunts.
I had decided to pick up this old VCR player on my next visit to my sisters when a memory of something I had read tickled my mind. Don’t our public libraries now advertise “makerspaces” for anyone to use and might they not include VHS conversion equipment?
A call to the Dakota County Library office confirmed that a number of branches did indeed have this equipment and I was walked through the online scheduling website. So yesterday, I had an “iLab” to myself nearly all afternoon.
The conversion process could not have gone better: the library staff made sure the equipment was up and running; they gave me a quick verbal tutorial on the Roxio software; and they gave me a notebook of simple, step-by-step instructions for doing the work. I converted my first two tapes and had the digital copies uploaded to my GoogleDrive in just a couple hours. Hours pleasantly spent watching my then two-month-old son learn to smile…
Not to sound grim, but one of my goals is to leave as few tasks for my children to do as possible after I go to the great recliner in the sky. This includes digitizing these videos and paper photographs. Thankfully the public libraries around here recognize the need for services that go beyond checking out print books and having a place to read a magazine*.
Once again, I am proud to have been in the library profession.
* I’ve written before about Libby being a fantastic public library resource for ebooks.
Reader Comments (2)
Oooh. Good to know. My folks left me a box of 16mm films I’d like to try that with. I don’t know if our library system has that stuff but it’s worth checking out. Thanks.
If your library doesn't have an iLab, perhaps share the information about Dakota County's with them and they might take the hint....
Doug