They Won’t Let Me Go to TIFF: I Still Watch VHS
Does your heart pine for the insert, click and whirl of the video?
Does your Great Aunt Filomene refuse to get rid of her VHS player?
Did you know Toronto Public Library still has 2300 VHS that you can borrow? The last collection is located in the Arts Department of the Toronto Reference Library but all of them can be found in our catalogue and most can be placed on hold and sent to your local branch.
What kind of things do we still have? I asked my co-worker Brenda, who has been with the VHS collection for 17 years, to tell me some of her own and the public's favorites:
There is a strong Canadian focus to the collection. The 1999 Peter Gzowski interview with Wayne Gretzky is a great example of an older item that really gives an historical flavour to a popular figure.
We also have a large collection of 450 VHS produced by the National Film Board. This biography of dancer Stephane Leonard is part of the diverse Canadian collection.
But we have a strong international flavor as well and what could be more popular than The Days of Beatlemania 1962-1970?
Well, actually war and history are still in high demand and this Red Baron World War One documentary is still popular.
Any library staff can'tell you that travel material is very popular and Brenda, who is fond of the East Coast, especially enjoys the three volume East of Canada The Story of Newfoundland.
I wanted to end with one that resonates personally – my father and his family owned a home on Clinton Street. Christie Pits was the park he used and it's still a local landmark in the neighborhood but in the 1930s it was the scene of an anti-semitic and anti-immigrant riot. My family, who are Macedonian Greek, used to speak of a similar earlier incident in Toronto at the end of WW I: see the DVD Violent August the 1918 anti-Greek riots in Toronto.
So, if you, or your mom, still has a hankering for VHS please come and visit.
We also have over 8000 DVDs – mainly documentaries, how to and performance.
3 thoughts on “They Won’t Let Me Go to TIFF: I Still Watch VHS”
“VHS” is not really a noun. “VHS tapes” is what you’re looking for.
You didn’t mention that one can visit the Reference Library and watch VHS tapes right there on the available VCRs. Not always entirely comfortable, but an option.
My sons and I just discovered the CBC’s News in Review VHS/booklet kits with our broadcast hero Knowlton Nash. We watched several pertaining to the fall of communism and the little ones were fascinated to see how the events unfolded and for the first time got a sense of the fear and uncertainty. We kept going back to the library for more and more kits until our VCR broke. The tapes are fine.
We also liked HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon and were puzzled that TPL doesn’t have it on DVD, as well as CBC’s The King Chronicles and many other treasures, including Mr. Dressup’s treasure chests.
We were worried when some branches told us that they were divesting their VHS’s, but we’re glad that TPL overall still keeps some of the significant pieces of the collection
Vincent
It’s informal or colloquial language to use VHS as a noun, so I think the writer can get away with it in this informal blog 🙂
If it were an academic paper on the other hand…haha.
Thanks for the tip about watching it at the Reference Library!