No More DVDs At The Library

Commonplace Newsletter #83

Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

They are discontinuing DVD rentals at my local library. Now that’s not the most exciting opening sentence you have ever read but it is factually true and I’m now going to base a 1,000 word essay upon it, because why not?

I was going to write about something else today, and the idea was to go for a morning walk, get some ideas percolating, perhaps generate a strong opening sentence as I made my way through the back streets from my block of flats to the city’s main library. See if I saw any faces, any sights, any unusual or interesting activies to get the imagination stirring and then later to get the fingers moving across the keyboard. One or two usable ideas were germinating by the time I entered the library but they evaporated as soon as I saw the cellotaped sign on the DVD racks.

The library would no longer be offering DVD or CD rentals, it said, and that the current stock would be sold off at the end of the month. I could either see x webpage for more information or talk to a member of staff for more details. So I did. The latter I mean.

See, one thing I’ve been trying to do since the Covid restrictions ended is to talk to more people. Not just family, friends and online acquaintances via video calls and chats but to really prioritise and savour those little interactions that you could easily take for granted in the pre 2020 era. Those small-talk moments that have- for me at least- taken on an extra special significance now that we are in this post 2020 age. I’m queueing to have my grocery scanned by a human now, I’m paying cash and shooting the breeze, I’m petting dogs as I stroll the neighbourhood and I’m asking the owners what name this cute little dog goes by. I’m making eye contact, giving a little head nod, saying ‘how are you?’ to those faces I recognise. And those I don’t, if they look as if they have some life in them and are not craning to look down at a phone screen. I’m leaving my headphones and my mobile at home. Trying to be a little part of the world, a part of the community. A presence.

So in this spirit I asked the librarian behind the main desk what was going on. She said that DVD rentals had been falling steadily, even when factoring in the times when the library had been closed for weeks and months at a time due to the lockdowns. And she said no one rents CDs any more. I wasn’t surprised. I know I don’t. The CDs I didn’t care about much, but the loss of the DVD rental service seemed a little sad. I said as much. She agreed out of politeness, this young woman, but I could tell she personally didn’t see it as any great loss. Perhaps the discontinuing of it would save her some effort, some tedious filling of these discs that few people cared for. Did the library staff have to breathe on them and wipe the finger smears away with a cloth? Is someone even allowed to breathe on something that may later be handled by a member of the public any more? Is a CD case now an accepted vector for a respiratory virus?

These latter questions I kept to myself. You still get occasional odd person around here wearing a mask, obsessively hand gelling and not willing to hear any humour or irony on the virus topic. And I get the feeling that libraries can be sanctuaries for such sorts. So I got back to the task at hand. I asked her what they were going to do to replace the soon to be mothballed DVD rental service. She said that the money they used to allocate to it would be going towards getting in more books, the same with the money that they would generate from selling the old discs (my ears pricked at this. When I heard the low price the single films and box sets would be selling for I realised that I would be coming back here on sale day with a handful of bank notes and a wheelbarrow to carry my haul back home in).

Hard to argue with that. More books can’t be a bad thing and it is good to see that this library has not only survived the government lockdowns and the kind of budget cuts that have closed hundreds of libraries up and down the country but that it actually seems to be thriving. But still. The end of DVD rentals did strike me as a shame, as a mild but real loss. A further lost battleground in the assault on serendipity, chance and cultural randomness and discovery. Now I had not been a big renter there by any means but I do recall taking out some art documentaries, contemporary westerns, recommended new releases and HBO mini series that led me down different cinematic tributaries that I might have otherwise never discovered. As I have said before Netflix and algorithms are the end of such discovery, or they at least modify it in ways that we as listeners and readers and viewers may not want. If, that is, we were actually consulted on it in the first place.

But there is an information acquisition and cultural discovery technology that predates such internet enabled services, that predates DVDs even, and that is now more vital than ever. And this is talking with people. Asking them what’s good and telling them what you think is good in turn. So things may change, mediums may come and go, things may be replaced or discontinued. But people will always be people, and they will always want to talk and make recommendations and discuss matters of taste and culture. You just have to find them and talk with them. And as I thanked the librarian for her time and walked through the automatic doors into the lunchtime sunshine, I realised how much of this I would have missed out on had I simply looked up the DVD availability on the library’s website.

Until next time,

Live Well,

Tom.

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