Librarian or otherwise, you've likely heard a million arguments for ditching the physical and adopting the digital. Advertisements, opinions, and ease of consumption fuel this cultural shift, but not nearly as much as the profit margin IP owners gain from not having to produce a physical copy. While some would dismiss the desire for physical copies of media, studies have shown that it isn't just nostalgia driving patrons to pick up books, DVDs, or CDs: Gen Z is leading the charge in new purchases of physical media as an alternative to algorithmically curated media and AI content-factory garbage. There are plenty of good reasons not to throw out your physical collections, and purely digital attitudes should have no place in collection development.
The Ownership Issue
Streaming and other e-media have a lot of potential benefits, including remote access, large pre-built libraries, and no need for physical storage space in your library. The drawbacks, however, have only become clearer as time has progressed. When using streaming services, you are borrowing from the IP holder, and they can take that media away at any time for nearly any reason. This can easily put librarians and patrons alike in frustrating situations.
There are too many examples of this happening in the past few years to count, most recently with Sony deleting previously purchased media from PlayStation owners' drives because of rights transfers. This has been happening for a long time, too, even on free resources like YouTube: an IP holder decides to copyright strike a video for using 12 seconds of a song, and suddenly the helpful video you added to your LibGuide just doesn't exist anymore.
While Kanopy and other services are a fantastic boon to the librarian, they, like any other similar service, can remove titles for a plethora of reasons. Teachers may come to rely on a title in their syllabus that is there one semester and gone the next because of the legal complexities of title ownership and media company takeovers or failures. You can always rely on these services to provide quality, current titles, but if you have teachers using specific titles year after year, it's a good idea to purchase at least one physical copy so that they can always access it from your collection.
There are many titles currently lost in IP law limbo. Even popular titles can disappear from the market because of company bankruptcy or just a lapse in ownership. The original English dub of the popular anime Sailor Moon was a recent victim of this, and many fans have resorted to media piracy to preserve their own copies and allow others to access them. In the case of computer and video games, there is an entire catalog of titles known as "abandonware," which can only be accessed through old copies or piracy. This includes some beloved and popular titles like Zoo Tycoon and The Simpsons: Hit & Run. By keeping old items in circulation, your library can help preserve these cultural artifacts for patron use and future generations while cutting down on the necessity for people to turn to less-than-legal means of accessing the media they want to use.
Patron Tastes
Working with collections is always a delicate balancing act. You have to guess at future demand while also addressing a contemporary variety of tastes and needs. Trying to keep up with this ever-changing landscape, many librarians have fallen into the open arms of digital streaming and various e-book services. These tools are excellent resources for many patrons: Kindle and other e-book users can check out titles from their couches, and the issue of item damage is nonexistent. But as we all know, access doesn't necessarily mean acquisition.
My father is always complaining about being three books deep into a series and being unable to find a Kindle-compatible copy of the fourth title. The libraries where he's a patron all have a copy or three in their e-book collections, but the waitlists are miles long. Sometimes, these lines are perpetually held up by frankly baffling ticketing systems that make the borrower the "owner" of that copy of the e-book, giving the library no recourse to revoke the token and put the e-book back into circulation. Wasn't the point of these systems to reduce a similar physical loss of titles?
Recent changes in e-book IP law have also increased costs. You used to get unlimited access and copies just for the subscription cost; now, you often have to pay for each copy just as you would for a paper book. If you have to pay for each one and can lose access because of patron forgetfulness anyway, you might as well diversify your collection a little. While he prefers his Kindle for its accessibility options, like adjustable text sizes and contrast control, my father is perfectly happy picking up a physical copy of a series he's enjoying if it's not available as an e-book. He can always use a magnifying glass or reading glasses, but he can't read a book he doesn't have. Owning a second or third option when your library loses access to an e-book is accessibility.
Tastes are always changing, but there are some pieces of media that become more serious cultural artifacts. Be they beloved movies or albums from local musicians, there are parts of your collection that are core: you're likely never getting rid of those items. Digital access to some of these can be exciting and useful, but don't throw out those CDs, DVDs, or records! It's not just Gen Z, as stated above; nearly everyone with a genuine interest in film, music, or books relies on the library to help curate their own collections in some way. For media like films and music, this can take up a lot of space and cost a lot of money. Without options like the old video rental stores, libraries have a chance to fill a unique community niche. Studies have proven that book browsing allows users to spark their interests and make connections organically, and librarians should be doing the same thing with other media in the collection.
The Experience
It's often the case that streaming media suffers from connectivity and internet speed issues: you can't buffer a movie if you're not consistently connected to the internet, and if patrons use a budget option from their ISP, they can hit their monthly quota for high-speed downloads with almost criminal swiftness. Physical formats circumvent this issue completely and have the added advantage of working even during AWS or internet outages. Especially for school libraries at any level, having DVDs or Blu-rays of frequently used media ensures consistent, high-quality access.
Speaking of quality, physical media, when well maintained, offers higher quality when it comes to video and audio fidelity. There's no decompression or recompiling that can leave behind glitches and artifacts: it just plays in fantastic quality. Especially for music, CDs and vinyl records provide the best experiences for fans and audiophiles alike. People really appreciate the option to listen to the highest-fidelity cuts of their favorite albums and artists. Blu-rays, including new HD Blu-rays, offer some of the highest-quality viewing as well and will be most appreciated by anyone with a newer TV.
The cutting edge of technology isn't the only reason to have physical media, though. Plenty of people have DVD players or devices with them built in. The old saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Serve frugal patrons in your community by giving them access to a great collection of DVD titles. DVDs run on the cheaper side, too, and there are plenty of places to find high-quality used titles to beef up your collection.
These discs often have increased accessibility options, multiple audio tracks, audio commentary, and other geek-out-worthy content attached as special features. No streaming service has come close to emulating this experience, either in accessibility or in additional content. Real fans want director commentary and behind-the-scenes footage. Disabled people want closed captioning and audio descriptions written by a human instead of the clunky, autogenerated garbage accepted as standard by most streaming services. As a person with hearing damage myself, I'm always happy to have a mono cut of an old movie available to me: stereo and surround cuts can make it difficult to hear dialogue and sound effects at the same time, but the wall-of-sound aspect of mono production lets my good ear do the heavy lifting. You just do not get these options for most titles on any streaming service.
There are a lot of great reasons to maintain and expand your collection of physical media. Even if it's just a title here and a title there, you're ensuring consistent access to media your patrons want. Just putting the old stuff back out can help your patrons on their quest to escape the algorithm and targeted advertising. And in most cases, they never stopped producing new physical media. The only things your patrons will be missing out on are streaming service originals you can't provide through the library in the first place. It's worth the effort and consideration to have a robust collection of varied physical media for your patrons for a lot of good reasons, and at the very least, it will get more people through the front door and browsing.
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