Video Difference film collection being bought by Halifax Public Libraries, Dalhousie

Thousands of hard-to-find films will be saved for the publicas an iconic rental store gets set to close.

Halifax Public Librariesand Dalhousie University said Tuesday theywill buy the films from Halifax'sVideo Difference.

"To have parts of that collection live on and be available for the public is really part of the lasting legacy of Video Difference,"Halifax Public Libraries chief librarian and CEO AsaKachansaid in an interview.

$125Kfor 5,500 films

Video Difference, which is 34 years old, has 40,000 titles. The two public institutions will buy 5,500 of those, at a cost of $100,000 forHalifax Public Libraries and $25,000 for Dalhousie University.

"From our perspective, that's a very reasonable price," Kachan said.

"We anticipate it would be significantly more [to buy individually]. What exactly that bottomline figure is, we haven't gone into that amount of detail."

Other films for saleSaturday

When the store announced its closure, it also said its film collection would be liquidated starting this Saturday, of which a portion ofthe proceeds would go to staff.

Store owner Tom Michael later said the library and a university had approached him about purchasing films, and that he was interested in keeping the collection together.

"We knew we had a relatively small window," Kachan said. "As soon as the news broke, we began conversations."

The store stopped renting films Monday.

• 'Thank you and we'll miss you': Video Difference closing after 34 years

Acquired titles

Someof the films acquired by the library include:

• American Film Institute titles.
• British Film Institute titles.
• More than 1,000 foreign films.
• Documentaries.
• About 1,000boxsetsof British and international TV series.
• Classics and horror.
• The entireLGBTQcollection.
• The entire Canadian film collection.

Exceptional quality

Kachan, who immigrated to Canada from Sweden,has been a dedicated Video Difference customer since movingto Halifax12 years ago. In particular, she's excited for the boxsets of Scandavian television shows.

"[The films]really give us an opportunity to reflect and evaluate our own culture and other cultures," Kachan said.

"It'stremendouslyimportant, and the quality of what's been curated at Video Difference is exceptional. It really has been just a treasure trove to discover and acquire a number of those items."

'Difficult to acquire'

Dalhousie bought 1,000 titles, including silent films, French and Spanish language titles and films from Ireland, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand. Those willbe available to the public, but also will be used by university courses, university librarian Donna Bourne-Tyson said.

"These are titles that are very difficult to acquire anywhere else. They aren't available through streaming media, for instance," she said.

All the filmswill be available to anyone through the Borrow Anywhere, Return Anywhere agreement, which allows full access to public and academic libraries around the province.

The ones at Dalhousie may be occasionally put on reserve when being used by a university course.

Dalhousie wantsmore

Dalhousie iscrowdfundingto buy more titles, Bourne-Tyson said. Already, a donation of $10,000 went toward the $25,000 purchase price, she said.

"There are always more things we would buy if we had more money," Bourne-Tyson said.

"This has inspired us to really just enhance the collection in general."