If you’ve been a librarian for more than a couple of years, you probably have memories connected to cassette tapes – circulating those book ‘n’ tape combinations; practicing your storytime songs or puppet shows or storytelling; or learning songs in your car on the way to work.
But those days are mostly over, and the cassette tape will soon join its brother, the 8-track, and its cousins, the 5 1/4 and 3 1/2-inch floppy disks and the VCR cassette, in the Misty Never-Never Land of Obsolete Technologies. This New York Times story, “Say So Long to an Old Companion… Cassette Tapes,” reminds us of what’s passing. It reflects on the things that made cassettes special, right to the end:
While the cassette was dumped long ago by the music industry, it has lived on among publishers of audio books. Many people prefer cassettes because they make it easy to pick up in the same place where the listener left off, or to rewind in case a certain sentence is missed….
Cassettes have limped along for some time, partly because of their usefulness in recording conversations or making a tape of favorite songs, say, for a girlfriend. But sales of portable tape players, which peaked at 18 million in 1994, sank to 480,000 in 2007, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. The group predicts that sales will taper to 86,000 in 2012.
That’s the end of the line for cassettes, but can you guess where cassettes hung on longer than anywhere else? In libraries, of course. Libraries accept and give up technologies reluctantly (why do you think it took libraries 12 years or so to get into video gaming?), and this story reminds us how perfect cassettes have always been for one important kind of library material:
…for audio books, the cassette is an oddly elegant medium: you can eject it from your car, carry it home and stick it in a boombox, and it will pick up in the same place, an analog feat beyond the ability of the CD.
In the 80s and 90s I spent a lot of time on the children’s room reference desk putting boys (and girls, but mostly boys) who were reluctant readers together with an unabridged cassette copy of books like Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet or C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe along with the book itself. “Have them read the book while they’re listening to the tape,” I’d tell their moms, and many of those moms came back, smiling and saying, “He read the whole book! Do you have any more of those tapes?”
Now those books are all on CD, and soon they’ll all be downloadable. I certainly don’t feel as if future generations will lose much by never having experienced the cassette. But I will miss them – I remember, as the article mentions, making mix tapes of favorite songs for girlfriends, and practicing lines for my puppet programs on cassettes. I also remember all those times my old cassette player pulled the tape out of the cassette (I had a car player that especially used to do that), and I’d have to eject that jumbled mess of tape carefully and wind it back into the cassette with my fingernail.
Do you remember doing that? Digital files aren’t quite the same…
July 28, 2008 at 3:52 am
You might appreciate the section of the musical “Avenue Q” where Kate Monster kvells to the mix-tape her potential boyfriend just gave her. It’s poignant.
A few years ago, I bought tape-to-tape recorder as part of a CD player set because I wanted to make sure I could make copies of recordings that were available only on audio cassette. Really, I need cassette-to-digital technology.
July 28, 2008 at 2:24 pm
My library has severely cut down our purchase of books on tapes (and no longer buys music on tape at all) in favor of CDs, but periodically we have patrons who come in and specifically request the tapes. Sometimes it’s because they want to listen in the car, and their car stereo only takes tapes. Other times, it’s because they like the natural “bookmarking” of cassettes.
I understand that the better mp3 players out there also do “bookmarking” of digital files, but, as the quote you pulled out mentioned, that’s an area in which today’s CDs just can’t compete. When I listen to books on CD, I have to keep a pen and paper nearby to note which track I left off on.
The other thing I miss about tapes is their durability. It seems like just as often as not, when I check out a CD or CD set from the library, a disc seems to have been handled by peanut buttery fingers, then played with in the sandbox, and finally used as a Hot Wheels racetrack. Unspooling and eventual wear aside, tapes are pretty impervious to patron use.
July 28, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Alkelda– As a long-time puppeteer, I ended up seeing *Avenue Q* twice, once off-Broadway and once on Broadway, and I know the scene you mention well. And cassette-to-digital technology is out there; it just ain’t cheap.
Lisa– Yes, I’m amazed with how non-durable CDs and DVDs are. Cassettes held up a lot longer, even if the sound quality wasn’t so great once they’d been played a hundred times or so. But you could listen to them without them breaking up and stuttering…
July 31, 2008 at 1:37 am
This is a timely article as I have spent much of the summer deleting our cassette tape read-alongs after ordering books with CD’s. Our library does have quite a lot of cassette books on tape and read-alongs left, so we purchased some portable tape players and hang them in the same bags on the same rack. The patrons seem thrilled to have them to check out. Old stock is still good, little hands can push the big buttons and the world goes on. All this CD/DVD/Digital stuff is really difficult for pre-school kids to manipulate. I am mourning the loss of video for their chubby little hands. CD losses due to damage (broken in half, dropped and cracked, surface scratches) have been sky high for my library and I continue to wonder why there are no outcrys about the $$$ from the library community.
July 31, 2008 at 3:35 pm
AS LMS in a K-2 school, by books with cassettes section is popular with many children. But, I’m starting to have the children tell me they don’t have a cassette player at home. I have, of course, started buying books with CDs, but am wondering how long to hang on to my books with cassettes…so sad!
July 31, 2008 at 9:47 pm
The last fortress of cassettes is the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (sic), Library of Congress. Its attempts to enter the late 20th century have met with mixed results in Congressional appropriations. While many other libraries serving people with print disabilities have transitioned to digital formats LC remains stuck in rewind. It will be several years before funding will allow widespread adoption of digital talking books. If you find that outcome unacceptable, and you should, contact your US rep.