>I have not had much luck with VCR's in exhibition settings. At
>least not ones we have used (they play 8-9 hours a day for 364
>days a year). I can highly recommend the use of a laser disk
>player however. In the eight years we have used them in our
>exhibition they have only needed to be repared once. We use two
>of them in our permanent exhibition. One is a SONY that is eight
>years old and as of yesterday its twin died and I just
>installed a Pioneer CLD-V2800 (SONY no longer makes laserdisk
>players). I have had very good luck with our other Pioneer
>equipment in the past. As for Monitors, we use a Panasonic and
>have had no repairs needed for ten years.

Robin, how do you transfer your videos to laser disc? Has the cost of
pressing laser discs coming down to where its affordable? What about
CD-write technology?

In the meantime, we still use the VCR-TV sets. I just purchased another one,
along with a 5 year repair plan which includes a loaner when this one breaks
(which, of course, it will.) We actually encourage our visitors to operate
the "clicker" and even choose amongst the video resources we place on a
shelf near the VCR. I don't recommend this for everybody, but it works for
us in an environment that doesn't see heavy usage and/or vandalism.

BTW, not to exacerbate the sexism thread recently on Museum-l, but we are
thinking of monitoring the usage of the "clicker" to see if males in mixed
groups end up hogging the thing!

Jim Gilmore, Director of Exhibitions                     916/243-8801
Redding Museum of Art & History                      fax 916/243-8929
PO Box 990427, Caldwell Park                  voice mail 916/224-8119
Redding, CA 96099-0427            email: [log in to unmask]
Web Page- http://www.shastalink.k12.ca.us/rmah/RMAHmain.html