16 mm Films - approximately 5000 unique titles which account for half of our deliveries. A very strong, very popular collection to which we now add only those titles that are better suited to the large screen than video.

VHS Video Tapes - 9000 titles in this collection that continues to grow in popularity. Many of these titles come from cooperative purchases such as ABC projects and GIFT which provide high priority topics at very low cost and often with duplication rights.

Laser Video Disc - Our collection of 600 titles is growing fast. Priority will be to select subjects that make appropriate use of this technology and are suited for short-term borrowing similar to film and tape.

CD Roms - Our newest collection of 1000 titles has been enthusiastically received by teachers. They are loaned for a 2-week period and are one of our fastest growing collections.

Multi-Media Kits - A combination of film, video, recordings, slides, filmstrips, printed material and objects that relate to a particular subject. These kits are few in number and are described in the catalog.

Timely Topics - A name given to a series of video tapes that are popular at specific times of the school year. Because of their unique popularity these titles were often in strong demand by all teachers at the same time. To relieve the resulting scheduling problems the CRC organized the most popular videos into 12 special collections on each topic (Fire safety, the seasons, national holidays, etc.) Each TIMELY TOPICS collection is boxed in a special group of 8 tapes and is sent to each elementary school automatically (without need of a special request) at the appropriate time for all teachers to use.

Samplers - VHS tapes selected to provide high quality home viewing of topics related to curriculum and of special interest to students. Divided into Primary, Intermediate, Junior High and High School subjects. Students may borrow videos for overnight use incompliance with the rules of each library.

Reference Videos - VHS tapes such as Video Year Book series, High School Chemistry, American Literature and Career Exploration. Reference Videos are vital and resources will continue to expand in numbers over the next few years.

Parent Collections - Our newest collections that have special topics to help parents better prepare their children for school as well as topics of special interest to parents on how to resolve problems, cope with stress and understand issues which involve approaches to successful parenting. This is an excellent method to bring important topics directly to the attention of parents seeking solutions.

Multi-tape collections on a particular topic. These sets are not sent automatically because the theme of the subject is not related to a particular time of year. These collections focus on an event, theme or topic such as immigration, the presidents, great leaders, etc. Timely Topics are virtually all devote to elementary topics, while Thematic Collections are mostly secondary topics.

Revenues: Participating schools receive unrestricted use of all media collections for an annual charge based upon their enrollment. This cost covers catalogs for each teacher, media searches, preview materials, site collections and direct courier service each week.

Participation: All 23 public school districts and 14 non-public schools are active users of this service. The Onondaga County Public Library System uses selected 16mm titles from the collection as part of their regular visual presentations.

History: The BOCES Media Collection began in 1972 as a 16mm Instructional Film Library by using fund from an ESEA Title II Grant. As schools joined the cooperative the 16mm collection grew rapidly and expanded to include multi-media kits and 35mm slides. Video tape programs began slowly in the mid-1970's to be part of the collection. When our association with the Appalachian BOCES Consortium was established as a result of merging the Cortland and Onondaga BOCES, video tape use began to grow rapidly. In 1990 site collections of video tape and timely topics collections expanded the range of media services offered.

In 1992 Direct Telephone Scheduling was introduced to give users the ability to schedule from the collection 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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