It may be the best movie rental place in town. The selection is huge and the prices -- seven nights out with the scan of a library card -- are unbeatable.

But there's a drawback. Most of the movies at the downtown library's Audio-Visual/Talking Book Center are on VHS, and they're rapidly wearing out with age.

Library Director Gary Swint says the tapes won't be making the move into the new building going up across James Brown Boulevard. The audiovisual department in the new main branch, scheduled to open in June 2010, will have DVDs only, and the disc collection will get a major boost thanks to the sales tax referendum passed last month.

Blockbuster phased out VHS years ago, and other rental chains followed suit. The tapes at the downtown library, though, about 4,000 of them, make for a selection few commercial stores can match.

While rental marts and grocery store kiosks focus on new releases, movie buffs can find a range of VHS titles going back decades at the library, such as Jason and the Argonauts , Dr. No , The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean , Marathon Man , The Conversation and Better Off Dead .

Also on tape are National Geographic shows, Star Trek episodes, Three Stooges shorts and Looney Tunes and Charlie Brown cartoons.

The best of the lot are likely to show up in the new library on DVD, Mr. Swint said. The $24 million building will get another $1 million from SPLOST VI to pay for an anti-theft tagging system, about 30,000 new books and audiovisual materials.

Mr. Swint said he plans to spend about $100,000 on the last category, and during the next few months he'll decide how much will go toward new DVDs and how much will go toward music CDs and books on tape/CD. (The library hasn't made the leap to Blu-ray. Mr. Swint said he's waiting to see if the technology takes hold in the market.)

The library's growing collection of about 3,000 DVDs is already more assorted than the typical video store, ranging from newer films such as Gran Torino and I'm Not There to classics such as Ben-Hur, Hud and Eraserhead .

As for the VHS tapes, those that are still watchable will be shipped to other library branches, and those that aren't are headed for the trash bin. Mr. Swint said he's considering selling some.

Though efforts will be made to replace as many as possible on DVD, many won't be because they're no longer in demand.

Mr. Swint said he's far more likely to buy an Alfred Hitchcock movie on disc than the 1987 Bette Midler/Shelly Long movie Outrageous Fortune , which hardly ever gets checked out.

"For me to try to duplicate everything we have wouldn't make sense," he said.

Reach Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225 or johnny.edwards@augustachronicle.com.