NORFOLK — Whenever Rob Copeland runs into former customers of the old Naro Expanded Video store, they tend to tell him the same thing: “Wow, I really miss it.”
The “it” was the beloved and eclectic store on Colley Avenue, with its labyrinth of wooden shelves stacked with more than 42,000 DVDs and videos for rent.
Copeland, 73, a retired movie theater manager, was one of the Naro Video’s many longtime employees who seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things related to film. Owners Tim Cooper and Linda McGreevy opened the rental store in 1996 in a different location around the corner. They shuttered their longtime spot next to the Naro Cinema movie theater in 2019.
While the store had many loyal customers, the growing popularity of streaming movie services had led to a significant drop in business. Cooper and McGreevy were forced to shut it down after a brief period of trying to keep it going as a nonprofit.
The collection of DVDs and videos the couple lovingly built over a few decades is believed to be the largest on the East Coast. And now, after years of being packed away in boxes, the films have recently made their way back onto shelves again.
The collection’s new home is at Old Dominion University’s Perry Library, the main library on campus, near the corner of Hampton Boulevard and 43rd Street. McGreevy, a retired ODU art history professor, and Cooper, a former movie critic for PortFolio magazine, donated it to the university after closing the store.
Most all the titles have been shelved and can be checked out, said Kris King, curator of the collection. King is a former customer of the store, and the person responsible for getting most of the items catalogued and shelved in their new space.
The collection — which now has over 43,000 titles — has its own 4,500-square-foot room in the library that used to be home to government documents. The university spruced the space up with new carpet, shelving, paint, furniture and window treatments.
“This area seemed like a natural fit,” said Timothy Hackman, ODU’s Dean of Libraries. “We wanted to have the whole thing in one place.”
Students and ODU employees are able to check out movies for free, and members of the public who pay to join the Friends of the Old Dominion University Libraries also can borrow them. The cost is $50 a year for one person to borrow up to three DVDs for a week, and $100 a year for up to four members of a household to take six out at a time, King said. Parking is available in a garage behind the building for $1 each half hour.
The system for categorizing the titles is different from the unique one used by the store, which had many of them separated by the director who made the films or the decade they were released.
“It used to be more who and when,” King said. “Now it’s what and where.”
The current genre categories are action, animation, arts, children, comedy, documentary, drama, horror, international, LGBTQ, martial arts, mature, musicals, mystery/thriller, rom-com, samurai & ninja, sci-fi & fantasy, shorts & avant garde, sports, war and Western, King said.
In addition to the DVDs and videos, movie posters and other items from the old store will be on display, including a neon Naro Expanded Video sign that hung in the front window. Viewing stations and a screening area will be included, and DVD players will be available for checkout.
The library plans to host a red carpet themed opening party March 2 that will include giveaways, music and other entertainment.
Students and faculty have already been making good use of the movies, Hackman said. A film studies professor who came to the university last year said part of the reason she chose ODU was because of the collection, he said.
“We really do see this as a great academic research resource,” Hackman said. “Any subject you can imagine, any time period. It’s all here.”
The library hosted an event earlier this year that some former store customers and employees attended. One goal was to recruit members for a Naro Advisory Board that will work to raise money to cover ongoing expenses, promote the collection, and seek gifts for it. The library plans to spend about $12,000 a year adding titles to it, Hackman said.
The public’s interest in the collection has been great, said Hackman, who arrived at ODU in the summer of 2022.
“Every time we put something out about it, it gets a lot of attention,” he said. “I know a lot of people are excited about it finally being available again.”
Among them are Cooper and McGreevy, who’ve already begun checking movies out.
“We are so happy that it’s going to be available to the local community again,” McGreevy said. “That was very important to us.”
King and Hackman believe there’s still a good number of people interested in checking out movies.
“I guarantee you there are,” King said. “People are getting frustrated with streaming services and there are a lot of films they can’t see through them.”
Movies made before 1990 can be especially hard to find on streaming services, he said.
King likens the renewed interest in watching DVDs to what’s happened with vinyl records in recent years.
“It’s kind of following the same pattern,” he said.
Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com
