The small tape is most likely miniDV. Your best bet is to borrow a miniDV camcorder from someone, hook it up via firewire, and transfer the video to your PC for editing. If you must use the DVD then...try renaming the .vob file as .mpg. I don't have Premiere (elements or otherwise) but some programs have been known to read DVD files with that workaround. If that fails you'll either need to extract the MPEG video data from the vob file (DVD ripper software) or find an editor that will work right from the DVD. I use Sony Vegas 6 which does import from DVDs (I assume do to the proliferation of DVD camcorders).
You really will be better off though pulling the video from the DV tape. DVD uses MPEG2 lossy compression. It's fine as a delivery format but not great for editing.
JTC