The Death of the Library?
Dec. 5th, 2010 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mary_j_59An informal essay in response to Jason Perlow's recent article. About 2,500 words long.
In a recent article on ZDNet, Jason Perlow brings up a few legitimate concerns about the fair dissemination of information while making some major assumptions. Here is a quote from his article:
“Within 20 years, perhaps as few as 10, virtually almost all formsI of popular consumable written media will be distributed exclusively in an electronic format.” A little further on, Mr. Perlow comments: “In a fully digital society, we won’t need Public Libraries (sic) anymore. They won’t be cost effective . . .”
Mr. Perlman then goes on to point out a genuine problem that I, as a librarian, was already aware of. As my director pointed out more than a year ago, there really isn’t any easy way to lend electronic books to our patrons, and this could certainly make the electronic book a problem for libraries. As Mr. Perlman remarks, an electronic book cannot be loaned or given away; it belongs only to the person who bought it. Further, unlike a book, electronic books can’t be read without a separate machine on which to read them. If all the middle-class and well-to-do readers have their own electronic libraries, and if libraries cannot loan e-books, he postulates, libraries will vanish. But then what becomes of our mandate to make information available to all? Won’t there be a sharp information divide in the electronic age between the wealthy, who will all have access to their own libraries, and the poor, who will have nothing?
This is a valid question; indeed, an important one. One of the reasons I’m proud to be a librarian is that the public library is a truly democratic institution. We have free information of all kinds available to our patrons, and anyone at all can use the library at any time it’s open. Thus, patrons can educate themselves at their own pace, and entertain themselves as well. Further, we protect and preserve our patrons’ first amendment rights. Patrons can ask us for all sorts of information, and we will get it without making value judgments or standing in their way. In my own small library, to give just a few examples, we carry the works of Limbaugh and Moore, Chomsky and Dershowitz. Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, The Prince, and The Rights of Man can all be found on our shelves. And that’s as it should be! We trust our patrons to use our resources intelligently. I firmly believe that public libraries are the key to a truly educated populace.
So what happens if Mr. Perlow is correct, and the public library actually vanishes within a generation? If this actually happens, he is surely right about the vast information divide that will open between those who can afford their own e-libraries and those who can’t. But I truly don’t think the library - or the printed book - will vanish any time soon.
1. We are not going to see the demise of the printed book in 10 to 20 years. Yes, I’m stating that quite confidently. What makes me so sure of this?
For one thing, I’m old enough to remember all the talk, back in the 1980s, of the paperless society. We are still talking about it! And many people do, in fact, do their banking, bill-paying, etc, online. Yet, somehow, we are using more paper than ever. For my automatic payments, for example, I receive a letter that looks exactly like a bill. I print out copies of my tax forms as well as saving the electronic files. And the voting scandals of recent years have persuaded many of us that paper trails are necessary, since electronic files can easily be damaged or altered. So - we may do a lot electronically, but we are far from a paperless society, even further than we were twenty or thirty years ago. All the talk about the demise of the book reminds me of those dreams of the paperless society.
Then, Mike Mullin points out, there was all the talk about how TV would kill the movies. Certainly, people don’t go out to movie theatres as often as they did a couple of generations ago, but they still go, and thousands of movies are still made every year. In fact, all of the biggest blockbusters of all time were made after the advent of television! Just as TV, movies and theatre coexist, so will e-books and printed books.
And a printed book still has some advantages over an e-book. The printed book is complete in itself - form, content and delivery method all in one neat, and really pretty cheap, package. The e-book consists of content and form only. It cannot be read without a machine that will deliver it to the reader. And - again, unlike books, which have kept the same form for centuries - e-books come in various formats which require different machines and/or software to read them. For example, my library system is now lending e-books to our patrons, and I’ve linked to a site that also will allow them to donwload free e-books. Both our official lending site and the free site allow patrons to borrow or download books in many different formats, to be read on many different machines. The one machine they can’t use to read a borrowed book? Amazon’s Kindle. The Kindle simply doesn’t use the same formatting (e-pub or PDF) that other machines and readers use. That’s quite frustrating to Kindle owners, who are blocked from reading thousands of books for free. But it’s also frustrating to try to figure out what the best format is for your particular machine. With an actual book, you have no problems. If you have the book, you have everything you need to read it.
And, right now, a minority of people have e-readers. A majority have books. It may not seem that way if (like Mr. Perlow and I) you are working in a tech or information field. But, even in the U.S., some people don’t own computers at all, and of those that do, close to 40 percent have only dial up access to the internet, or no access at all. Again, I’m reminded of all the talk about the paperless society. People predicted that by this time, every household would have at least one computer, and every child would have his or her own computer in the classroom. Has it happened yet? We are well on the way there, certainly, but nowhere near as close as people thought we would be thirty years ago.
Finally, I suspect that it is the big publishers who are pushing the e-book. After all, most authors send electronic files to be read and corrected; most editors send electronic files back for revision, It’s extremely easy to convert a standard word file to a PDF, which can be read by almost any computer, and not much more difficult to convert to the e-pub format. Printing on paper is relatively expensive for the publishers. By publishing in e-format only, they can save on the costs of printing and distribution. But, if I were given a choice between an e-book and a paper book, I would almost always prefer the paper book, for its flexibility, durability and ease of use. I doubt that I am alone. As an aspiring author, my dream is to have a lovely hardcover containing my story on my library’s shelves. Again, I doubt that I am alone. In the future, people are going to continue to want actual books, just as people continue to go to the movies and the theatre today. Because there will be a demand, paper books will continue to be published. Not as many will be printed, and some books may be published only in an electronic format*, but books are not going to vanish. Not in my lifetime.
2. Libraries, too, will not vanish, because we won’t let them!
Yes, I’m pretty confident about this, as well. I have several reasons for affirming this. Of course, I’m biased; I’m a librarian, and I love my job. But I’ve also seen the role the library plays in my community. It’s an important role: the library fills not one, but several, niches. A library is a dynamic place, not just a box containing books that people may or may not borrow!
A. The virtual/electronic library already exists, and is being used. If you doubt this, take a look at the Westchester library system’s website, or that of any library within it, including ours. Our catalog is online, and can be browsed at any hour of the day or night; patrons can request books from home and then pick them up at their leisure; we have extensive databases of full-text magazines, newspapers, specialized encyclopedias, and historical, literary, medical and business information. We also have a database of audiobooks and e-books - more on that below - and a lot of other things as well, including live streaming video of library programs that people who couldn’t attend in person can watch from home. Here’s our url if you’d like to visit and see what we have! (http://www.northcastlelibrary.org/library_2007/HTML/index.htm)
B. As Mr. Mullin again pointed out, libraries will enable people to both borrow and read e-books. Right now, people without computers, or without internet access, come to the library to get online. In the future, if the majority of books are actually published in one electronic form or another, people will be able to read them - and even borrow them - at the library. I said before that electronic books can’t be loaned or given away; I also said that my library system has begun to lend them. That seems like a flat contradiction, doesn’t it? But the library system has worked out a method for lending e-books, as well as audiobooks and music, legally. Patrons don’t even have to visit the library to borrow them; they can do it from home. This collection is in its infancy right now, but it will grow, and so will its usage. You’d need a card from the Westchester library system to borrow our free e-books, but I’ll provide the link, anyway, so you can see what’s possible.
(http://westchester.lib.overdrive.com/B7B14C00-28E3-4D8F-85FD-C4B83FC9BE72/10/411/en/Help-QuickStartGuide.htm)
C. So, libraries will continue to offer information in all sorts of formats. But we do more than to offer information. For one thing, there is reference. We answer patrons’ questions in person, over the telephone, and online, and we do everything from straight directional questions, to teaching how to use the catalog and our databases, to guiding people in using the internet, to assisting with research questions, to reader’s advisory. As long as people have questions about information, we will be helping them to find answers. (Hilari Bell, a YA author and librarian, makes an interesting distinction between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge can be compared to straight information, such as a patron might acquire through searching Google. Wisdom requires knowledge and builds on it. By assisting our patrons in their search for knowledge, we help to guide them toward wisdom! I like that comparison.)
D. Libraries build community. It’s valuable and important to offer a physical space for people to come together, and that’s something that libraries can do superlatively. In our library system alone, you can go to the library for storytimes, book discussions, creative clubs of many types from poetry workshops to filmmaking, nature programs, simulcasts, classes in everything from astronomy to the legal system, gaming programs, book parties, and concerts and film series. What do all of these programs have in common? They allow people of all ages to have fun, certainly. They encourage patrons to socialize. But they also encourage independent learning, which is one of the main things the library is about.
And a part of community is local knowledge and local history. This, too, is something libraries preserve and disseminate. In my library, we have local newspapers going back to 1915, which a teen volunteer is in the process of digitzing. Patrons do look through these newspapers searching for genealogical information. We also have local history pamphlets, census records, and books on local geology, wildlife, architecture and society. This part of our collection is very popular - we even get calls and visitors from out of state who come to use it. My colleague in reference worked together with another colleague and a friend in the historical society to put the historical pamphlets and index online. Here’s a link to that database.
(http://www.northcastlelibrary.org/library_2007/HTML/historical_resources_home.htm)
E. Finally, even a small public library offers a breadth of information that private libraries cannot match. Consider all the titles I mentioned at the beginning. I don’t own any of them because I know I can always go to the library to read or refer to them. The library also has specialized encyclopedias, such as Contemporary Literary Criticism and Grove’s Music Encyclopedia, which, like the databases I mentioned earlier, are too expensive for most patrons to own privately. If libraries vanish, to be replaced by patrons’ private collections, we will lose that breadth and depth of information. Only the wealthiest citizens will have access to the sources anyone can now find in a public library’s reference collection. And that’s only if those citizens choose to subscribe to costly databases. If Mr. Perlow is right and wealthy citizens no longer come to the library, there will indeed be an information divide. But, assuming that I'm right and libraries continue to exist, it may not be quite the divide he expects. Poor people and immigrants, who do visit public libraries, will have access to classics and a wide range of resources. Wealthier people will access information that seems immediately useful to them, but they may not choose to purchase classics or in-depth reference sources outside of their own specialties.
Of course, electronic books are going to be increasingly common. And some types of book are ideally suited to the electronic format. Textbooks are a good example. They are ephemeral - no one wants an outdated textbook. They are also large, heavy, and expensive to print. How much better would it be if every child had all of his or her textbooks stored on one small electronic tablet! Having an electronic alternate for massively popular bestsellers is a great idea, too. That way, everyone can be sure of getting a copy, and bookstores and libraries won’t have to worry about either not having enough, or getting rid of extra copies once the craze for a title or series has passed.
So yes, there are going to be many more electronic books in the future, and many more titles will be published only in electronic format. But that doesn’t mean the paper book will die. And it certainly won’t mean the death of libraries! We are already finding ways to distribute electronic books to our patrons, just as we lend books, videos, dvds, mp3s, magazines, and many other forms of media. And - more people are using our particular library than ever before! Thousands are coming to library programs and using our online databases. The same is true throughout the Westchester library system, and I’m sure it’s true elsewhere in the country and in the world.
Libraries started with books on scrolls, and have loaned and preserved stories and information in many other formats. Remember 33 ⅓ LPs? Libraries used to loan those, back in the 1980s, and even had stations where you could listen to them! Now, kids bring in their iPods and play them through our computer speakers, and we set up iPod and computer based listening stations. We’ve always adapted to new media, and we always will. The newest format is the electronic book. Who knows what will come after that? One thing I can assert: librarians will figure out how to lend it and distribute it. We’ll still be here - in ten years, and in twenty, and in the coming centuries. Because people will keep needing stories, information, and community, and the public library offers all three.
Citation: Mr. Perlow’s article can be found here:
Digital Underclass: What Happens When the Libraries Die?
By Jason Perlow | November 10, 2010, 1:38pm PST
Summary
Libraries will need to be replaced with digital equivalents as publishing moves towards eBooks. As a result, will a new “Digital Underclass” be created from the base of technology have-nots?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/digital-underclass-what-happens-when-the-libraries-die/14554?tag=mantle_skin;content
I would also like to thank Mike Mullin, who pointed out this article on twitter.
Mary Johnson, Teen librarian, The North Castle Public Library
In a recent article on ZDNet, Jason Perlow brings up a few legitimate concerns about the fair dissemination of information while making some major assumptions. Here is a quote from his article:
“Within 20 years, perhaps as few as 10, virtually almost all formsI of popular consumable written media will be distributed exclusively in an electronic format.” A little further on, Mr. Perlow comments: “In a fully digital society, we won’t need Public Libraries (sic) anymore. They won’t be cost effective . . .”
Mr. Perlman then goes on to point out a genuine problem that I, as a librarian, was already aware of. As my director pointed out more than a year ago, there really isn’t any easy way to lend electronic books to our patrons, and this could certainly make the electronic book a problem for libraries. As Mr. Perlman remarks, an electronic book cannot be loaned or given away; it belongs only to the person who bought it. Further, unlike a book, electronic books can’t be read without a separate machine on which to read them. If all the middle-class and well-to-do readers have their own electronic libraries, and if libraries cannot loan e-books, he postulates, libraries will vanish. But then what becomes of our mandate to make information available to all? Won’t there be a sharp information divide in the electronic age between the wealthy, who will all have access to their own libraries, and the poor, who will have nothing?
This is a valid question; indeed, an important one. One of the reasons I’m proud to be a librarian is that the public library is a truly democratic institution. We have free information of all kinds available to our patrons, and anyone at all can use the library at any time it’s open. Thus, patrons can educate themselves at their own pace, and entertain themselves as well. Further, we protect and preserve our patrons’ first amendment rights. Patrons can ask us for all sorts of information, and we will get it without making value judgments or standing in their way. In my own small library, to give just a few examples, we carry the works of Limbaugh and Moore, Chomsky and Dershowitz. Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, The Prince, and The Rights of Man can all be found on our shelves. And that’s as it should be! We trust our patrons to use our resources intelligently. I firmly believe that public libraries are the key to a truly educated populace.
So what happens if Mr. Perlow is correct, and the public library actually vanishes within a generation? If this actually happens, he is surely right about the vast information divide that will open between those who can afford their own e-libraries and those who can’t. But I truly don’t think the library - or the printed book - will vanish any time soon.
1. We are not going to see the demise of the printed book in 10 to 20 years. Yes, I’m stating that quite confidently. What makes me so sure of this?
For one thing, I’m old enough to remember all the talk, back in the 1980s, of the paperless society. We are still talking about it! And many people do, in fact, do their banking, bill-paying, etc, online. Yet, somehow, we are using more paper than ever. For my automatic payments, for example, I receive a letter that looks exactly like a bill. I print out copies of my tax forms as well as saving the electronic files. And the voting scandals of recent years have persuaded many of us that paper trails are necessary, since electronic files can easily be damaged or altered. So - we may do a lot electronically, but we are far from a paperless society, even further than we were twenty or thirty years ago. All the talk about the demise of the book reminds me of those dreams of the paperless society.
Then, Mike Mullin points out, there was all the talk about how TV would kill the movies. Certainly, people don’t go out to movie theatres as often as they did a couple of generations ago, but they still go, and thousands of movies are still made every year. In fact, all of the biggest blockbusters of all time were made after the advent of television! Just as TV, movies and theatre coexist, so will e-books and printed books.
And a printed book still has some advantages over an e-book. The printed book is complete in itself - form, content and delivery method all in one neat, and really pretty cheap, package. The e-book consists of content and form only. It cannot be read without a machine that will deliver it to the reader. And - again, unlike books, which have kept the same form for centuries - e-books come in various formats which require different machines and/or software to read them. For example, my library system is now lending e-books to our patrons, and I’ve linked to a site that also will allow them to donwload free e-books. Both our official lending site and the free site allow patrons to borrow or download books in many different formats, to be read on many different machines. The one machine they can’t use to read a borrowed book? Amazon’s Kindle. The Kindle simply doesn’t use the same formatting (e-pub or PDF) that other machines and readers use. That’s quite frustrating to Kindle owners, who are blocked from reading thousands of books for free. But it’s also frustrating to try to figure out what the best format is for your particular machine. With an actual book, you have no problems. If you have the book, you have everything you need to read it.
And, right now, a minority of people have e-readers. A majority have books. It may not seem that way if (like Mr. Perlow and I) you are working in a tech or information field. But, even in the U.S., some people don’t own computers at all, and of those that do, close to 40 percent have only dial up access to the internet, or no access at all. Again, I’m reminded of all the talk about the paperless society. People predicted that by this time, every household would have at least one computer, and every child would have his or her own computer in the classroom. Has it happened yet? We are well on the way there, certainly, but nowhere near as close as people thought we would be thirty years ago.
Finally, I suspect that it is the big publishers who are pushing the e-book. After all, most authors send electronic files to be read and corrected; most editors send electronic files back for revision, It’s extremely easy to convert a standard word file to a PDF, which can be read by almost any computer, and not much more difficult to convert to the e-pub format. Printing on paper is relatively expensive for the publishers. By publishing in e-format only, they can save on the costs of printing and distribution. But, if I were given a choice between an e-book and a paper book, I would almost always prefer the paper book, for its flexibility, durability and ease of use. I doubt that I am alone. As an aspiring author, my dream is to have a lovely hardcover containing my story on my library’s shelves. Again, I doubt that I am alone. In the future, people are going to continue to want actual books, just as people continue to go to the movies and the theatre today. Because there will be a demand, paper books will continue to be published. Not as many will be printed, and some books may be published only in an electronic format*, but books are not going to vanish. Not in my lifetime.
2. Libraries, too, will not vanish, because we won’t let them!
Yes, I’m pretty confident about this, as well. I have several reasons for affirming this. Of course, I’m biased; I’m a librarian, and I love my job. But I’ve also seen the role the library plays in my community. It’s an important role: the library fills not one, but several, niches. A library is a dynamic place, not just a box containing books that people may or may not borrow!
A. The virtual/electronic library already exists, and is being used. If you doubt this, take a look at the Westchester library system’s website, or that of any library within it, including ours. Our catalog is online, and can be browsed at any hour of the day or night; patrons can request books from home and then pick them up at their leisure; we have extensive databases of full-text magazines, newspapers, specialized encyclopedias, and historical, literary, medical and business information. We also have a database of audiobooks and e-books - more on that below - and a lot of other things as well, including live streaming video of library programs that people who couldn’t attend in person can watch from home. Here’s our url if you’d like to visit and see what we have! (http://www.northcastlelibrary.org/library_2007/HTML/index.htm)
B. As Mr. Mullin again pointed out, libraries will enable people to both borrow and read e-books. Right now, people without computers, or without internet access, come to the library to get online. In the future, if the majority of books are actually published in one electronic form or another, people will be able to read them - and even borrow them - at the library. I said before that electronic books can’t be loaned or given away; I also said that my library system has begun to lend them. That seems like a flat contradiction, doesn’t it? But the library system has worked out a method for lending e-books, as well as audiobooks and music, legally. Patrons don’t even have to visit the library to borrow them; they can do it from home. This collection is in its infancy right now, but it will grow, and so will its usage. You’d need a card from the Westchester library system to borrow our free e-books, but I’ll provide the link, anyway, so you can see what’s possible.
(http://westchester.lib.overdrive.com/B7B14C00-28E3-4D8F-85FD-C4B83FC9BE72/10/411/en/Help-QuickStartGuide.htm)
C. So, libraries will continue to offer information in all sorts of formats. But we do more than to offer information. For one thing, there is reference. We answer patrons’ questions in person, over the telephone, and online, and we do everything from straight directional questions, to teaching how to use the catalog and our databases, to guiding people in using the internet, to assisting with research questions, to reader’s advisory. As long as people have questions about information, we will be helping them to find answers. (Hilari Bell, a YA author and librarian, makes an interesting distinction between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge can be compared to straight information, such as a patron might acquire through searching Google. Wisdom requires knowledge and builds on it. By assisting our patrons in their search for knowledge, we help to guide them toward wisdom! I like that comparison.)
D. Libraries build community. It’s valuable and important to offer a physical space for people to come together, and that’s something that libraries can do superlatively. In our library system alone, you can go to the library for storytimes, book discussions, creative clubs of many types from poetry workshops to filmmaking, nature programs, simulcasts, classes in everything from astronomy to the legal system, gaming programs, book parties, and concerts and film series. What do all of these programs have in common? They allow people of all ages to have fun, certainly. They encourage patrons to socialize. But they also encourage independent learning, which is one of the main things the library is about.
And a part of community is local knowledge and local history. This, too, is something libraries preserve and disseminate. In my library, we have local newspapers going back to 1915, which a teen volunteer is in the process of digitzing. Patrons do look through these newspapers searching for genealogical information. We also have local history pamphlets, census records, and books on local geology, wildlife, architecture and society. This part of our collection is very popular - we even get calls and visitors from out of state who come to use it. My colleague in reference worked together with another colleague and a friend in the historical society to put the historical pamphlets and index online. Here’s a link to that database.
(http://www.northcastlelibrary.org/library_2007/HTML/historical_resources_home.htm)
E. Finally, even a small public library offers a breadth of information that private libraries cannot match. Consider all the titles I mentioned at the beginning. I don’t own any of them because I know I can always go to the library to read or refer to them. The library also has specialized encyclopedias, such as Contemporary Literary Criticism and Grove’s Music Encyclopedia, which, like the databases I mentioned earlier, are too expensive for most patrons to own privately. If libraries vanish, to be replaced by patrons’ private collections, we will lose that breadth and depth of information. Only the wealthiest citizens will have access to the sources anyone can now find in a public library’s reference collection. And that’s only if those citizens choose to subscribe to costly databases. If Mr. Perlow is right and wealthy citizens no longer come to the library, there will indeed be an information divide. But, assuming that I'm right and libraries continue to exist, it may not be quite the divide he expects. Poor people and immigrants, who do visit public libraries, will have access to classics and a wide range of resources. Wealthier people will access information that seems immediately useful to them, but they may not choose to purchase classics or in-depth reference sources outside of their own specialties.
Of course, electronic books are going to be increasingly common. And some types of book are ideally suited to the electronic format. Textbooks are a good example. They are ephemeral - no one wants an outdated textbook. They are also large, heavy, and expensive to print. How much better would it be if every child had all of his or her textbooks stored on one small electronic tablet! Having an electronic alternate for massively popular bestsellers is a great idea, too. That way, everyone can be sure of getting a copy, and bookstores and libraries won’t have to worry about either not having enough, or getting rid of extra copies once the craze for a title or series has passed.
So yes, there are going to be many more electronic books in the future, and many more titles will be published only in electronic format. But that doesn’t mean the paper book will die. And it certainly won’t mean the death of libraries! We are already finding ways to distribute electronic books to our patrons, just as we lend books, videos, dvds, mp3s, magazines, and many other forms of media. And - more people are using our particular library than ever before! Thousands are coming to library programs and using our online databases. The same is true throughout the Westchester library system, and I’m sure it’s true elsewhere in the country and in the world.
Libraries started with books on scrolls, and have loaned and preserved stories and information in many other formats. Remember 33 ⅓ LPs? Libraries used to loan those, back in the 1980s, and even had stations where you could listen to them! Now, kids bring in their iPods and play them through our computer speakers, and we set up iPod and computer based listening stations. We’ve always adapted to new media, and we always will. The newest format is the electronic book. Who knows what will come after that? One thing I can assert: librarians will figure out how to lend it and distribute it. We’ll still be here - in ten years, and in twenty, and in the coming centuries. Because people will keep needing stories, information, and community, and the public library offers all three.
Citation: Mr. Perlow’s article can be found here:
Digital Underclass: What Happens When the Libraries Die?
By Jason Perlow | November 10, 2010, 1:38pm PST
Summary
Libraries will need to be replaced with digital equivalents as publishing moves towards eBooks. As a result, will a new “Digital Underclass” be created from the base of technology have-nots?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/digital-underclass-what-happens-when-the-libraries-die/14554?tag=mantle_skin;content
I would also like to thank Mike Mullin, who pointed out this article on twitter.
Mary Johnson, Teen librarian, The North Castle Public Library