Libraries and the Populist Trap

A protesting quote from Jim Duncan, Executive Director at the Colorado Library Consortium (CLiC)  that the U.S. Postal Service failed to mention libraries as a potential place to provide 3D printing services got me to thinking: Is the library as a public institution haring off after every new fad because they deep down fear books just don't cut it any more?  I am not saying that there aren't ancillary services readers benefit from, such as photocopying and faxing, and the like. Those, I maintain, are related to the use of books and reading materials.  Libraries may end up losing their unique standing if our focus gets too diverted by tangential technologies.

Just and dangerous is the sentiment underlying the statement by Shannon O'Grady, also of CLiC, that "Libraries are evolving, and one of the things, in some ways, that happens is they're less about books, they're more about communities."  One could say something similar about almost any public institution and get away with it. But is it a bit tautological?  Is she in some ways saying "this public thing (a library) is about a thing that is public", that is that belongs to a community?

I wonder if there's sort of a populist anti-intellectualism insidiously making its way into discourse about libraries.  If it can be about communities rather than about books, then maybe you can still get benefits from a library if you don't read. Any fool can be a member of a community, but it takes a literate person to read.

This can lead to another insidious tendency -- to brand readers as elitist. "What do you mean I can't use the library if I can't read? How dare you take MY tax money and then say I can't use the service if I can't read, or don't want to?"  It doesn't take much for some to use any excuse to reduce funding to public libraries, and one should be chary of giving them any such encouragement.

I think the reason say such things is be be inclusive. They are purposely unchallenging. It inclusive to say "Everyone in the community gets something from a library" instead of "everyone benefits from having libraries." There is a difference, and it is both subtle and easily misstated.  If everyone gets something from libraries (one gets DVDs, another gets books, another gets their 3D printing done), that's one way of dealing with the use of libraries.  It's another to say "reading, and the abilities and talents they engender in people benefit everyone eventually", because the people to do the reading then go on to contribute to the greater good.

For example, if society benefits from having learned doctors, then it benefits society to support the education of doctors.  If having libraries contributes to that effort, then society benefits. Not everyone becomes a doctor, but everyone can go to the doctor if they are sick. So if only doctors (in our hypothetical example) go to the library, and everyone (through taxes) contributes to the sustenance of the library, everyone benefits, even though everyone does not directly use the library.

Of course, this example is meant to show the relationship between funding libraries and the greater good.  The particulars of how libraries should be administered are much more complex.  This is also not to say that libraries can't serve a broad public with a multitude of services.  It is important to be aware, though, that libraries should not be justified with populist pedantry, but with a more nuanced sense of what truly benefits society over all.

Books, and the skill of reading they inculcate, are vital to good citizenship and quality of life. It is a mistake, however innocently intended, to downplay the importance of books in libraries.  It is a slippery slope to a bleak future.

I Dare To Read

Recently, I read an article that admonished that adults should not read young adult or teen fiction.  It was as if to say there was some great sin lurking in the grown up who enjoyed Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider series or Erin Hunter's Warriors books.  Will I go blind?  Will it stunt my growth? Will it rot my mind, Uncle Analdus? I like better well-known library science educator Betty Rosenberg's sentiment “Never apologize for your reading tastes.”  Like food "de gustibus non disputandum est." I hope I am not blasphemous to suggest that Jesus' logion about what goes into a man's mouth can extend to his eyes.  

Why should we not find our lost youth in the pages of a book, as long as we promise to return?  I wouldn't recommend staying there, but surely a visit to refresh our memories will do us no harm.  I also feel that a steady diet of such material would be harmful, as any excess can be.  

So to paraphrase Stephen Hopkins' line from "1776", I've never seen, heard, nor smelled any book so dangerous, it shouldn't be read. 

Are Ebooks For Everyone?

As a technically inclined person, I get excited about the potential of e-books.  I had a tablet once and it was so fun to read a novel and get easy access to the on-board dictionary and to look up obscure references in the browser. When my tablet bought the farm (I bought it used and now I know why they sold it) I felt betrayed by the world of technology, and sought solace in my reliable books. Now, I didn't pay much for my tablet relative to what's out there.  Let's just say in my position, my budget is limited, but I had hoped for better.

Not everyone can use technology.  Some eschew it for their own reasons. Some can't afford it, plain and simple. Some remain ignorant of how to use it.  Some have a combination of these challenges. Libraries cannot be empowered to change some of these challenges, and some of them they try to, with varying success.

One additional challenge that faces libraries is the behavior of publishers who apparently take the position that libraries are trying to undermine their bottom line by loaning ebooks to many people rather than just one.  I assume their viewpoint is that if people can just check out an ebook at the library, they won't pay for their own copy. If they had their way (and some are actually attempting to have it so) their books would never appear in a library collection at all.  Each individual would have to buy the book from them at the price the publisher sets.

Let's imagine that publishers long ago had figured things this way for regular books.  They might have said they would not sell to libraries.  Instead, libraries would have had to be built on used books.  Many libraries in existence today started out as private collections, so it is a possible scenario.  Instead of having a budget for new books, donations would be the source for new acquisitions  The assumption would be that ownership of the book transferred to the customer upon payment.

It is also possible that a new service would arise in which you could 'rent' books owned by an aggregator, just as used to happen with video stores. Once you read them, you would have to bring them back for the next customer to use.  In effect, it would be a for profit private library.

If public libraries continue in the direction of being less about books and being about "communities" instead, this model could ostensibly come to pass.  Libraries could take the position that publishers have made providing books to the entire reading public untenable. It might instead be that some books would be kept as a side service -- like magazines in a doctor's office.  

All of this ties into the future of ebooks.  Thinking of these kinds lead to the approaches publishers and libraries have taken regarding them.  I would say the cooperative publisher has taken the long view.  They want ebooks to become ubiquitous. They want everyone to have access so they will get used to them and integrate them into their lives.  Once they develop that demand, prices can rise to what the expanded market will bear.

Others take the short view.  They want their money and they want it now.  Maybe their bosses expect big profits immediately.  Perhaps they don't trust the longevity of the demand for the product.  It would seem a self fulfilling prophesy -- "let's make it expensive so almost no one can afford it." Only the rich will buy it and there are so few of them, it will ultimately fail from lack of demand.  I don't get it, but then I don't have an MBA.  Maybe it makes sense to them.

The more fooling around they do, the longer it will take for ebooks to have the ubiquity of print. Some libraries have tried to band together to protest the obstructive position some publishers have taken.  I wouldn't waste my time. Let them keep their ebooks.  Other publishers who are friendly will get the exposure, the publicity, and authors who publish with them will be better known.

The world doesn't just go in one direction, and libraries and publishers aren't monolithic.  Librarians choose the best options available to them and companies come and go and change their approaches to suit the vagaries of the market.  But one advantage of writing a weblog is that you can say what you would do as 'King of the Forest'. In my kingdom, publishers would treat electronic books as something to buy.  Once you owned it, you could give it to whomever you wished. You wouldn't be allowed to copy it, that wouldn't be fair, but your copy could be transferred so long as you gave up use of it once you did the transfer.  In such a system, as in some systems in existence now, and as it is with print materials, ownership or possession could transfer at will and the materially could be read by a succession of people. Whether I ever see that reality arrive is a matter of continuing debate.

Why Innovation Isn't Always a Good Thing for Libraries

I've really liked a lot of the innovations in libraries during my tenure in them over the last 30 years.  Do I want to go back to manually filing cards in the catalog?  Not really, though it gave me a physical experience of entries in a catalog that mere coding will never replace.

Nobody likes waiting in lines either. I like self checkout, both at the supermarket and at the library. It's not that I don't want to talk to the friendly clerks, it's just that I like doing things for myself more.

These are great library labor saving devices which making working in and using libraries more enjoyable.  Like any labor saving approaches, the point is not to reduce work, but to redirect it to better purpose.  I advocate spending more time in reading and research and less in the scut work that wastes time.

I do still think it's important for everyone to learn how to use books, especially printed reference books such as indexes and encyclopedias.  There is still much that is printed and not available on the internet. As wonderful as it is, not everything can be found (and properly authenticated) in Wikipedia.

Innovative technology can often improve access, but a dependence on it alone, eschewing printed material can be as much of a barrier to complete and trustworthy research as an ignorance of technology.  If libraries forget to advance the cause of good research practices, they do a disservice to their constituents.  No one really enjoys making the kids eat their vegetables, and in the same way, it's less sexy to push books than show off the latest database, but for those of us responsible to the reading community, we can't abdicate our place in their education with impunity.

Fishing for Information

"Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll feed his family for life," or something to that effect, is a well known saying. I've also heard it as "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he'll spend all day in a boat drinking beer."

Be that as it may, the principle is that teaching someone to do for themselves is better in the long run than doing temporary things for people.  I have often thought that it would be better for libraries to spend their resources teaching the great masses of people to do their own searching and making it largely unnecessary to have reference librarians.  I do see, though, that in many ways this is inefficient. Part of the economics of specialization is that it is expensive to maintain a person in training for any length of time.

Each time a system changes, there are retraining costs for users.  If a library has, say, 5 staff members who routinely use databases to search materials for the public, this means every time a major change takes place, 5 people from that organization will need to be apprised. However, if three thousand nearby patrons need to know this, it becomes a logistical problem several orders of magnitude larger. So if fishing is just baiting a hook with a worm and sticking it in a pond (the equivalent of using Facebook for viewing pictures of cats doing funny things), then no extensive training is needed.  But catching a whole school of tuna is several orders of magnitude larger a job, requiring much more extensive equipment and training.  It would not be effective to have a whole bunch of people in rowboats with fishing poles trying to catch a tuna each.

This is not to say that it is not at all effective or reasonable to teach people about using the internet.  A recreational fisherman (my father was an inveterate amateur trout fisherman) can benefit from lessons in the ins and outs of types of bait, lures, and the like.  But there comes a point at which it becomes more efficient to leave it to the experts.  My father just fished for the fun of it -- he would give away his catches or do catch and release, but when it came time to make dinner, frozen fish from the supermarket served the purpose just fine, and no cleaning was required (I think my mother had something to do with that approach).

This is leads me to surmise that once the need for information becomes mission critical or the source is prohibitively expensive or elusive, then it needs the intervention of a professional, a librarian. Give a man a book, he reads for a week.  Give a man a library card, and he reads forever.

Spinster with a Bun

The classic image of the librarian is a stern lady with her hair tied up in a bun. Like a character from the Commedia dell'arte, it embodies a set of characteristics and expectations. These stereotypes are a kind of shorthand for people's fears and desires while relating to people in these social roles.

Let's face it, there is something a little intimidating about a library, no matter how you dress it up.  It is usually fairly quiet, often capacious, at once private and public, each person artificially ignoring the other as they try to accomplish their objectives with as little interference from others as possible. Questions linger in the air about how loud one can talk, about how long one can have a book, about which chair one can use.

Perhaps the stern maiden lady is an expression of our desire for certainty.  She is there as much to control the behavior of others as she is to admonish us. The unruly see her as oppressive -- the timid see her as protection.  Libraries, as expressions of published and authorized thought, overseen by hyper-virtuous priestesses are as much totems of convention as they are avenues for exploration.

Maybe, too, like the nursery, they are safe places to 'play'.  If one is nestled in an easy chair with a book, reading of adventures, the librarian becomes part nanny, another role for the 19th century spinster woman, telling you when it is time to go, not to make too much noise, giving you the right things to read.

Too, the woman portrayed seems always unmarried.  You don't see many boyfriends, girlfriends, or husbands dropping by the library to chat with her.  She is married to her work, a professional through and through, autocratic and dictatorial.  Her authority is absolute and unquestioned.

So it's possible that, at least in the United States, the image of the librarian serves as a touchstone for our feelings about libraries. We are repelled by the austerity, but assured by the dependability. In reality, not all librarians are spinster women.  Many are married, and some are men. It is not the representatives of the profession that perpetuate the image, but the emotional needs of the public that fuel its ongoing popularity.

What's a Library Without Books?

In the September 2013 edition of ALA Libraries, the house organ for the American Libraries Association, there was a news article about a library in Texas that is entirely electronic. The head librarian proudly submitted that they would now be able to focus on getting the information people wanted, rather than doing all that pesky re-shelving.

I wonder if someday, maybe in my daughter's children's children's lifetime, books will go back to what they once were -- the special privilege of the rich. As incomes of the 99 percent fall and the super-rich become de facto oligarchs, there may come a time when libraries, the province of the proletariat, will have to go all electronic for what will be termed 'economic efficiency'.  Provided it remains cheaper to provide electronic copies of romance novels and blockbuster best sellers (which libraries are known to provide because they are popular, and the customer is always right), there will be no need to build or to maintain large buildings with deteriorating collections of books requiring expensive staffs to manage them.

Some will tell you that there is so much not published electronically, but if libraries continue to decline along this path, those wanting to preserve and disseminate their information, opinions, and stories will have to adapt to the new paradigm. Publishers will more than likely have to fall in line too or be caught with unsalable inventories.

I don't say this is around the corner. The circumstances I  posited require that trends continue in a straight line and that there is sort of a social equivalent of a black hole where everyone who's anyone gives up on books as too expensive or too inconvenient.

I wouldn't worry about any of this if it weren't for the fact that I'm vulnerable to the same argument.  When I got my tablet computer, I was thrilled to have some of my favorite books on it, some borrowed from the library. I loved the word look up feature and the ability to use the internet to look up obscure reference to help me better appreciate the text. Book aficionados will smugly snicker when I mourn the loss of this device to malfunction. I am relegated to the technologically impoverished substitute for my sleek and shiny tablet: books. I want my e-books back!  I want to have the equivalent of a small public library in the palm of my hand.  I want to be able to be able to look up the obscure epigrams Dorothy Sayers puts in her Lord Peter Wimsey novels with the touch of my finger. Like a modern day Tevye, I wish I could be rich enough to afford to spend the time to look things up in my huge private collection. Alas, I am not, so I muddle along with my collection of old paperbacks and those items I can still check out of my local library. For good or ill, the day I imagined has not come ... yet.