Libraries Are Screwed, by Eli Neiburger

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Libraries Are Screwed
by Eli Neiburger
September 29, 2010

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EBOOKS: LIBRARIES @ THE TIPPING POINT



A Library Journal / School Library Journal Online Summit

September 29, 2010

Libraries at the Tipping Point: How eBooks Impact Libraries

by Eli Neiburger, Associate Director for IT and Production, Ann Arbor District Library



[Eli Neiburger] How's everybody doing today? I'm Eli Neiburger. I'm the associate director for IT and Production at the Ann Arbor District Library, and I want to, kind of piggybacking on some of the stuff that Ray was talking about, push this out as far as this might go and see what the future might hold. Of course, none of us have a crystal ball but there's a lot of change that's going to be happening, and part of the challenge that's facing libraries right now is being willing to consider some pretty bleak scenarios for libraries, and think of ways out of them.



So, with that said, the following is my personal opinion: Libraries are screwed.



Libraries are screwed because we are invested in the Codex, and the Codex has become outmoded. Now technologies can become obsolete, they can become outmoded. Outmoded is different from being obsolete. The Codex isn't worthless. It's not crappy. It doesn't suck. It's not pointless. It doesn't offer no value.



But it is outmoded, meaning that it has been replaced by an increasingly convenient format that usually becomes less expensive. Now, interestingly enough, that's not really happening with ebooks yet because of who is in control. And we'll talk more about that as we go.

But, as this is happening, it's not just the format shift from the Codex to the ebook, it's also not just a change of text delivery format, but it's a move away from content that is ownable and shareable. And that's a problem when your organization is in the business of owning and sharing content.



You know, the more heavily invested you are in a media format, the worse you get screwed when that media format becomes inevitably outmoded. And you can ask any library that circulated laser discs how they fared in the mid-80s when that technology kind of flamed out and of course there weren't very many libraries that circulated laser discs because back then we were pretty much focused on just the book. We hadn't really had the AV boom yet.



Going even further, the faster the format becomes outmoded, the faster you get screwed regardless of the quality of the content encoded into the format. Everyone agrees "Lost in Translation" is a pretty awesome movie, but here you can see on eBay, nobody wants a copy of "Lost in Translation" in a high definition format because it's the wrong high definition format, and it wouldn't even sell for $0.99 with one hour left to go on the auction.

So it's not just about the media format and our physical investment.



Despite our efforts to the contrary, the brand of libraries is "The Book Temple." Come to the Book Temple and get yourself some books. And of course, we changed that, and avid library users know that there's more to it, but if you do a market study, you find that the brand of libraries is books. And that can be a little problematic.



And here's our first bonus question: Does anybody know what library this is, and if you are my Kansas peeps, you don't get to answer. That's not fair.

So our values, and our operation parameters, and even our physical facilities, are all built around the Codex. But as the Codex becomes outmoded, again replaced by an increasingly convenient alternative, if libraries can't disassociate themselves from the Codex and its requirements, the "Memorial Library" can quickly become a "Library Memorial."



So, but this isn't the first time this has happened. Libraries have been through this before.



You know, the first libraries were cuneiform. Other than cave walls, of course. We started with the cave walls, and then we had things that were slightly more mobile, the cuneiform.



And then can you imagine the handwringing and dire predictions that came to our industry when mobile technology came onto the scene and shook up our collections? I mean, we need a whole new strategic plan. You know, we need a a completely different tool. We need a very different way of circulating because, "Oh, man, the shelving is all wrong." And everything was different. And yet, we survived. We're still here.



So, maybe we can learn something by looking at how other outmoded technologies have fared as their markets have changed over time.



Let's talk first about vinyl. Vinyl is not an obsolete format. There are things that vinyl can do that no digital format can even come close to matching. But it is a completely outmoded format, and it became outmoded primarily because of its convenience.

Now, at the same time, the industry that produced vinyl crumpled from a peak of moving over 500,000,000 units a year to now just over 2,000,000 units a year.



And there is so much unwanted inventory out there, that a lot of this vinyl gets downcycled -- or I guess you could call it upcycled, depending on how you look at it -- into other uses, while destroying their original purpose. And this is the rickroll bowl.

The other part of it is that those who survived the crash of that market are thriving. Vinyl is enjoying triple digit growth over the past years, but the industry is a slim shadow of its former self. And there is nobody involved who wears a suit to work anymore.



Meanwhile, the format just oozes cool, and all the weak, soft, digital formats wish they could be as cool as vinyl. They wish they could have just a shred of vinyl's coolness.



On the flip side, nobody wants to be as cool as the 8-Track. [Laughs] It was a transitory technology. It was only popular as long as it had a convenience edge. And that convenience edge was driven primarily by the idea that people might want to take recorded music with them, carry it around with them. What a crazy idea! You know, who wants to carry all their music around with them? That's just insane!



However, the technology was quickly replaced by a higher capacity, less fussy format -- the cassette -- and 8-Tracks rapidly became a big joke, garage-sale staple, and even a symbol for the weirdness of one nutty decade. And some of you might know where I'm going with that.



So, let's look instead at candles. As a technology, it's completely obsolete. It's unreliable, it's messy, it's inefficient, and yet there isn't a 21st century kid in the world who doesn't know what they are. They have not disappeared. They are still a big part of our humanity.



And for a lot of reasons like that they occupy a very different place in our society than they did at their sales peak. Now, candles are all about experience, ceremony, atmosphere, romance, or for when our modern infrastructures fail and leave us in the dark ...



or, you know, if you have accidentally forget the sensor bar on your Wee, or something like that.



The most interesting thing about what has happened to the candle market since it peaked was that the candles that are now produced and sold are optimized along completely different axis than they used to be, such as how they smell, or how they are decorated, or any of those kinds of things. And also, 90% of all candle purchases are made by women. But it's still a $2 billion industry in the U.S. Now, that's not too big of an industry. What else is a $2 billion industry?



Well, whale watching is $2 billion industry.



And oh, yeah, Yu-Gi-Oh is a $2 billion industry.

So you know this is a shadow of its former self, and it's important to keep that in perspective.



So, along the lines of light, let's consider gas lamps. This is a dangerous, labor-intensive technology, but it was once a fixture in most cities. It was eventually outmoded by electric lights of course, and it's now almost completely gone ...



except for designated theme nostalgia districts that deploy, you know, like an organized kitsch installation as an attraction, San Diego's Gas Lamp Quarter, of course, the most famous one, but most people know there really aren't that many gas lamps left in the Gas Lamp Quarter.

[admin]

Or, when you are thinking about a theme park that evokes but barely deploys this technology as part of their magic. What's interesting about gas lamps is that the built infrastructure and the access nodes that was built to support this technology then provided a foundation that was used by successive technologies. There are probably many gigabits currently flowing through conduits that were first built to supply lamps with gas.



Alright. What about the typewriter, the noble typewriter? It was an authoring tool that didn't really change anything about words but it changed everything about writing by bringing publishing and productivity to the masses. And yet now, this technology has become so outmoded, it's almost a symbol for all outmoded technology.



And this was such a central part of our culture that people used to do weird things like pose for their official portrait with their typewriter. Or carry them in the same suitcase with their toiletries just because, you know, it was that important. But once that technology was outmoded, it disappeared except for people who really only used them to make some sort of a statement about our modern world.

Now, here's bonus question number 2. Does anybody know who that guy on the left is? He's pretty obscure, but maybe someone knows who he is.



Alright, at the same time, the descendants of the typewriter, despite its primitivity as a tool, the descendants of the typewriter owe their interfaces to it completely. That paradigm will be with us for many, many years to come until, of course, we stop typing with our fingers and we're just using our brains, and projecting off our glasses, and all that kind of stuff.



So, one more technology to consider: movable type. It changed humanity just by simplifying the complex labor-intensive process. And it's greatest impact was that it moved eventually the labor costs into the setup and away from the copying, making the copies cheap and plentiful, especially compared to having a scribe write out a new copy by hand.



What was most interesting about the printing technology is that ...



about every, you know, 25 or 30 or 40 or 50 years, the technology involved changed completely.



But once the ball was rolling, the users of that technology really didn't notice any of these differences happening ...



until it landed on their desk, and by then, the copies were so cheap everyone it really didn't make a difference. The change of the technology became decoupled from the output. And that's something interesting to consider in these situations.



So, what might the future hold for the codex, and for the ebook?



Well, are books going to be, is the future of the codex like the present of the vinyl record where it's niche enthusiast oriented and it's a very low volume industry, a shadow of its former self, but with very high cachet and something that people aspire to collect?



Or, are ebooks going to be like the 8-Tracks of the noughts or the tens, a transitory tool that quickly became outmoded and laughable and a symbol of one nutty decade?



Are books going to go the way of candles? Is the future of the Codex the present of the candle where it's imbued with, or even essential for romance and rich experience and luxury, perfumed and adorned and most useful when the power goes out?



Or, is the future of the ebook like the past of the gas lamp, where it's a technology that flourished while it had an edge, but disappeared quickly once cheaper alternatives existed, leaving in its wake an infrastructure that was then colonized by its successors?



Now, here's bonus 3. Does anybody know who this guy is? You should.



Is the future of the Codex like the present of the typewriter, meaning that will someone who has a book collection seem as eccentric and confused as somebody who has a typewriter collection? Now, this isn't the bonus question, because nobody knows who this guy is, although if I remember right his name is Olaf.



And then, is the future of the ebook like the present of movable type, where we have a new thing that's called "movable type" -- it goes by an old name, but can you imagine trying to explain to Gutenberg when we're talking about movable type these days what it is that we are talking about, and what it does, and what's involved in that technology? Will the word "ebook" become something so different than what it is now, that it would be impossible to explain it to us?



So, here's the real problem. If these are the potential futures for the Codex -- the record, the candle, the typewriter -- libraries are going to get screwed as the outmoded market that we're invested in slowly collapses to a fraction of its peak.



Even more dangerous if this is the future of the text distribution, then we're really screwed, because we are unlikely to ever have the access to these markets and the flexibility with our purchases that we currently have with the Codex market. I mean, everyone's heard, you know, if libraries didn't exist, it wouldn't be allowed to create them. And I think given where the power currently lies in our institutions, I think that there's something to be said for that.



So, that's all troubling, and it's concerning, and it's a little scary, but that's not even the real problem.

[admin]

The real problem is that the value of library collections are rooted in the worth of a local copy.



Now, let's take a look at that for a moment -- local copy. First, it's the predominant value of a library that they offer to the communities. But it's the 21st century!



The localness of something loses most of its embodied value when you can retrieve information from Australia in 300 milliseconds. That left side of the image is the ping trace of a packet being delivered to my house in Ann Arbor from the Library of Sydney in Australia -- it took 300 milliseconds to do it -- and it crossed the Atlantic twice! It went first somewhere in Europe, then it went back to California, and then it went across the Pacific to Australia in 300 milliseconds. Who cares if it's local or not, I have it immediately?



But even more dangerous, the copy, the notion of a copy, loses most of its embodied value when there's no longer a difference between transmission and duplication. When you're dealing with digital objects, to transmit it is to duplicate it. And of course, every kid and hacker and all that kind of stuff knows that if you can view it on your computer, you can somehow save it, or, if you know where it is, you'll always have it. And of course that might change as we have some cloudbursts as things change.



So, there are already more cellphones in the world than there are toilets, and in this century, most humans are going to have persistent Internet access in their pocket.



In an Internet-worked world, when you can download anything from anywhere, the idea of having a local copy only makes sense to a hoarder.



And I think that it's very likely the case that late 21st century humans will likely feel the same way about a dust jacket ...



as we currently feel about grandma's slip covers. The idea of owning a copy of media will likely become as alien and baffling to 21st century kids as we might feel about grandma's davenport.



So, at the same time, there's this issue that there may not always be new material made available in formats that libraries can purchase. This has already started. We had our first request this past week for an item that is not available in print, it's only available on kindle. There's no way that we can buy it. There are video games for years already that cannot be circulated by a library. This is already happening where the materials are becoming less than available.



Or, the physical versions of the mainstream titles that are actually produced might be so sumptuous that they provide a compelling experience for prospective purchasers but they are entirely unfit for shared use and circulation.



Or, the digital products that we are allowed to buy might force artificial constraints on the use that ensure that using a library remains an inferior experience. No digital native is going to get excited about waiting to receive a digital object. And what's the sense in making somebody give something back to you when you still have it, even after you gave it to them?



Then finally, the user experiences available to people who choose not to bother trying to use a library will only provide increasingly appealing value ...



which puts us in the situation where all this is happening as taxpayers are having to simply decide what municipal services they can live without.



So, we're so screwed. Unless -- here's my glass half full part. We need to recognize and start thinking about and admit to ourselves ...



that the circulating collection itself as a solution to a problem is a technology that has become outmoded by the Internet and the Web and by digital distribution of content. And you know, it's not going to happen fast. It's not going to happen at the speed that HD DVD has happened, or anything like that, because there's a lot of embodied value.



But we have to admit that the peak of physical item circulation is near, and in some places has already occurred.



And as our book carts roll down the long tail, the rapid pace of technological change will give some powerful nostalgia that will keep us being used, but there's going to be a peak, and it's coming soon, and what do we do next?



Well, remember what libraries actually used to be for, and here's bonus question no. 4: who knows what library this is? The purpose of libraries when they were created were not to purchase commercial content for use by the community, but to store and organize the content of the community. The popular materials have fueled a huge boom for popular libraries ...



but libraries were created to protect and ensure access to things like this for the communities that produced them, not to subsidize access to the hottest new clay tablets from Babylon. It's these unique things that don't exist anywhere else, and that matter more to our own communities than anyone else that have the future for libraries.



The other part of it is that it's not just about the data about the community, but also creations of the community that libraries can enable by giving patrons access to production tools, event venues, and most importantly, a permanent, non-commercial, online home for our patrons' creative works, making the library the publisher. By putting the emphasis on the library as a platform for the community ...

[admin]

and less emphasis on having enough copies of the hot new thing.



So, the cat is out of the bag. Everyone is a publisher.



To draw another analogy from the wonderful world of outmoded technologies, consider the lost icehouse.



The publishing industry is making beautiful, professional ice ...



but we've just entered the age of the home refrigerator. The market for ice, and the business of making and selling it, no matter how big and how critical it used to be, will never be the same ever again.



So, the 20th century [library] brought the world to its community ...



the 21st century library brings its community to the world.



Or -- here's some longshots --



or maybe we could get a new fair use exemption saying that it is considered fair use for a library to distribute to its patrons content that it had legitimately purchased. We could scan what we wanted. We can distribute it to them. It wouldn't be in violation of a license, or anything like that. Yeah, right, that's going to happen. There's so much popular groundswell for fair use, and so many people in Congress who are invested in the issue.



Uh, the other thing that we might do is start negotiating -- and this is, of course, the way that the model is currently working -- negotiating access licenses to individual titles, but they have got to be unlimited. This "one person can use a digital object thing at a time" has no future. And with that, our selectors become negotiators, we reap the benefits of the digital format, and publishers get a few big checks on an annual basis from a library instead of lots of little ones from the patrons as they are buying things one piece at a time.



Or, maybe we might be invited to the party! Maybe Amazon will make Kindle for Libraries, or making borrowing ebooks from your library as easy as buying from the kindle store. Then the question is, "Why would they do that?"



I mean, I guess maybe on Bizarro Earth they might do that. Bizarro [inaudible] say, "Me want to erode revenue stream. It just right thing to do!"



So, the other thing is that maybe DRM could triumph, and everyone's life gets so complicated and full of restrictive licenses that demand for hard copy gets a second wind.



Of course, this is happening hundreds of times, every day people are agreeing to restrictive licenses, and nobody's really too concerned about it yet. So I don't think that's going to be a very big break for libraries.



So, here's the tipping point.



It's already done tipped.



Circulating collections are an outmoded technology. There's going to be a long, long decline. They are going to have worth to our communities for a while, but less every day, less every year.



And the sooner that libraries invent a future beyond circulating collections, and become a platform for unique experiences, and a host for unique content -- that's our choice! We can become a platform for unique experiences and unique content ...



or we can ride that long tail off into the sunset.



So, here are the bonus answers. This is the Liberal Memorial Library in Liberal, Kansas. Uh, this is Wallace Stegner, sometimes called "The Dean of the Western Writers," and winner of the 1972 Pulitzer. The guy, that egghead with all of his books was of course the most famous egghead of all, Adlai Stevenson. And that library is one of the first libraries now rebuilt, the New Alexandria Library in Egypt.



So, here are my image credits.



Of course, you can get these all later in the download.



Still more image credits.



And thanks for listening! I'm ulotrichous on Twitter, and my avatar was made by the wonderful Rich Stevens of Diesel Sweeties. Thanks a lot for your time, and thanks for listening.