A good new entry into the search engine arena. ProCog - short for Proficient Cognition is calling itself a transparent search engine. It does a good job of basic search, but its real strength is providing you with information about a website when it has identified it for you. This is what the results screen looks like:
Not particularly attractive I'll agree, but the fun stuff occurs in the links under the results. SEO Report, Scoring, Duplicates, Site-inlinks, Traffic, Sections, Cached, Reindex. Each of those links provides a host of valuable material, not just for the SEO team who are involved with the site, but for the rest of us as well. Who is linking to a site, what common material does it share, how old it is and so on.
A nice feature is the ability to compare results between ProCog and Google, seeing them side by side, although for this to work you do have to create an account. I don't yet see much value in having an account other than to see this, and I wonder at the extent that they just want to get a user base for some reason in the future. ProCog has indexed a billion plus pages so it has a reasonable database, but nothing to write home about. It has basic search functionality (and, or, phrase) but no advanced search and no option for searching images, news, video and the rest.
This is really a search engine that works best in the discovery of factual information about a site. It would be valuable if you're trying to check authority for example, but remember that it's still in beta, so can be a little irritating (I had to go back and reinput my search terms a few times for example, and it can be rather slow), but it's worth a quick 5 minute explore.
I was fortunate enough to attend Internet Librarian International today and listened to R D Lankes recorded talk on 'Stop Lending, Start Sharing'. One of the points that he made in this talk, and which he has made in others, is that the people who use the library are 'members' rather than 'patrons', 'clients', 'customers' or 'users'. He didn't mention 'owners' but I added that in myself for good measure. This provoked a lot of interesting discussion, with tweets flying around the room during the talk. Here's a selection:
@AlisonMcNab: #ili2012 Don't call our patrons: "customers, users or consumers" - they have more to contribute!
@xmacex here in #Finland we don't like "members", that sounds exclusive. "Users" instead. Maybe were more consumeristic here? #ili2012
chibbieFollowing feed from #ili2012. Can't believe still having discussions over users, members, customers etc in #libraries.
lukask @xmacex @Philbradley Surely, more people than 'members' are 'users' of the library? And academic libraries don't have 'members' #ili2012
RogerFarbey #ili2012 don't let them be users, let them be members. Participation is key. Library as community of knowledge facilitation.
Personally, I like the term 'member'. It implies that the library (of whatever brand or style) is something that can be joined, and that a commitment to it can be made. It says to me that someone views a library as something that they can be involved with, and can affect what it does, and how it does it. That they are able to have a conversation with the library staff in a collaborative mode. I don't view it as being exclusive or elitist, though I can see where people are coming from when they say that. However, some libraries are exclusive - you have to be a certain type of person (student, employee etc) before you can use it, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just the way it is.
How about 'user' then? Should we as librarians just be putting stuff out there for people to use? Isn't that what we do? Well yes, but equally, shouldn't the people we work with have some say in what that stuff is? Shouldn't they be working in conjunction with information staff to work out how the librarians/library can help them achieve stuff, and to promote and better the community? So yes, they do use materials, but that's only part of a much larger interaction. I don't find 'user' as inclusive as 'member'.
Patron then? It's an American term. I'm British. Enough said on that. :)
Client? I have clients - they're the people that I work for, and I pretty much do what they want, because they're paying me. So, if you take the view that you pay your taxes ultimately the library staff answer to you. However, the necessary element of shared interaction doesn't quite work in the same way that a 'member' does. It implies a very strong hierarchical approach, with the library staff running around doing exactly as they are told, pat on the head now go away again idea.
Customer. I take my custom to a shop, purchase a product and leave. Moreover, with the new self service tills, I can do that without any real interaction with the shop. If I don't like the range of goods that are available, not much that I can do about it. Of course, the transaction doesn't have to be financial, but there is still that element of 'trade' which doesn't work for me. There shouldn't be a trade off, there should be collaboration.
Owner. This is an interesting one - if you have students at a university who are paying large sums of money, there is an entirely different dynamic going on there. Should it be acceptable that - for whatever reason - there's 30 in a class and only 4 text books available? Should they have specific rights based on the transaction of money? Are the students in some way owners of the library and indeed in part, of the university itself? However, as an owner, they should be also in a position to exert specific pressure, which in a library setting probably is entirely unrealistic. Also, we come back again to the interaction between the people who come into the library and the people who work in the library. Should this interaction be based on a power dynamic? I don't think it should - it should be based on a dynamic of collaboration, each side helping the other. That isn't ownership in the way that I view it.
So - 'member' works for me. I accept that it doesn't for other people, and that's absolutely fine, if you're happy with it. So let me turn the tables a bit - what doesn't work for YOU about the term 'member' (presuming it doesn't - it may well do!) What works better, and what transaction is implied for you between the member/user/etc and the library staff that's dependent or defined by the term you prefer?
Bit of a rant here, so feel free to ignore. I got an email last night from GiffGaff, which is some sort of mobile network company 'run by you'. 'Welcome' they said 'Great to have you with us' they said. Only problem being of course that I hadn't joined them. Some nitwit had, and for reasons that make no sense to me, had provided them with my email address.
Now, any sane, sensible, intelligent company that knew what they were doing would have sent me an email validation to say 'Can you confirm that this is your email address please?' You know - the kind of thing that most companies do. Not this shower though, oh no. They just joined me. I love this line in the email:
"Just
to re-assure you, we hate spam too. This email was sent to you because
you have given giffgaff permission to contact you via this address.
giffgaff may email you from time to time to let you know important
information about your giffgaff account plus other giffgaff news."
No, I have NOT given you permission to contact me via this address - you just decided to, and didn't give me an option to tell you not to. That's SPAM.
However, I decide to close the account, or at least, stop them sending me stuff. So I go to the website, where they want me to log in, with my user name and password. Y'know - the ones that I don't have *because I hadn't joined their service*. So not much I can do there. However, they have a help forum. So I go along to that; I knew what would happen, and it did. 'Before you can post, you have to join with your user name and password.'
So let's go along to their Facebook site. I complain. The next thing that I know is they have sent me a link to change my password. Now of course, this is where it gets interesting. They have now given me the opportunity to take over one of their members accounts. I haven't hacked it or anything... they have GIVEN me the means to do this. Now, I have no idea what's in that account, and I'm not going to find out. But I know the phone number, since they provided me with that in the initial email. I could do lots of interesting things in the account though, I am sure.
So - not only do Giffgaff NOT validate email accounts, they spam, they have no proper method of contacting them, and they're giving me permission to get into a members account. These people are an absolute shower - and if you have anything to do with them, I'd run away quickly.
The home defaulted to the UK for me, and provided me with simple RSS style headlines from 12 newspapers, ITN video news from YouTube, UK news from DailyMotion and 3 sports streams. Tabbed options include breaking news, politics, business, sports, entertainment and all the other usual suspects. A feature that I particularly liked was the ability to look at news from other countries, and there was a very wide selection available.
In summary, it does a good job of pulling in RSS feeds from different news sources providing users with a quick and easy overview. However, for any indepth information or analysis of news, you still can't do much better than Silobreaker in my opinion.
o sooner do you get one article about a search engine, but then along comes another. It's now becoming more commonplace for search engines to start adding in extra content to search results - Google's knowledge graph being one example. DDG has now partnered with Zanran (a search engine that provides tabular, spreadsheet and statistical data) to provide quick snippet answers to queries. Here's an example of what I mean:
You can check this out for yourself with the same child poverty search. Try other searches - but make sure that they are very tight, since this feature doesn't work with vague searches. By leaving off the '2012' from the search I used above results in a normal set of results, without the Zanran data.
In my blog the other day I mentioned that there was an eReader coming out which cost a ridiculously small amount of money. It's called the Beagle, and here's a short video about it:
It's got a fair number of limitations - it can only hold 5 books at a time, it doesn't have any connectors (linking into your smart phone via bluetooth to transfer content across) and it runs on batteries: 2 AAA which seem to last for about ever from what I can tell. It's 5mm thick, and it weighs
just 128 grams, making it the world's lightest 5" or 6" E Ink eReader
available.
It has an 800 x 600 pixel resolution, and there is 4GB of internal memory and it supports both .pdf and .epub book
formats, along with all others normally supported by a smartphone,
according to Txtr’s website. It won't however be available for sale this side of Christmas, so don't get your hopes up.
This is NOT going to be a 'Kindle killer' despite the nonsense that the Daily Mail is peddling. It does one thing, reasonably well, but the main drawback is the fact that, since it doesn't have it's own operating system just about everything, other than turning the pages, has to be done by the app on the smartphone. However, it's indicative that the market for eReaders is not yet saturated, and there's plenty of room for innovation and expansion. What is important however is that it makes claims that it's only 'rich people' who can afford an eReader fairly nonsensical. I haven't seen any indication of the limitations and restrictions placed on the reader, but I'm just having an interesting daydream of someone going into a library, choosing 5 books, having them transferred onto the Beagle, and taking it away with them. It clearly has the power to be a disruptive technology with the eBook publishing arena, and I look forward to developments with interest.
DuckDuckGo is an excellent alternative to using Google. As well as providing good results, the use of many short cuts that are quick and easy to remember (such as !images for example) DuckDuckGo is very strong on privacy, and doesn't store your search results. They're currently attacking Google both on that front and also on the concept of filter bubbles. This is a term coined by Eli Pariser, who says that Google is able to identify what you're interested in and adjust the results you see accordingly. Consequently you see more of what you like, and less of what you don't, which in turn reinforces your world view, and excludes important stuff to further down the list of results.
DuckDuckGo has just launched a new video to explain this in more detail:
Now it could be argued that Google is doing that because it thinks that's what people want, and is actually nodding its collective head. However, the key issue is that search isn't search any longer. Your results are not my results, which for information professionals can be a big deal. There's more on this whole topic on the DDG site 'Don't bubble us'. If you're interested in the filter bubble concept and want to learn more, toddle over to SearchEngineLand, which has a good interview with Pariser.
Just in case you're not aware, there are some important campaign events peaking up over the horizon at the moment. There is a mass lobby of Parliament on October 29th in which a group of school librarians are planning to lobby parliament for school libraries to be made statutory. This isn't a protest, but a lobby, whereby people will ask to speak to their MP in order to discuss the issue. A template letter is available and there is a Twitter account to follow: @schliblobby Finally, there's a Facebook group, organised by Barbara Band (CILIP VP Elect); The Mass Lobby for School Libraries.
Scotland has their own lobby, with a Facebook group; Lobby for School Libraries Scotland, and this is taking place a couple of days earlier on October 27th.
There is also the Speak Up for Libraries conference, taking place on Saturday November 10th. I quote from the website: "The day-long event will pull together library campaigners and supporters
from across the UK and give them the opportunity to build on their
existing campaigning skills and tactics, share ideas and strategies, and
focus on a way forward to make their local campaign as effective as
possible, with the goal of ensuring library services are supported and
protected, now and in the future."
There are speakers and workshops, including authors Philip Ardagh and Bali Rai as well as Alan Gibbons. The event is widely supported by groups such as CILIP (at which the event is being held), The WI, Voices for the Library, Campaign for the Book, The Library Campaign and UNISON.
If you are able to attend any of these events, please consider doing so - or if you can't, please offer support by blogging or Tweeting as you feel appropriate.
Edited: I was asked to add the following: For the Speak Up for Libraries conference people need to book in advance. There's only 100 places, as they need the money upfront, and people need to choose their 2 workshops. They are also imposing a bookings cut-off date of Nov 2, after which they can neither guarantee places or the price.
There's a text version and 2 videos totaling 24 minutes below.
There’s a phrase that I use every now and then; “It’s like dancing on quick sand” and never was it more appropriate than right now in respect of the eBook arena. It’s almost impossible to get properly to your feet and on top of things before something else comes along and drags you down again. Unfortunately I also think that we’re in a situation where some of the people in the quicksand are trying to get out by climbing over other people.
Let’s look at the latest news. A new low cost eBook reader
has been unveiled by txtr, a German eBook retail platform. It’s a 5” e-ink reader, running off standard
AAA batteries that should last it for a year, it can be customised with
different coloured backs and works using Bluetooth. The price? Estimated at £8.
No, I haven’t missed any figures off there – I really do mean eight pounds. Amazon
has also recently said that they don’t make money from selling the Kindles;
they see their profits coming from booksales. They’re also going to be
delivering the Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Fire tablets towards the end of the
month. Jeff Bezos told the BBC "We want to make money when people use our
devices, not when people buy our devices"
Oyster, which is a new startup has raised $3 million in
order to become the ‘Spotify of books’. It’s preparing a mobile app that will
allow customers to get unlimited access to a library of books for a single
monthly price. Their blog announcement is an interesting read, because
everything that they say could also be said about libraries. Here’s a small
example: “By moving from individual transactions to an access-based model,
readers can explore and enjoy books freely; more like your corner bookstore
than a big box retailer. This leads to a more fulfilling experience built
exclusively on taste and relaxed reading.” Another thing that is really
interesting about the Oyster option is that when everyone has access to the
same library you can share experiences with your friends. They can read the
same book at the same time as you without having to find it to purchase and
read.
HarperCollins is launching a new global publishing system
which will provide them with an infrastructure that allows them to maximise it’s
catalogue of books, eBooks and apps. They want to focus on the content first, “thus
enabling the flexibly to adapt to various formats depending on the needs of the
business.” The publisher is putting digital products at the core of the
publishing business, rather than as a bolt on.
I also read an excellent article from author Patricia Martin reported in the
Huffington Post
talking about the future of libraries in a digital culture. She had some
interesting figures to share; in 2011 OCLC reported that library usage
increased for 36 million Americans, and that 69% of Americans use public
libraries. Moreover, 30 million Americans rely on libraries to find a job by
offering CV writing classes, online job-search tutorials, free access to
business databases like LexisNexis and unbiased financial information. A
telling point that she makes is “Americans need help navigating a way forward
-- whether it's to find work or explore a new career path. It's no wonder
people are rediscovering their local libraries as a place to begin. That's why
libraries need to innovate. Otherwise, they risk becoming an object of
nostalgia -- the emotional step right before irrelevance.”
The final news item that’s caught my eye, and I assume has
also caught yours is that Amazon is going to launch their lending service in
the UK by the end of the month. Users of the Amazon Prime service (costing £49
a year) will be able to borrow a book for free every month. It’s no surprise
that Amazon sell their readers at cost when the lending library drives 229%
more in sales to backlist eBook titles. Authors who enrol in the Amazon Direct
Publish program can earn as much as $2.29 per borrow, which cuts out the
publisher from the chain rather neatly.
So what, if anything, does this all mean? I suspect that the
short answer is ‘no-one knows’. However, there are lots of possibilities that
abound, so I’ll throw in my viewpoint. I firmly believe that the existing model
of publishing is unsustainable in the medium to long term, as I think HarperCollins
has already discovered. There is an inexorable move away from print to digital,
and while there are still many hundreds of thousands of books printed every
year we are seeing the closure of bookshops and the increase in sales of
digital copies. This is not going to change – does anyone think that we’ll
still be mainly reading physical books 100 years in the future? Probably not.
How about 50 years, or 25 years? There is going to be a tipping point and I don’t
believe that it’s an if question, it’s a when. If we are to plan for a long
term future for libraries we have to take this into account.
Meanwhile it’s perfectly clear that there’s also a change in
the way in which we can read and purchase books, in exactly the same way that
we listen to music. The Spotify service, where you pay £10 a month to listen to
unlimited amounts of music means that there’s less need to buy it. If I can get
the music that I want, when I want it and where I want it (and I can) £10 a
month is a damn good price. Interestingly, I probably pay more for music now
than I have ever done when I was buying CDs. I am happy to pay for a
frictionless service that I don’t have to think about. Why shouldn’t something
similar work for books? Why would I need to buy a book when I can read or
re-read the sections that I want to over and over? I once had an English
teacher and she said that her idea of heaven was to read a book, and then throw
it away, knowing that if she wanted it again, she could get it immediately. Of
course that model already exists – it’s called a library. If the book that I
want is available, why buy it?
Of course at this point, we come to a parting of the ways.
On the one hand, there is still the attraction of the artifact – we have grown
up with the idea of possessing things, as we have done for hundreds and
thousands of years. We proudly show off our bookshelves of titles, and they
help us define who we are, and I still like to take a quick look through
friends bookcases when I’m over for a visit. However, most of my books are
boxed up in the garage, simply because I don’t have room for them. I believe
that one of the most common tags on LibraryThing is ‘garage’ so I know that I’m
not alone in this. My ‘special’ books however are in the house – not because I
necessarily want to read them again, but because they are important items to
me. They have their own history, not because they are books but despite the
fact that they are books.
Are books – in and of themselves – important? Some people
will say with an absolute certainty that they are. However, a book is really
just an object. If they were that important we wouldn’t have so many
remaindered bookshops available. I really think that one of the things that we
need to do is to disassociate the feelings we have from the actual objects. If
I go into a library which has thousands of books on my particular area of
interest the American Civil War, of *course* the books are important to me! But
are they really? Perhaps what’s more important is all of the information that
is contained within them, together with the feeling of academic study and
pleasure associated with using them going back perhaps decades. However, if I
was presented with a library of books on say Physics, which holds no interest
for me, I would have no interest at all. The subject matter is meaningless to
me personally, and consequently the books are of no value to me. So is it
*really* the books? Or is it something else instead?
A library is not, and should not be tied to books. Now, I
know this isn’t going to go down well with a lot of people (I can think of
several without even thinking), but I firmly believe it to be the case. If
libraries had been tied to scrolls, or to manuscripts or to handwritten books
they would have ceased to exist hundreds of years ago. But they have continued
their long history because of the ability of the librarians to adapt to new
situations. If libraries were tied to hardback books, the arrival of paperbacks
would have been a death knell. They weren’t, and it wasn’t. Paperbacks simply
meant that the library could contain more books (and information, data and
knowledge) than was possible previously. The librarians and the library
adapted, changed and continued. This is what happens. Technology changes
things, but it doesn’t remove them. We’ll always have journalists, even if we
don’t have daily paper newspapers, because what is important is the activity,
and the results of that activity. The danger that we face is when people
associate the library with the item or the artifact, and I see this time after
time. If a library is equal to its collection of physical items, when those
items cease to be important, the library will also cease to be important. If
the purpose of the library is to create a collection, that collection must have
meaning above and beyond the way in which the information is contained. Because
really, what’s important is what is contained in the collection and
specifically, how is that information going to be used for the benefit of
society. How is the librarian, using the library as the medium, going to be
able to work with their community, and how does the community in turn work with
the librarian to create something within the library that improves that
community? The library as a collection of books is a dead end – a very
dangerous dead end. Now, I can already hear people saying ‘but the books are
what our community wants’. I really think I’d want to question that statement;
let’s try testing that by saying ‘our community wants vinyl records’
or ‘our community wants video tapes’ or indeed ‘our community wants hand
written books chained to walls’. On the one hand, that’s what we do want,
because that’s what we know, and that’s what we’re familiar and happy with. On
the other hand, the people who don’t want those things, or who want to look
beyond it are excluded. Isn’t it the role of the librarian, through the use of
the library, to offer something to all the members of the community? We are
seeing fantastic work being done by Friends of groups and library activists, to
say nothing of keen and impassioned librarians and library workers. However,
councils throughout the land believe that they can get away with closing
libraries. They are aware (certainly now, if they weren’t originally) that
there are key groups who are going to fight them, but how loud are those
voices? Individually, very loud. However, when you look at the community as a
whole, is that still the case, I wonder. We cannot save libraries by doing more
of what we have done in the past. We need to reach out into the community and
attract those people who do not use a library, and in conjunction with the
community, the entire community, create the resources that match their needs,
and improve their lives. Of course, providing physical books is one very key
element of that process (though how long it will remain key for I’m not
entirely sure), but we have to look beyond the artifact to the activity and the
results. We need, as Patricia Martin has mentioned, to improve and aid a
community. This means letting the entire community work with us to provide the
things they need – free access to computers, help with using eBook readers,
appropriate training and assistance in many different areas. The library needs
to be seen as a creative hub, full of ideas, excitement and above all, power.
Because the power of ideas and the translation of those ideas into action
cannot be over estimated. Instead of just explaining to someone how to read a
book on a Kindle, perhaps we should also be pointing them to ways in which they
can become authors themselves. Rather than explaining why searching blogs is a
good idea, we need to offer to help them create blogs. Instead of giving a band
some books on music maybe we need to offer them a place to play, to record
their music and to advise them on how best to get promoted via different social
media channels.
Many people will be aghast at this; I know, because I’ve met
and talked with a lot of them. It’s fine to be horrified as an initial step,
but I’d ask you, if you’re in that group – what exactly horrifies you? Is it a
fear of something new, of being excluded in turn, or being lost or out of your
depth? There is nothing wrong with any of these feelings – in fact I’d go so
far as to say that they should be embraced, because it’s only when people are
in an uncomfortable space that I believe they do their best and most innovative
work. Perhaps the concern is that if libraries turn towards these activities we’ll
fall between two stools, and will alienate the existing users and will not
attract the new ones. As long as we are aware that is a danger, we can take
steps to ensure it doesn’t happen. However, the dangerous thing is to do
nothing, except try and preserve what we already have. This will not work,
because the old saw that ‘libraries are a good thing’ doesn’t work in our
society at the moment. The only people who will fight for the library are the
ones that use it, and those numbers are simply not enough. We have to
demonstrate much more widely to a wider group of the community that a library,
staffed with professionals can improve society. We can only do that if we
improve our libraries, not save them. Surely the mission, if we have one should
be to assist the communities that are being battered and destroyed? To help
people get back on their feet and provide them with the means and the knowledge
that they need to get new jobs, or start new enterprises? We cannot do that by
simply offering books. We have to do it by our actions, by reaching out to
these people and showing them just how powerful knowledge can be. That way the
library – by appealing to a larger group within a community stands a better
chance of not just existing, but thriving.
Now, a while ago I mentioned that we’ve come to a parting of
the ways, with people perhaps finding out that the physical item isn’t quite as
important as it once was. On the other hand, there are still many people who
want to purchase items, be they books of a physical nature, downloads to their
ereaders, MP3 files or films via iTunes for example. This is certainly what
publishers are hoping for, and indeed they’re pretty much betting the farm on
it. Publishers have worked for centuries using an excellent model that’s always
worked. It’s understandable that they want to continue using that model,
because it feels safe. However, they’re also very much aware that it’s not
going to last that much longer, which is why they’re scared. Make no bones
about it – publishers can see that their profits, based on physical ownership
may start to drain away. They are looking around at the moment for someone to
blame, and libraries are an easy touch. Personally I’d be more likely to blame
supermarkets for discounting books by insane amounts of money, but maybe that’s
just me.
It’s perfectly clear that the price of eReaders is dropping like
a stone, as I mentioned earlier. When I was a teenager my parents bought me a
tape cassette player for one Christmas, and it cost about £80. All it did was
play tapes and let me listen to the radio. A calculator cost a ridiculous sum
of money, way out of the reach of most people. I could go on, but you get the
idea. We have politicians attempting to define how a library should work, and
how it should present and promote eBooks based on the current costing of
eReaders, and I have been told that they are so expensive, only the rich and
middle class can afford them. This isn’t even the case now, and it will be less
the case in the future. I also wonder sometimes why there’s all the fuss over
eReaders anyway, when I can – and do – read books on my smart phone, my tablet
device and my desktop as well as my Kindle.
Publishers are so scared of libraries that they don’t even
want to talk to us. Now, if you want to view that negatively, it means that a
library, the librarian and the library authority are powerless. I prefer to
view it in a rather different light, since I believe that librarians are
powerful people, and libraries are places of power. Feel free to hear some
mystical music welling in the background for a few moments if you want! Far
from causing publishers problems, we can help the publishers achieve their
goals. If you read eBooks, you read more, you buy more. That’s what Amazon is
basing their entire sales pitch for the Kindle on. A library is not going to
take sales away from a publisher, it is going to increase sales. Libraries have
always done this in the past and they will continue to do so in the future. It
doesn’t matter if the book is physical or digital, because people will always
want to read, and they’ll always want to read favourite authors and explore new
ones.
Librarians are perfectly placed to assist in this process.
This is the value that we have – not just in providing titles in the first
place, but by helping provide new and appropriate material in the future. We
are able to promote titles, shine a light on lesser known authors, help people
discover new genres, identify challenging works, thoughts and ideas. What our
members will get is exactly what they don’t get from Amazon’s Kindle Lending
library. As professionals, we are able to do so much more for our communities
than they, or the Oyster offering will ever be able to do. In fact, I don’t see
these initiatives as a threat to a library service in the slightest. Rather
what they are doing is making it obvious to people that a lending/borrowing
model is a good idea. Instead of paying £49 to Amazon to borrow one free book a
month, maybe the idea of borrowing unlimited numbers of books from my library –
for nothing – is an even better deal.
However, in order for this to happen, two things must occur.
First of all, the publishers need to realise that we’re on the same side – that
is, the reading side. We both flourish when people read, and we both wither
when they don’t. It’s got nothing to do with the physical item at all – as long
as the right titles are available. A reduction in book budgets means less
books, which makes libraries a less tempting prospect, I get that, and it’s
quite right. So what we must do it work with publishers to look at entirely
different models, in order to get more people reading. The more they read, the
more they want to read. Publishers deserve a return on their product, and
authors deserve a return on their work. However, there’s no point in publishers
saying to libraries ‘this is the model you have to conform to, like it or lump
it’ when there are competing models out there – the Kindle idea, the Oyster
concept being the obvious examples. They will not help publishers achieve their
goals, but libraries can. We all need to think laterally and look at different
approaches, and there are many of them. That’s the first thing, and that’s the
one that’s hard for the publishers. The second thing, which is hard for the
libraries, or rather the staff and users of the libraries, is to begin to wean
ourselves off the physical model being the only model. A book is a book,
regardless of physical or digital. ‘Pride and Prejudice’ has the same power and
provides the same enjoyment for me irrespective of reading it in a hardback,
paperback or digitally.
This suggestion was met with horror by one politician that I
talked to. He said ‘well, if we move to putting all the books online we could
get rid of all the branch libraries and just have a few central libraries
scattered around the place – is that what you really want?’ That only holds
weight if you define a library by a very narrow criteria – as a collection of
books. This is the clear and present danger that we have – we must rise above
the association with the artefact, and – as I’ve said – concentrate on the
activities and results of those activities and the improvements we make in our
communities. A library must be – has to be – more than a collection of books.
That’s what we’re all saying – the professionals, the activists, the Friends of
groups. We are saying that a library is a key part – in fact central to the
community. An attack on a library is an attack – not on the books, but on that
community itself. So we need to look laterally as well, beyond the books, and
into the ways that we can work with the community, and how we can not just save
libraries, but improve the libraries, and as a direct result, improve ourselves
and our communities.
We are at an absolutely pivotal point within both our
profession, and within the library service in the UK. I recently talked to an
ex-librarian who has since left the profession, and she said ‘I’m glad I got
out, we’re finished’. That is so patently not the case it’s painful. This is a
superb time to be a professional, or to have a love of libraries, of reading,
books and knowledge. This is because we are going to be able to shape the
development of all of those things into the future. What we do now is going to
set a pattern for the next 50 or 100 years. We just need to believe in the power
that the information professionals have, and the key role that libraries play
in society. But – and this is a big but, we can only do it if we all work
together, because it’s only by holding out our hands to one another in trust
that we can help drag ourselves out of the quicksand, rather than push each
other under faster.
We always portray the library as a nice safe, warm and welcoming space don't we. Of course it is, but I sometimes wonder if we could look at it in a slightly different way. A library doesn't deal in books or artefacts, it deals in thoughts and ideas. It provides people with the opportunity to think through things, to challenge the status quo, to better themselves, to learn new skills and to improve old ones. A library provides people with a chance to think 'what if?' and to provide them with rebuttals to the statement 'you should'. A library gives people access to facts; pure, simple and unbiased. It also lets people look at bias, to examine hate, prejudice, racism, homophobia and anything else they wish, from any angle. A library can change people.
So a library can be a dangerous place. I've seen a lot of the ALA 'Read' posters, and they're great fun, with celebrities holding up books. They're fun and fluffy. But what do they actually tell us? That we can use a library to read books. I think we kinda know that already. I want to see posters that ask 'Why?' or 'How?' or 'Why not?' that show people the library is a place to think. I want to see posters like this one:
(If you want to see a copy on my Flickr page, it's here. If you want to buy one, it's on my Zazzle store.) It's also CC on Flickr, so feel free to copy and use to promote libraries.
I was really pleased to see a poem over at The library as incubator which linked to the following poem, 'If librarians were honest' by Joseph Mills.
If Librarians Were Honest “… a book indeed sometimes debauched me from my work….” – Benjamin Franklin
If librarians were honest, they wouldn’t smile, or act welcoming. They would say, You need to be careful. Here be monsters. They would say, These rooms house heathens and heretics, murderers and maniacs, the deluded, desperate, and dissolute. They would say, These books contain knowledge of death, desire, and decay, betrayal, blood, and more blood; each is a Pandora’s box, so why would you want to open one. They would post danger signs warning that contact might result in mood swings, severe changes in vision, and mind-altering effects.
If librarians were honest they would admit the stacks can be more seductive and shocking than porn. After all, once you’ve seen a few breasts, vaginas, and penises, more is simply more, a comforting banality, but the shelves of a library contain sensational novelties, a scandalous, permissive mingling of Malcolm X, Marx, Melville, Merwin, Millay, Milton, Morrison,
and anyone can check them out, taking them home or to some corner where they can be debauched and impregnated with ideas. If librarians were honest, they would say, No one spends time here without being changed. Maybe you should go home. While you still can.
After all, if libraries were nice and simple, easy places to go and keep people quiet, would politicians want to close them down?
Recent Comments