And we're all missing the point again. Libraries are about books. I go to libraries to borrow books, to read books and generally get access to books other than Dan Brown and Harry Potter. That stuff is more than adequately supplied by the market: if I want mass-market paperbacks, I can get them used on Amazon for a penny plus shipping, much less than the cost of a bus ticket/train ticket/driving to the library. But more obscure stuff, out-of-print stuff, that's the value of libraries. And giving free (well, subsidised/low-cost) access to everyone who wants that is the value of libraries.
I've got a Kindle. I use it as a place for storing personal documents, pretty much exclusively. Almost everything I read is not an e-book in any format. Almost everything on my bookshelves is not available as an e-book in any format.
The long tail of books are not e-books and probably won't be for a long time. The point of libraries is exactly to ensure there isn't an information divide in society. Science, philosophy, literature, history, languages: these shouldn't be the preserve of people who can afford to buy the books or attend college or jump through the hoops needed to access research libraries.
And it's all very well telling people to go use the Internet. What are they gonna do, look it up on Wikipedia? Fine, and where are the people who write Wikipedia going to get access to the books to write the Wikipedia articles? And what happens when they get to the end of the Wikipedia article and want to read more? It's the same with adult education: the government tell us that we need to become "lifelong learners" to survive in the current economy. How exactly are we to do that when adult education courses are closing and libraries are closing?
A working programmer friend of mine wanted to do A-level in mathematics. He could only find one place in London that offers an adults course. To get into universities, students are more and more expected to have read outside their curriculum. Getting rid of libraries makes it so only the rich kids can get access to the books. And the only answer we can give them: go buy a Kindle.
If education is the road to a better life, we sure as hell need to make sure the road is kept in good repair.
"A working programmer friend of mine wanted to do A-level in mathematics. He could only find one place in London that offers an adults course."
I work in Adult Education in the UK, and I also teach in a local Further Education College. You won't find an AS/A2 level course in Maths or any of the Sciences easily now. Its because of 'data driven management', which brings this post back on topic for this forum...
The short version: AS/A2 Maths and Science subjects are specialised and difficult. Evening class students have work and family commitments. They start a course with great enthusiasm, then, usually just after the New Year, reality kicks in with the cold weather and the difficulty of finding time to study. People drop out of the course. Those who have the time and self-organisation to make it to the exams usually pass, although grades are not astounding.
Data: when you attend a course in a Skills Funding Agency funded programme, your attendance is monitored and used to compile something called an ISR. Your attendance and the outcome of your exams are on the database.
Success: The percentage of the students who started left at the end is called 'retention'. The percentage of students who took the exam who pass is called 'achievement'. Success = retention * achievement.
"Raising Standards": Success rates are compared with national benchmarks. Courses with pass rates that are more than 5% below benchmark are 'poor quality'. Single course percentages are aggregated (in wonderful ways) to give success figures for departments. Departments have success targets. Easiest way to improve your success? Dump the low performing courses. They happen to be the harder subjects.
There is a small industry in specialised data mining and tracking software that will process the database and 'pull out' the success statistics. Most of the applications look like they are written in VB or something similar, but some have Web interfaces. Middle managers in colleges in the UK spend an awful lot of time going through the database reports.
So now you know! Next time a politician speaks about 'raising standards in education' be aware that the only way you get fast change in the pass rates is by simply removing the lower scores by closing the courses.
In many towns libraries serve as a default community center. I get daily emails with all of the events happening in my small town and I would say at least half of those are at the local library.
What you're saying is true, of course. But that over looks a great deal of value that libraries provide -- it's more than just bound paper on shelves.
I agree, in principle, but I think one of the issues is that it is increasingly common for library patrons to ignore the books and head for the computers. I don't have hard statistics on this, but if it's true, then I imagine it's hard for libraries (and the governments that support them) to justify pouring more resources into keeping the book collections robust, if too few of the people they are serving don't care about the books.
And even on the digital front, I fear that people are reading more blogs and tweets and fewer books. Even Kindles won't matter to people whose reading attention span is limited to a couple sentences at a time... :-(
(This, though, is a bit of speculation and anecdotal conjecture on my part. I would be interested in hearing if others have observed the same or not.)
Libraries create community and culture. I can't tell you how much value I get out of having a library across the street from me. I must go there at least weekly. I read books and see movies I wouldn't have otherwise. I meet neighbors there. Families bring children there. Libraries stock books and movies stores don't.
Having fewer libraries, even if bigger, doesn't match the value of a neighborhood library.
And it's not like smaller libraries can't get books in, if you need them. These days, you can probably fill in a list of ISBNs on a website, and pick them up in a couple of days, as they can ship rarer books in from larger libraries.
The only point in having libraries, not warehouses, is that people can visit them.
If you did not have a family, would you still find value in the library? Not trying to put words in your mouth, but it seems it's biggest value is for parents with children.
This is truly sad. When I visit my local library all of the public user computers are continuously utilized and there is a waiting list -- I assume these folks either don't own their own computer or need to be able to use a public one. I appreciate the quiet place to work and free WiFi.
Not everyone has e-readers or can afford to purchase a large number of books--our library definitely fills a need in the local community. Plus knowledgable staff can recommend good books and assist students with their research (the inter-library loan system which includes local Universities is especially helpful in this case).
While I can drive to the library, I do see a large number of folks arriving via foot and/or public transportation. I cannot imagine the impact to those communities which are losing their local libraries. Perhaps Brent is particularly affluent, but I suspect that the council is being misguided by their consultants or simply doesn't care about those members of the community who will be impacted most by these library closures.
How many of you who support libraries actually give to them? After a friend challenged me to match his efforts I started giving books to our local library every year. My sister and I virtually came of age in that library and I'd forgotten how vital it is for a childs development.
But libraries do need to evolve. They need to have digital offerings. I'd like to see them set aside room for hacker spaces as well as user group meeting rooms.
The more community engagement for the libraries services the harder it will be for politicians to cut their budgets.
How many of your book donations show up in the stacks, available for check out? I've stopped donating books to my local library because they would just turn around and sell all of them at the next book fair. I was even buying new books which I'd appreciate being able to check out and donating them -- perhaps my tastes are out of sync from the rest of the patrons, but as a kid I appreciated that my local library had technical books that I was able to learn programming from.
The District of Columbia used to accept books for resale, not to put on the shelves. The acceptance ended with 2011, when the library's store at the MLK library downtown closed.
I consider the public library to be the secular society's equivalent of a church -- a place where the entire community can freely meet and exchange ideas, where mind and spirit can be enlightened through knowledge. I fear as libraries go, so goes secularism itself.
Libraries are one of those things that, even if you don't personally use them, your life will get a little bit worse if they disappear because of how their loss will effect your community. Probably enough so to justify supporting them with your taxes even if you never set foot in one.
Maybe they can hold on as free Internet cafes, since that seems to be how many people actually use them today. All that would be missing would be the availability of free or subsidized tea, drip coffee, and maybe some sort of nutritious but inexpensive to prepare hot soup.
That Wikipedia article blurs research libraries (like you'd find in a university) with public libraries. Almost all the hard numbers they quote are about research libraries, but the libraries that most of us care about (the ones that act as a democratic backstop for access to information) are public libraries.
The real thing to watch is the countercyclical nature of public libraries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_library_usage#Econom... in that article). As the economy worsens, public library use increases. Not just for reading material, but for the public services the libraries provide: free law clinics, resume-writing help, etc.
I'm not sure what your local public library is like, but in our small town library is busy all the time. People are borrowing paper books, using the Internet-connected computers, and getting help from librarians. Doomed? Only if we let them; only if we think it's okay to reinstate barriers around lifelong learning.
I'm very comfortable with the end of libraries as we know them today, but I think the facilities should be repurposed into "study lounges" and meeting space for civics groups. With a few exceptns, you don't really need a library for books anymore. Why not have the young professionals studying for grad school entrance exams or high school kids studying in Starbucks to do that in a community-center type space. For folks without computers/Internet access, keep or expand the computers that are already in there.
I remember the Nook had a very weird feature where if you were inside the store you could free-read any book you wanted electronically, maybe a repurposed library could have the same licensing arrangement with content from the likes of Google books.
The article argues that libraries serve their purpose as public e-cafes. Given that this is not the original intent of libraries, it would call for re-considering how they have been transformed by modern technology, i.e. the very thing the author mocks the council for having considered.
I would argue for a cloud model to libraries - as centralised a super-library as possible to house the electronic literature and then a series of "thin" libraries that have terminals to access that media.
This article offers personal anecdotes against a corpus of literature on falling library user bases, etc. A NYT author can do better than inducing the state of British libraries from a personal example.
> I would argue for a cloud model to libraries - as centralised a super-library as possible to house the electronic literature and then a series of "thin" libraries that have terminals to access that media.
Some libraries already work this way, with a central organization paying for access to many research databases that can be accessed by patrons. Physical collections also work this way in some places, where shelving for physical items has been reduced in individual branches but made up for by a system where a book can be requested and delivered to your local branch at no charge.
The main issue here is that there is a ton of knowledge that isn't digital and not everyone has the capability to access digital materials or to "take" digital materials home for a time.
The Library of Congress should step into the "super library" role as authoritative archive, with the Internet Archive serving as DR/backup; buy the content once, and heavily subsidize Kindle-esqe devices ($79 currently from Amazon, buying tens of millions at a time should be able to drive the price below $30/piece) to distribute.
Turn libraries across the country (world?) into collaborative meeting/working/co-working space.
My local libraries function primarily as daycentres for the homeless and free internet cafes for students and immigrants. Arguably a valuable social service, but a library in name only. My nearest library loans more DVDs than books.
I'd be prepared to fight for the idea of libraries, but the reality? Not so much. Cut the funding, close them all, spend the rest of the money on FE colleges (community colleges).
"I'd be prepared to fight for the idea of libraries, but the reality? Not so much. Cut the funding, close them all, spend the rest of the money on FE colleges (community colleges)."
Make sure that money is ring fenced carefully. See my post above in this thread.
The article starts out with a potentially sound assertion on considering whether patrons of libraries walk or travel to them (though I cringe at anecdotal evidence being used to assault a study).
It then argues that libraries serve their purpose as public e-cafes
With VHS tapes, and DVDs, we watched programs and movies on television screens. Take away the physical media and replace it with files on a computer, and we're still watching programs and movies on television screens.
With vinyl records, and cassettes, and compact discs, we listened to music on speaker systems and on headphones. Take away the physical media and replace it with files on a computer, and we're still listening to music on speaker systems and on headphones.
But books? We never consumed books through something analogous to television sets or speakers. We held the actual book in our hands, and read the printed pages with our eyes. Replacing physical books with digital books is, in my opinion, a significantly bigger switch than moving from compact discs to MP3s or from DVDs to MP4s. The entire experience has changed, not just how the content is stored.
The article is actually about Brent council and the use of digital media as an excuse to remove libraries from poor communities--where they are popular as free Internet cafes and provide books for people who couldn't afford readers--and dubious plans to reinvest the money. The story comes complete with suggestions of corruption and further deprivation of an already impoverished community.
Quite possibly. Libraries/Amazon need to get up to speed on this. I have a Kindle, as does my brother, my mum, and my nan.
My mum is a member of a library, and they have ebook which she can download and read on her laptop. However, she can't read it on the Kindle, as they are distributed as DRM protected ePub's.
To put it on her Kindle she would have to remove the DRM and convert to mobi... But she doesn't need, or even want, the DRM removed.
Also, second-hand books. I could very easily get hold of a Dan Drown's The Lost Symbol for £0.50 in a charity shop/second hand book store. But it costs £4.96 to get the Kindle edition. There's also no way to trade/sell/give Kindle books to other people.
Removing DRM but then deleting within loan period- or pirating and donating £0.50 to charity - for ebooks seems morally equivalent to me. But it's illegal/break of copyright.
[+] [-] tommorris|14 years ago|reply
I've got a Kindle. I use it as a place for storing personal documents, pretty much exclusively. Almost everything I read is not an e-book in any format. Almost everything on my bookshelves is not available as an e-book in any format.
The long tail of books are not e-books and probably won't be for a long time. The point of libraries is exactly to ensure there isn't an information divide in society. Science, philosophy, literature, history, languages: these shouldn't be the preserve of people who can afford to buy the books or attend college or jump through the hoops needed to access research libraries.
And it's all very well telling people to go use the Internet. What are they gonna do, look it up on Wikipedia? Fine, and where are the people who write Wikipedia going to get access to the books to write the Wikipedia articles? And what happens when they get to the end of the Wikipedia article and want to read more? It's the same with adult education: the government tell us that we need to become "lifelong learners" to survive in the current economy. How exactly are we to do that when adult education courses are closing and libraries are closing?
A working programmer friend of mine wanted to do A-level in mathematics. He could only find one place in London that offers an adults course. To get into universities, students are more and more expected to have read outside their curriculum. Getting rid of libraries makes it so only the rich kids can get access to the books. And the only answer we can give them: go buy a Kindle.
If education is the road to a better life, we sure as hell need to make sure the road is kept in good repair.
[+] [-] keithpeter|14 years ago|reply
I work in Adult Education in the UK, and I also teach in a local Further Education College. You won't find an AS/A2 level course in Maths or any of the Sciences easily now. Its because of 'data driven management', which brings this post back on topic for this forum...
The short version: AS/A2 Maths and Science subjects are specialised and difficult. Evening class students have work and family commitments. They start a course with great enthusiasm, then, usually just after the New Year, reality kicks in with the cold weather and the difficulty of finding time to study. People drop out of the course. Those who have the time and self-organisation to make it to the exams usually pass, although grades are not astounding.
Data: when you attend a course in a Skills Funding Agency funded programme, your attendance is monitored and used to compile something called an ISR. Your attendance and the outcome of your exams are on the database.
Success: The percentage of the students who started left at the end is called 'retention'. The percentage of students who took the exam who pass is called 'achievement'. Success = retention * achievement.
"Raising Standards": Success rates are compared with national benchmarks. Courses with pass rates that are more than 5% below benchmark are 'poor quality'. Single course percentages are aggregated (in wonderful ways) to give success figures for departments. Departments have success targets. Easiest way to improve your success? Dump the low performing courses. They happen to be the harder subjects.
There is a small industry in specialised data mining and tracking software that will process the database and 'pull out' the success statistics. Most of the applications look like they are written in VB or something similar, but some have Web interfaces. Middle managers in colleges in the UK spend an awful lot of time going through the database reports.
So now you know! Next time a politician speaks about 'raising standards in education' be aware that the only way you get fast change in the pass rates is by simply removing the lower scores by closing the courses.
[+] [-] mrj|14 years ago|reply
What you're saying is true, of course. But that over looks a great deal of value that libraries provide -- it's more than just bound paper on shelves.
[+] [-] tjr|14 years ago|reply
And even on the digital front, I fear that people are reading more blogs and tweets and fewer books. Even Kindles won't matter to people whose reading attention span is limited to a couple sentences at a time... :-(
(This, though, is a bit of speculation and anecdotal conjecture on my part. I would be interested in hearing if others have observed the same or not.)
[+] [-] spodek|14 years ago|reply
Having fewer libraries, even if bigger, doesn't match the value of a neighborhood library.
[+] [-] wisty|14 years ago|reply
The only point in having libraries, not warehouses, is that people can visit them.
[+] [-] gavinlynch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smountcastle|14 years ago|reply
Not everyone has e-readers or can afford to purchase a large number of books--our library definitely fills a need in the local community. Plus knowledgable staff can recommend good books and assist students with their research (the inter-library loan system which includes local Universities is especially helpful in this case).
While I can drive to the library, I do see a large number of folks arriving via foot and/or public transportation. I cannot imagine the impact to those communities which are losing their local libraries. Perhaps Brent is particularly affluent, but I suspect that the council is being misguided by their consultants or simply doesn't care about those members of the community who will be impacted most by these library closures.
[+] [-] rmason|14 years ago|reply
But libraries do need to evolve. They need to have digital offerings. I'd like to see them set aside room for hacker spaces as well as user group meeting rooms.
The more community engagement for the libraries services the harder it will be for politicians to cut their budgets.
[+] [-] smountcastle|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cafard|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atacrawl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjscott|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiba|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gavinlynch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valgaze|14 years ago|reply
A quiet place to study and think is crucially important
[+] [-] noonespecial|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandon|14 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_library_usage
Maybe they can hold on as free Internet cafes, since that seems to be how many people actually use them today. All that would be missing would be the availability of free or subsidized tea, drip coffee, and maybe some sort of nutritious but inexpensive to prepare hot soup.
[+] [-] gnat|14 years ago|reply
The real thing to watch is the countercyclical nature of public libraries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_library_usage#Econom... in that article). As the economy worsens, public library use increases. Not just for reading material, but for the public services the libraries provide: free law clinics, resume-writing help, etc.
I'm not sure what your local public library is like, but in our small town library is busy all the time. People are borrowing paper books, using the Internet-connected computers, and getting help from librarians. Doomed? Only if we let them; only if we think it's okay to reinstate barriers around lifelong learning.
[+] [-] valgaze|14 years ago|reply
I remember the Nook had a very weird feature where if you were inside the store you could free-read any book you wanted electronically, maybe a repurposed library could have the same licensing arrangement with content from the likes of Google books.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] absconditus|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|14 years ago|reply
I would argue for a cloud model to libraries - as centralised a super-library as possible to house the electronic literature and then a series of "thin" libraries that have terminals to access that media.
This article offers personal anecdotes against a corpus of literature on falling library user bases, etc. A NYT author can do better than inducing the state of British libraries from a personal example.
[+] [-] king_jester|14 years ago|reply
Some libraries already work this way, with a central organization paying for access to many research databases that can be accessed by patrons. Physical collections also work this way in some places, where shelving for physical items has been reduced in individual branches but made up for by a system where a book can be requested and delivered to your local branch at no charge.
The main issue here is that there is a ton of knowledge that isn't digital and not everyone has the capability to access digital materials or to "take" digital materials home for a time.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|14 years ago|reply
Turn libraries across the country (world?) into collaborative meeting/working/co-working space.
[+] [-] waqf|14 years ago|reply
Right, so close the libraries and make sure e-books are free for everyone like library books used to be.
[+] [-] jdietrich|14 years ago|reply
I'd be prepared to fight for the idea of libraries, but the reality? Not so much. Cut the funding, close them all, spend the rest of the money on FE colleges (community colleges).
[+] [-] keithpeter|14 years ago|reply
Make sure that money is ring fenced carefully. See my post above in this thread.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Game_Ender|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|14 years ago|reply
It then argues that libraries serve their purpose as public e-cafes
[+] [-] antidaily|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjr|14 years ago|reply
With vinyl records, and cassettes, and compact discs, we listened to music on speaker systems and on headphones. Take away the physical media and replace it with files on a computer, and we're still listening to music on speaker systems and on headphones.
But books? We never consumed books through something analogous to television sets or speakers. We held the actual book in our hands, and read the printed pages with our eyes. Replacing physical books with digital books is, in my opinion, a significantly bigger switch than moving from compact discs to MP3s or from DVDs to MP4s. The entire experience has changed, not just how the content is stored.
[+] [-] Hyena|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grogs|14 years ago|reply
My mum is a member of a library, and they have ebook which she can download and read on her laptop. However, she can't read it on the Kindle, as they are distributed as DRM protected ePub's.
To put it on her Kindle she would have to remove the DRM and convert to mobi... But she doesn't need, or even want, the DRM removed.
Also, second-hand books. I could very easily get hold of a Dan Drown's The Lost Symbol for £0.50 in a charity shop/second hand book store. But it costs £4.96 to get the Kindle edition. There's also no way to trade/sell/give Kindle books to other people.
Removing DRM but then deleting within loan period- or pirating and donating £0.50 to charity - for ebooks seems morally equivalent to me. But it's illegal/break of copyright.
[+] [-] paulhauggis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjen3|14 years ago|reply