Can Libraries Survive the E-Book

Revolution?
Facing higher prices and limited access to e-books from the major publishers, one man has inspired a
national movement to promote smaller, digitally based presses and self-published authors.

by Dylan Scott | July 2013

Facing higher prices and limited access to e-books from the major publishers, Jamie LaRue,
the man charged with running Douglas County, Colo.'s library system, has inspired a national
movement to promote smaller, digitally based presses and self-published authors. Barry
Staver

More than 20 years ago, when Jamie LaRue took over the library system in Douglas County,
Colo., few people outside that patch of Rocky Mountain wilderness south of Denver knew
who he was. A lot of things were different back then. Public libraries were still considered
pillars of the community and the most important stop for any local resident looking for the
latest from the printed word. Commercial e-books were still a fantasy in the mind of some
anonymous Silicon Valley geek. The rules of the game between libraries and publishers had
been established long ago: Discount prices and generous access were the norm, and there was
every reason to believe that the status quo would continue, ad infinitum.

But it didnt.

Instead, the e-book revolution has overturned the whole infrastructure upon which libraries
depended. From 2011 to 2012, the percentage of Americans who owned an e-book reader
leapt from 18 to 33 percent, a rapid climb from 6 percent in 2010. Attempting to
accommodate this shift, more than three-quarters of U.S. libraries allow their customers to
check out digital books, but theyve encountered fierce resistance in access and pricing from
the major publishers. Some wont even sell e-books to libraries. If libraries are able to obtain
mainstream e-books at all, those sales almost always come with onerous conditions and high
prices, especially compared to the traditional discounted rates libraries pay for hardcover
copies.

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The situation has left libraries looking desperately for a way to make e-borrowing sustainable
for customers in the future. But they have little negotiating power other than an altruistic
appeal to the established relationship between library and publisher, both working toward the
goal of a more literate nation. The bottom line is that libraries need to have e-books for their
readers to check out, because thats how people are going to read in the future. If they dont
have the goods, then what will a library be useful for a decade from now?

Enter LaRue, who oversees seven libraries in what is now a suburban county of 285,000
people, but is building a nationwide movement based on his principles. He talks about
bypassing the Big Six New York publishers, or at least leaving them behind and setting his
sights on the next publishing wave: smaller, digitally based presses and self-publishing
authors. He wants to transform the library from a place where you go to find a New York
Times bestseller to a local incubator fostering homegrown writing talent. If the big publishers
want to cut libraries out, thats fine, he says. Hes going straight to the people.

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This is the most exciting time to be a librarian in the history of mankind, he says. There
has never before been this profusion of writing. Theres this incredible opportunity that we
have if we step up to the table, if were willing to reinvent ourselves, if we are bold. But if we
are not willing to do those things, we will be marginalized. As time goes on, well become
less and less relevant. At some point, well perish. Its adapt or die.

LaRues ideas have inspired an upheaval in the library and publishing worlds. Libraries from
California to Massachusetts are fitting his design to their own systems. Mere mention of his
name attracts audible sighs and knowing nods from top executives at some of the biggest
publishers in the world. Whether he and his philosophy succeed or not could determine the
public librarys future. Thats how many librarians view the stakes, anyway. If hes wrong,
the library could fade into obscurity, a relic of the pre-digital age. But if hes right, and a
growing number of acolytes believe he is, it could still thrive in an era when hardback books
have gone the way of illuminated manuscripts.

Before the arrival of e-books, the library business model for purchasing and distributing print
books was set in stone. There were intermediaries between the publishers and libraries,
companies like the giant distributor Baker & Taylor, but there was little tension. Libraries
purchased books at a comfortable discount, sometimes as much as 40 percent off the retail
price, and publishers earned an acceptable profit by selling them new releases and
replacements for worn-out books. A library bought a copy of a book, and it could lend the
copy as many times as the binding would hold; if the book was in high demand, the library
could buy more copies. Affordable prices meant a library could build a huge reservoir of
material for its readers.

The digital market, however, has been built from scratch in the last few years, and all those
old norms have disappeared. There are still intermediaries that transmit digital files from the
publishers online collection to the libraries -- one company, OverDrive, owns an 85 percent
market share -- but little else is the same. First of all, not every major publisher is selling its
products to any library that wants them. Several, including Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and
Penguin, either dont sell e-books to libraries at all or have only begun to do so through pilot
projects that work with select libraries, usually concentrated in New York. This leaves out the
nearly 9,000 other libraries spread throughout the rest of the country.

Even if publishers do sell to libraries, theyve restructured the rules. HarperCollins, for
example, sets a limit of 26 loans on each e-copy; after that limit is reached, the library has to
purchase a new copy license. Random House hasnt established such restrictive conditions
and makes its full e-catalog of 46,000 titles available to libraries, but the price for each copy
is often four or five times ($85 is the upper limit) what the company charges for physical
copies.

While their business model is being upended, libraries, along with the rest of the public
sector, are enduring the aftershocks of the Great Recession. Library spending in the U.S.
dropped 8 percent in 2013, largely a result of government funding cuts, continuing a decline
that started with the economic downturn. So at the same time that libraries are navigating
unprecedented financial challenges, they must contend with a new marketplace that they feel
is rigged against them.

The situation has basically become: Its going to cost you so much that you cant afford to
buy it, says LaRue. That means we cant buy as many things. Our citizens are now being
denied things that they used to be able to have.

Publishers say they are just trying to make sure their industry is sustainable for the long haul.
A whole host of new variables in the digital market, they argue, makes it different from the
traditional one -- and more expensive. E-books have to be protected against pirating and other
copyright infringement. Digital books are constantly being corrected or revised in a way that
physical books never could be, plus they must be adapted to various formats from iPad to
Kindle to Nook to smartphones, and all that coding costs money. Virtual copies never wear
out the way physical books do, and a significant portion of publishers income used to come
from reselling old titles to libraries to replace deteriorating inventory.

But most fundamentally, it seems, the rise of e-publishing has given the industry an
opportunity to reevaluate its traditional way of thinking about libraries, which was that they
encouraged reading and thus benefited publishers. Now the big companies are concentrating
on direct sales to the customer. Alison Lazarus, president of the sales division at Macmillan,
acknowledges her company has focused on the retail market as e-books have taken off. It has
treaded lightly in selling e-books to libraries. Only this March did it launch a pilot program
for library sales of 1,200 titles from one of its crime fiction imprints.

Libraries always talk about how theyre a venue for discovery, for people to learn about
authors. I believe that in theory, but I dont know that theres any hard evidence, Lazarus
says. She also argues that going digital has erased old barriers for people borrowing from a
library, such as the necessity of getting a library card and physically going to the library
building to check out a book, and that might mean library lending will cut into publishers
profits more than it did in the past.

Our concern is that the more e-lending becomes available what would have in the past
been a sale becomes a borrow, Lazarus says. Over time, that would be extremely
detrimental to the health of the publishing industry.

For the moment, the industry, thanks in large part to the digital market, is showing few signs
of sickness. In 2008, e-book sales represented on average about 1 percent of a publishers
revenue, according to a recent report by the Association of American Publishers. That share
ballooned to 23 percent in 2012, accounting for $1.5 billion in sales. The overall industry
grew 6.2 percent in 2012, up to $7.1 billion in revenue.
In a way, that remarkable growth might validate the industrys apparent marginalization,
intentional or not, of libraries. E-books seem to be doing just fine without them. So while
publishing executives are quick to emphasize, as Lazarus does, that they still appreciate the
value of libraries, the libraries themselves are more skeptical.

I frankly think in some cases they just see the opportunity to make more money, says
Maureen Sullivan, president of the American Library Association (ALA), who has personally
participated in negotiations with publishers. Thats the American way, of course; as Alan
Inouye, director of the ALAs Office for Information Technology Policy, puts it: People are
not required to sell you things at all or at terms that the consumer likes.

These contentions have led to robust, sometimes tense, negotiations between libraries and
publishers in recent years. Representatives from the ALA have met with top executives of the
Big Six publishers at least five times in the last year. Some compromises have been made --
Macmillans new pilot program, for example -- but the underlying issues remain unresolved.

If LaRue has his way, though, it might not matter if they are. He surveyed this new world as
director of the Douglas County Libraries and saw an opportunity to move in a new direction.
He recalls looking at The New York Times bestseller list and seeing that a growing number of
the books on it were being sold digitally. He noticed that self-published authors had begun
creeping toward the top of bestseller lists (this March, a self-published book topped the
Digital Book World E-book Best-Seller List for the first time). Some of the most successful
independent publishers, those outside the Big Six, were increasing their sales exponentially
year over year, and that growth was almost exclusively driven by the digital market.

Most important, more and more people started coming to his seven libraries, which receive 2
million visits annually, and asking about e-readers and the possibility of checking out digital
books. The supply wasnt able to keep up with the demand, because his libraries faced the
same fiscal pressures and burdensome restrictions as their peers across the country.

I realized we needed to do something, LaRue says. The vendors were screwing us. In
December 2010, with all of these ingredients mixing in his mind, he had a moment of clarity.
As with the music industry before it, a common analogy in these conversations, he decided
that the publishing industrys future didnt rest with the legacy conglomerates that had
dominated it in the past. Its strength resided in the independent presses and self-publishing
writers who had seized the opportunity that e-books offered: the democratization of
publishing. Libraries, he reasoned, needed to harness that creative outburst. He devised a plan
to do it.

It was remarkable in its simplicity: LaRue decided to build a digital warehouse and
contracting system, which would allow his libraries to purchase directly from smaller
publishers and authors, cutting out the Big Six and OverDrive, which would mean lower
prices. In January 2011, Douglas County Libraries purchased Adobe software that for
$10,000 would serve as the backbone of the new system, safely transferring files from the
provider to the library to the reader. LaRue wrote Dear Publishing Partner letters, setting
simple yet firm expectations for how the content would be handled and eliminating the
restrictions that accompanied the major publishers products. The whole enterprise cost
$200,000, but LaRue says the libraries have already saved that much in a year because the
prices theyre paying for the independent and self-published materials are much lower, up to
45 percent below retail.
The system went live in February 2012, and LaRue went to work finding partners. They soon
flooded Douglas Countys digital shelves. The libraries have so far purchased e-books from
more than 900 smaller publishers and hundreds of individual authors. They make up 21,000
of the 35,000 titles in his virtual catalog. The rest come from the major publishers, sold
through intermediaries at much higher prices. Those mainstream titles are still more popular
with readers, making up 65 percent of the countys loans, but its clear that the appetite for
the independent and self-published content is growing.

Outside Douglas County, LaRues ideas have even earned their own acronym: the DCL
model. A consortium of more than 250 California libraries is on the verge of rolling out a
similar system. The Harris County Public Library, which serves the Houston area, has
launched its own pilot project based on the DCL principles. LaRue gave the keynote address
at a May 2012 conference hosted by the Massachusetts Library System, which represents the
states 1,700 libraries, and exactly one year later, the group established a limited DCL-style
prototype with 50 participating libraries. The plan is to expand it statewide in 18 months,
which would make it the largest victory yet for LaRues vision.

Jamie is such a leader. The passion is very clear. You hear how important this is to him. He
inspired us to move forward, says Greg Pronevitz, executive director of the Massachusetts
Library System. The librarys future is becoming more and more electronic, so it is essential
that we work this out. Weve got the whole library community working toward it.

The Big Six publishers are watching the DCL movement closely. Skip Dye, vice president of
library and academic sales at Random House, says he has talked privately with LaRue. While
he has some concerns about every librarys ability to adopt a similar model, Dye says hes
very interested in how it performs as it becomes more widespread. We know what theyre
doing. Were very excited about what theyre doing, he says. Wed really love to see them
come up and be able to handle this but the question is whether this is sustainable for them
in the long term.

Having lit this fuse, LaRue is turning his attention toward what he sees as the next frontier:
libraries themselves as publishers. Now that Douglas County has the content management
system for its direct-purchasing project, he thinks it would be easy to turn that into a self-
publishing portal. The library would be the center of a local authors society, connecting self-
starters to copy editors, cover artists and e-book distributors, and transforming thousands of
Word documents sitting idly on neighborhood desktops into polished, professional products.
LaRue hasnt actually done this yet, but the idea is already attracting adherents. Officials at
the Harris County Public Library say theyre interested in eventually starting a similar
project.

Theres something circular about it, LaRue says. Adversity that threatened to undermine the
existence of libraries entirely could ultimately lead to their reinvention as incubators for
writing talent, creating new content for their own collections and reconnecting with their
original purpose as stewards of the written word. And like it or not -- though he must not
mind because he describes his own activism as proselytizing -- LaRue himself has become
the face of the movement, the chief priest of a new faith.

Were in the midst of a fundamental shift in the role of the public library, he says. Youre
moving people from consumers of content to producers of content. If you want your library to
become part of this renaissance, thats how you do it.
Dylan Scott | Staff Writer

dscott@governing.com | @dylanlscott
http://www.governing.com/topics/education/gov-can-libraries-survive-ebook-revolution.html

What Will Become of the Library?

4.8k

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How it will evolve as the world goes digital.

By Michael Agresta

Whats missing from these four pictures of library interiors?

Photo by Tom Rossiter from the book Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of
Chicago; Photo courtesy Bexar Bibliotech/Facebook; Photo courtesy Mitch Altman/Flickr; Photo
courtesy Marc Hall/NC State University
Around the turn of the 20th centurya golden age for libraries in Americathe Snead
Bookshelf Company of Louisville, Ky., developed a new system for large-stack library
shelving. Sneads multifloor stack systems can still be seen in many important libraries built
in that era, for instance at Harvard, Columbia, the Vatican, and at Bryant Park in New York
City. Besides storing old bundles of bound paper, Sneads stacks provided load-bearing
structural support to these venerable buildings. To remove the books would literally invite
collapse.

A recent attempt by the New York Public Library to do away with stacks at its main branch
and move much of its research collection to New Jersey invited just this concern.
Engineers described the idea of removing the shelves that support the Rose Reading Room as
cutting the legs off the table while dinner is being served. The plan was to transform the
interior of the iconic 42nd Street building from its original purposea massive storage space
for books with a few reading rooms attachedto a more open, services-oriented space with
many fewer books on-site. An outcry from scholars and preservationists may yet halt the
NYPLs renovation. A revised version of the plan, which would keep more of the collection
onsite, awaits a final verdict later this year.*

A library without books was once unthinkable. Now it seems almost inevitable.

That decision will be just one milestone in the rapidly developing identity crisis of 21st-
century libraries. In Sneads era, a library without books was unthinkable. Now it seems
almost inevitable. Like so many other time-honored institutions of intellectual and cultural
lifepublishing, journalism, and the university, to name a fewthe library finds itself on a
precipice at the dawn of a digital era. What are libraries for, if not storing and circulating
books? With their hearts cut out, how can they survive?
Pillars of civilization at the New York Public Library, 1907.

Photo courtesy New York Public Library

The recent years of austerity have not been kind to the public library. 2012 marked the third
consecutive year in which more than 40 percent of states decreased funding for libraries. In
2009, Pennsylvania, the keystone of the old Carnegie library system, came within 15 Senate
votes of closing the Free Library of Philadelphia. In the United Kingdom, a much more
severe austerity program shuttered 200 public libraries in 2012 alone.

Ours is not the first era to turn its back on libraries. The Roman Empire boasted an informal
system of public libraries, stretching from Spain to the Middle East, which declined and
disappeared in the early medieval period. In his book Libraries: An Unquiet History,
Matthew Battles calls such disasters biblioclasms.

The most commonly invoked image of biblioclasm is the burning of the Library of
Alexandria, probably the greatest-ever collection of Hellenic manuscripts, many of which are
now lost to history. In most versions of the story, the arson was committed by early Christian
zealots or by invading Arabs under the banner of Islam. Indeed, either group might have seen
the burning of the pagan Library as an act of devotion and a net gain for civilization. Just as
likely, however, the fire is a myth that obscures a long, slow decline, and the flames that
brought down the ancient library were fed not by a single man or group, but by the winds of
historychanging reading habits, political instability, and the decline of the administrative
state.
Will the digital age mark another era of decline for libraries? To an observer from an earlier
era, unfamiliar with the screens and devices now crowding out printed books, it may look that
way at first. On the other hand, even the smallest device with a Web browser now promises
access to a reserve of knowledge vast and varied enough to rival that of Alexandria. If the
current digital explosion throws off a few sparks, and a few vestigial elements of libraries,
like their paper books and their bricks-and-mortar buildings, are consigned to flames, should
we be concerned? Isnt it a net gain?

A
19th-century imagining of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

Image courtesy Ambrose Dudley/The Stapleton Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

Libraries have come a long way since Alexandria, of course. Much of what wed miss if they
disappeared are more recent traditions, dating back a few hundred years.

In 1888, Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie endowed a public library in

Braddock, Penn., connected by an underground tunnel to a steel works he owned. As an
immigrant working boy, he had been the beneficiary of an informal lending-library operated
by a prominent Pittsburgher, and Carnegie wanted to pay the favor on to the next generation
of strivers. Over the next decades, as he became one of the richest men on the planet, he
devoted a substantial part of his fortune to building what would become the backbone of the
American public library systemabout 2,500 Carnegie libraries stretching from Maine to
California.

Though tastes and designs have shifted, a few of the ideals enshrined in the old Carnegie
libraries are still held dear today. They are monumental, carrying a reader up a flight of stairs
into a beautiful building, evoking a temple of learning. The layout, with books arranged in
alcoves and open shelves, encourages random browsing. Most importantly, the space is
egalitarian and open to all (though Carnegie did endow so-called separate but equal
libraries in the South). Carnegie libraries exemplify what sociologist Ray Oldenburg calls a
third placeneither work nor home, a universally accessible space where citizens are free
to congregate and fraternize without feeling like loiterers.

These ideals can still be seen in the design of many more recent libraries, even if today
theyre more likely to be built in a strip mall or a converted Walmart.

Left, the first Carnegie Library in Braddock, Penn. It has recently been threatened by closure. Right, a
converted Walmart in McAllen, Texas.

Photo courtesy Christopher Rolinson/Braddock Carnegie Library/Wikimedia; Lara Swimmer

Photography

These design benefits were ancillary, of course, to the fundamental purpose of the Carnegie
librariesaccess to the precious treasures of knowledge and imagination through which
youth may ascend, in the words of the benefactor. If Carnegie were alive today, however, an
Internet connection and perhaps a good e-book lending program would be enough to provide
him treasures beyond his wildest dreams.

Libraries have compensated for this shift by redefining their mission around providing access
to new technologies. The slow invasion of computer clusters that has defined the past two
decades of library design serves an important purpose, but that mission, too, now seems
increasingly redundant. Already, three-quarters of Americans access the Internet at home,
with both broadband and mobile access rising steadily, particularly among younger people. It
seems unlikely that providing on-site public access to online media will be a compelling
justification for funding brick-and-mortar libraries even a decade from now.

Instead, librarians have begun to identify a rationale for institutional survival in the ancillary
public benefits noted above, in particular the principle of a third place focused on learning.
The British writer Caitlin Moran, mourning the closings of public libraries in her country,
eloquently defends the ideal:

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival.
They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold,
rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen,
instead. A mallthe shopsare places where your money makes the wealthy wealthier. But a
library is where the wealthy's taxes pay for you to become a little more extraordinary, instead.

Across the United States, librarians have been experimenting with ways of expanding on this
newly elaborated missionfor instance, by opening so-called maker spaces in annexes and
areas where bookshelves have been cleared out. A throwback to the mechanics library of the
19th century, maker spaces collect old and new technologies, from sewing machines to 3-D
printers, and encourage patrons to develop and share skills that cannot be practiced over the
Internet.

A
trend-setting maker space called the Fab Lab at Fayetteville Public Library, in New York.

Photo courtesy Fayetteville Free Library FabLab

Some look askance at the library morphing into a bookless social club for gearheads and
gadget nerds.

For those who might look askance at the prospect of their library morphing into a bookless
social club for gearheads and gadget nerds, a group of young arts-oriented librarians have
formed the Library as Incubator Project to promote a different, though by no means
incompatible, vision of third place. On its website, the Library as Incubator Project
highlights library programs from around the country that involve displaying, facilitating, or
disseminating art, often by and for the local community. Favorite projects include the Local
Music Project at the Iowa City Public Library, where librarians lease recordings from local
artists and offer them online to cardholders for free, and the Brooklyn Art Librarys
Sketchbook Project, a traveling bookmobile that accumulates donated 32-page sketchbooks
from both professional and amateur artists and displays them around the country. Its easy to
imagine how a local institution built on these sorts of programs could continue to serve as
hospital of the soul and theme park of the imagination long after all the paper books have
been cleared away.

The Idea Box at Oak Park, Ill. public librarya rotating interactive exhibition and artist residency
space.

Photo courtesy of Oak Park Public Library/Flickr

Both maker spaces and Library as Incubatorstyle art programs engage library patrons to
produce their own content. Also in this vein, some wealthier libraries have begun hosting
self-publishing and print-on-demand technologies like the Espresso Book Machine. If basic
Internet access is no longer anything to write home about, its notable that the cutting-edge
technologies that libraries can boast of providing on-site access to are used more for creating
and less for passive, traditional library activities like reading and watching.
On a broader scale, the recently-launched Digital Public Library of America, operating out of
the Boston Public Library, is building a nationwide digital collection of historical materials
sourced everywhere from libraries and private collections to family photo albums and boxes
of old letters in the attic. According to founder Dan Cohen, the DPLAs ambition is to work
with local libraries to collect materials and perhaps eventually to present them at touch-
screens designed to help patrons explore the history of their specific communities. We love
the idea of making a connection between the digital and physical realm, Cohen says.

Here, the new emphasis on user-generated content overlaps with one of the longtime pillars
of the library ideal, going back to Alexandriaa comprehensive archive of human
knowledge, imagination, wisdom, and experience. The local library, the communitys
traditional point of contact with that vast archive, becomes a place where we not only
download culture, but upload it too.

As cash-strapped public libraries scramble to reorient themselves for the digital age around
access to technology and third place services, better-funded university libraries have been
steadily pushing ahead with the same set of revamped ideals writ large. A few bold new
constructions, like the James B. Hunt, Jr. Library at North Carolina State University, reflect
widespread confidence that universities will always have a place for libraries as service
desks, collaboration spaces, and technology access points.

The Hunt, completed in early 2013, stores the vast majority of its book collection in a
compact system of metal bins accessed by book-fetching robots. Similar systems are used by
companies like Walmart at distribution centers. The robots work 24 hours a day and can
retrieve a book ordered from a computer or mobile device in two to five minutes. On display
to the public upon entering the building, the robots have become a museum-like attraction,
drawing not just curious engineering students but also children, who get a kick out of pushing
a button and spurring the robots into action.

The rest of the library is an experiment in what to do with an abundance of space and a
mandate for technology and collaboration. Many walls and even furniture pieces can be
written on, illustrating the librarys transition away from a mood of hushed reverence. In
addition to loud rooms and quiet rooms, the Hunt features several spaces that offer to the
entire campus community specialized technology that might in other circumstances be
available only to a certain academic program. We find that people in other disciplines will
use the technology differently, extend it, says university librarian Susan Nutter.
 Students in front of the robotic book
storage system at NC States Hunt Library.

Photo courtesy Jeff Goldberg/Esto

For example, the Hunts four visualization labs allow students and professors to share
MicroTiles screens to collaborate on complicated projects that require looking at multiple
images, documents, videos, or websites side-by-side. These labs attracted the attention of the
campus ROTC chapter, which is training students in warship steering simulations, and the
local video game industry, which has formed new research collaborations with professors on
campus.

Students explore traffic simulations at a teaching and visualization lab at NC State.

Photo courtesy Marc Hall/NC State University

The high-tech future of libraries might lie in buildings like the Hunt, but walk into a typical
American public library and youll probably identify about three current core services:
storing an underused circulating collection of paper books, ensuring community-wide access
to Facebook on desktop computers, and sheltering homeless people.

As at the New York Public Library, the books are making a quiet last stand against the
techno-historical forces pushing them aside. It seems unlikely theyll hold onto their real
estate for very long. The desktops are, for now, essential for a significant but shrinking slice
of the populationmostly poor and elderly peoplewho cant reliably access the Internet
from home or on a mobile device. Eventually, the Venn diagram of those who lack
smartphones and those who lack homes may nearly overlap exactly. Libraries are well
positioned to serve many of the needs of this demographic, the dispossessed of the digital
age.

Library interior.

Photo courtesy Bradleyolin/Flickr

Patching the gaps of the fraying social safety net with shelter, bathrooms, and other very
basic services for people in crisis is not part of the original mission of public libraries. It can
detract from other services, particularly those aimed at children. Perhaps for this reason, a
library in Orange County, Calif., recently instituted a napping and odor ban.

However, public libraries have long served a progressive, interventionist agenda, putting
knowledge directly into the hands of the poor, the immigrant, and those historically excluded
from certain educational institutions. If no better resources can be cobbled together, isnt it
against the spirit of the library to turn away a person in need? It remains to be seen how this
commitment will affect middle-class willingness to fund public libraries.

The Gramsci Monument Library at the

Forest Houses, in the Bronx, 2013.

Photo courtesy Jason Eppink/Flickr

Outside of the publicly financed system, the library-as-intervention model thrives in fringy
endeavors like books-to-prisons projects, the Occupy Wall Street library, or the Little Free
Librarys outdoor book-sharing boxes. Its a good time to operate one of these outsider
libraries, which are particularly well positioned to make use of the vast detritus of unwanted
paper books currently washing up every day at Goodwill stores and recycling centers.

It remains uncertain exactly what will happen to the New York Public Librarys Main Branch
in the renovations already underway. Supposedly forthcoming is a plan that will preserve the
Snead stacks as part of a new circulating library, allowing patrons to see and experience the
historic stack design, which has been off-limits to visitors up until now. This plan should
satisfy preservationists, if not scholars hoping to keep the research collection intact. If it
carries the day, the stacks will have survived less as a functional element of city infrastructure
and more as a museum curiosity for tablet-toting patrons of the future.

But perhaps its in the model of the museum that nostalgic and futurist visions of libraries
converge. Just as families have begun to visit NC States campus to gawk at the book-
fetching robots, so tourists of the coming decades might plan trips to 42nd Street to walk the
venerable stacks that once served as intellectual aquifer to a great city in its era of cultural
blossoming.

Since Alexandria, weve gone to libraries look backward, to give our focused, undivided
attention to the wisdom and imagination of the past. This ethic, bound up for centuries in the
symbol of the book, can be a kind of intervention in itself, particularly in the current era of
constant distraction and multitasking. A library of the future might also be, at its best, a
sanctuary where we are encouraged to spend entire hours looking at just one thing, losing
awareness of our phones in our pockets, our messages that have to be checked, the thousands
of informational tasks that we set for ourselves every day. The book-oriented library, where it
survives in defiance of the digital shift, tends to take on the aspect of a temple for this sort of
focused, old-fashioned study and contemplation.

For instance, Book Mountain, a recently completed library in the Netherlands, proudly
emphasizes paper books. It abuts a 42-unit development of residential homes, the so-called
Library Quartera sort of mission town for a cathedral of the mind.

Book Mountain in Spijkenisse, the Netherlands, by MVRVD.

Photo courtesy Daria Scagliola/MVRDV

These days, of course, cathedrals arent in much better shape than libraries. To maintain a
monumental institution in the middle of a community requires patronage, in both the financial
and civic engagement senses. If the people want emerging technologies more than they want
books, libraries have to respond to that, even if it means closing up shop and moving entirely
online.

Matthew Battles, who since publishing his history of libraries has become a principal at
Harvards forward-looking metaLAB, believes that the future of libraries must be decided not
by nostalgic scholars or librarians hoping to save their jobs, but in conversation with
communities. Librarians, scholars, policy makers all have to be part of that dialogue, but it
must embrace a civic context, not the institutional context, he says. If you do that, having
spent a lot of time in libraries and meetings with library administration, you end up in this
conversation of how do you save the library. People say, We know we have to change, but
we dont know how. Theres a death spiral in that dialogue.

Libraries will only survive if the communities they serve want and need them to.

In the 1990s, the Egyptian government under Hosni Mubarak decided to rebuild the famous
library of Alexandria. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a monumental design by the Norwegian
firm Snhetta, was completed in 2002 at a cost of about $220 million. Despite the obvious
echo of the past, it is in many ways a library of the future. In partnership with the Internet
Archive, it features an offline backup of every website since 1996an early stab at long-term
preservation of online materials. It is also a hub for projects digitizing early Arabic and
ancient Egyptian archives.

From the start, however, the Bibliotheca has been plagued by funding problems. Its book
collection has never rivaled those of other major national libraries, and, perhaps due to its
Latin name, the institution has had trouble earning the trust of its own country. During the
recent political upheavals, dissidents physically attacked the executive floor of the library.
The director was investigated for corruption, and the library it lost its endowment. More
recently, a tweeted photo of a library gift shop covered in broken glass accused demonstrators
of firing bullets at the Bibliotheca and injuring security staff.

History can repeat itself. Libraries will only survive if the communities they serve want and
need them to. It would be a tragedy of historic proportions if, for instance, the public library
system that Carnegie endowed and inspired is dismantled in the coming decades, but its a
real possibility. In the end, its up to usscholars, makers, and artists, seekers of community,
access, and safe haven, and above all, readers in the old, human sense of the wordto rise to
the level of these monuments weve built.
Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Photo courtesy Ting Chen/Flickr

Correction, April 30, 2014: This article originally misstated that the original plan for the
New York Public Library's main branch proposed moving all of the research collection to
New Jersey. It only proposed that much of the research collection would move to New Jersey.
(Return.)

Update April 30, 2014: This article has been updated go clarify that the current New York
Public Library proposal would keep more of the collection onsite than had initially been
proposed.

Michael Agresta is a writer living in Austin.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/design/2014/04/the_future_of_the_library_how_they_ll_evolve
_for_the_digital_age.html

For many of us, libraries are magic.

We treasure the feeling when we walk through the door that weve entered someplace
awesome, the thrill of the hunt through the catalog for exactly what were looking for, the
wonder of discovering new titles, and the rush of joy we experience when we see the book
that we want waiting for us on the shelf.

Whats to become of libraries now that the sum total of human knowledge is literally in the
palm of our hands? What will happen to libraries when virtually every book, every image,
every piece of music ever produced is available instantly in our homes at the touch of a
keyboard?

Dont despair. Not only is there still a place for the library in the
modern age, but libraries are just as important now as theyve ever been. So says John
Palfrey, Head of School at Phillips Academy and author of Biblio TECH: Why Libraries
Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google (Basic Books, 2015).

Libraries are more than community centers, just as librarians do more than answer questions
you could easily ask Google, writes Palfrey. From the opening of the Boston Public
Library, the first public library, to the expansion of libraries across America . . . the library as
an institution has been fundamental to the success of our democracy.

Libraries provide access to the skills and knowledge necessary to fulfill our roles as active
citizens, Palfrey continues. Libraries also function as essential equalizing institutions in our
society.

John Palfrey. Photo: Dave White

Lisa Oldham, director of the New Canaan Public Library in Connecticut, agrees. The
traditional mission of public libraries is to serve the learning needs of the complete diversity
of their constituency, from cradle to grave, from indigent to millionaire, from barely literate
to academic.

And the American public agrees as well. According to a recent poll from the Pew research
center, more than 90 percent of Americans believe that public libraries are a vital part of their
communities.

But how can libraries continue to do that in a time of e-books and Wikipedia? Libraries must
adapt to technological changes and include them as part of their offerings to their patrons.
And libraries must move rapidly, says Oldham, incorporating new technology as quickly as
possible to serve [communities] vital needs while also retaining older, analogue formats for
those who prefer them.

The path forward for libraries and librarians is not mysterious, Palfrey writes. The key is very simple:
to focus on what the digital media and the Internet make possible, not what they undo. This perspective
enables library supporters to find and exploit the ways in which the digital and the analog come together,
where they reinforce on another.

The potential for libraries in the digital world is endless. For starters, they provide free access
to computers and the Internet to anyone who needs them, regardless of income or
background. Beyond that, librarians can help patrons navigate the vast and expansive digital
frontier. For example, librarians can help patrons find, at no cost, interactive materials
ranging from original historical documents to the notes from recent city hall meetings,
Palfrey writes. Libraries and librarians remain essential for helping other people make sense
of the overwhelming mass of information onlineand making it immediately relevant to
their lives.

The adaptation of technology wont be easy, though, in a time of dwindling financial support
from local, state and the federal government. It will be largely up to us, those who love
libraries, to help successfully usher them into a digital age. Support for libraries, both
financial and otherwise, is crucial during this period of transformation from a predominantly
analog to a predominantly digital world, Palfrey writes. Our job now as citizens and library
patrons is to support them in their efforts so they can fulfill their essential role in our
communities.

Physical libraries have never been more vital, interesting, useful places, says Palfrey. If we dont
maintain physical libraries, we will lose essential public, intellectual spaces in our communities, places
where people can meet face-to-face, and if we dont build digital libraries connected to them, those
physical places may become obsolete.

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Posted in Smarts | Tagged analog, BiblioTech, digital, digital age, digital world, John Palfrey,
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About The Contributor

Michael Ruscoe is a writer, teacher, and musician living in Southern Connecticut. He is the
author of the novel, "From the Stray Cat Files: Youll Do Anything," the anthology,
"Baseball: A Treasury of Art and Literature," and numerous educational texts. An instructor
at Southern Connecticut State University, Ruscoe is also lead singer and songwriter for the
indie band Save the Androids! In his spare time he earns karma for his next life by ardently
following the New York Mets. The proud father of two children, Ruscoe also cares for and
supports a pair of goldfish, who, in all honesty, are not very good conversationalists.

http://booktrib.com/2015/08/how-can-libraries-survive-in-the-digital-age/

Can libraries survive in a digital world?

By Alex Hudson
BBC Click

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The British Library has aspirations to digitise all of its 14m books

Publishers stand accused of "nonsensical" policies on e-book lending to libraries. So,

with nearly $1bn spent on e-books last year in the US alone, what does this mean for the
institutions already at risk of closure?

When publishers "declared war on libraries" last October - according to Luton's head of
libraries - there was uproar.

The Publishers' Association (PA) in the UK has agreed with the major publishing houses to
restrict e-lending by either geographical location or the number of readers using an e-book at
any one time.
And when HarperCollins became the first publisher to
put its head above the parapet and change its conditions
to the libraries, there was further anger.

It believes that e-books should be given a licence for 26

uses and then this must be renewed at further - though
reduced - cost.

"We believe this change balances the value libraries get

from our titles with the need to protect our authors and
ensure a presence in public libraries," read a Amazon says it sold over 8m Kindle e-
HarperCollins statement. readers worldwide in 2010

The "26-use" model was arrived at because,

HarperCollins says, of the average lifespan of a physical copy in a library.

"Our hope is to make the cost per circulation for e-books less than that of the corresponding
physical book," says Josh Marshall, president of sales at HarperCollins.

While only a policy in the US at the moment, HarperCollins "weren't ruling out" it happening
in the UK and this has angered librarians even further.

"The idea that they've decided on 26 uses doesn't make The whole point of having an e-
any sense to me," says librarian Phil Bradley, vice book is that I can get one
president of the Chartered Institute of Library and wherever I am, whenever I want
Information Professionals.

"Any librarian can tell you that a paperback can be Phil Bradley, librarian
loaned at least 40 times and a hardback even more than
that."

He had previously described the announcement as "a stupid, backward looking and
retrograde step" on his personal blog.

'Price-tag zero'

But if all e-books were available to everyone at any time, why would anyone need to buy a
book ever again? And why would anyone need to visit a library if it could be downloaded
off-site?

"It's important to remember that libraries are not simply bookstores where the price-tag
always reads zero," says Nora Daly, digital curator of the British Library.

"They exist to collect, sometimes create, but always preserve that knowledge, regardless of
what format it is in and to help make it grow through advocating and assuring free and
fruitful access to it.
"If we understand the role of libraries in that context, then
in 10 years' time they will still be providing open and
trusted environments - virtually and physically - in which
to share, create and grow knowledge."

Amazon, the biggest e-book retailer, is getting in on the

e-lending act. It offers the ability, in the US alone and
only if the publishers opt in, to allow the "owner" of an e-
book to lend it to someone else. Each file is allowed to be
loaned only once for 14 days and cannot be read by the
original purchaser during that time. The British Library offers a glimpse of
what could be the library of the
"We've got the balance about right in the [traditional] future
publishing world," says Richard Mollet, chief executive
of the PA.

"If [libraries] had the ability to lend e-books freely... it would have a serious consequence for
the commercial model."

Who owns what?

There has always been disagreement about what constitutes ownership in the digital world,
and what can be done with the files you purchase.

"When you buy an e-book you are effectively buying a licence to view a file," says Mollet.

"Yes you're buying the manifestation of the work but what you can then do with that file is a
separate question."

Not everyone agrees with this sentiment.

The author, journalist and campaigner Cory Doctorow allows his work, wherever possible, to
be released from any digital rights management and made freely available on the web.

"The thing that's so offensive about saying you cannot There is no way to coerce
own a book anymore is that ownership of books predates someone to pay for something if
copyright," he says. they want to take it for free

"It not only predates printing but it predates commerce.

People have been owning books longer than people have Cory Doctorow, author
been buying and selling things."

And with the paper form having its limits, many see the new possibilities available with
digital technology as a great opportunity to allow greater access to libraries, especially for
those who traditionally struggle to reach libraries.

"The whole point of having an e-book is that I can get one wherever I am, whenever I want,"
says Bradley.

"They are not physical items and for the publisher to try and pretend that they are seems, to
me, nonsensical."

'Homemade' Harry Potter

But the idea that things should be available instantly to all library users is not one that the PA
agrees with. Indeed, Mollet believes that this is where e-tailers should step in.

Libraries are not for those who want something straight away, he says, as "you can jump onto
any number of sites and buy them".

"It's not got much to do with the e-lending debate."

A fact that publishers are wary of is that the written word

is easier to plagiarise than a movie or film.

A homemade version of Avatar is not going to look as

convincing as a home-typed version of Harry Potter. In
fact, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - not released
as an e-book - was typed out and released online illegally
within 24 hours of release.

"In an increasingly digital world, there is no way to

coerce someone into paying for something if they want to Harry Potter has been typed out by
take it for free," says Doctorow. fans and put online without
permission
"The only mechanism we have for convincing people to
do the right thing, the legitimate thing or even the
profitable thing is to appeal to their sense of ethics.

"I don't think you start doing that by saying that 'by the way, we don't trust you, we've
developed this book that explodes after 26 uses and you can no longer own books anyway'."

But what does this mean for libraries? With hundreds of libraries earmarked for closure, are
people just going to stop venturing into libraries at all?

"I get really fed up with the people who believe the entire idea that we're not going to read in
libraries," says Bradley.

"I see the exact opposite. Libraries have got a vibrant future.

"Communities need libraries more than they ever have done before and they are in a superb
position to help [during difficult economic times].

"People who say 'we don't need libraries because it's all on Google' either don't understand
libraries or don't understand the internet at all."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9421996.stm

Envisioning the library of the future

 Envisioning the library of the future
o Research methodology
Reference Online
Community libraries research
Libraries Development Initiative

Envisioning the library of the future was a major research project undertaken by the Arts
Council in 2012/13 that will help us to understand the future for libraries, and how we can
enable them to develop.

Envisioning the library of the future and the work that came from it will help us and our
partners in the library sector to set out the value, role and purpose of public libraries with
more clarity, pointing out ways they can respond to change in order to remain at the heart of
their communities. This will provide the focus for our work in the future.

The research began in January 2012, and comprised three phases during which researchers
spoke with more than 800 people. The research included an online survey which had over
1,400 responses, and 10,000 people viewed the online conversation.

Download the Arts Council's response to Envisioning the library of the future

Envisioning the library of the future research documents

Phases 1 and 2:

Envisioning the library of the future Phase 1: a review of innovations in library services by
Ipsos MORI and Shared Intelligence
Envisioning the library of the future Phase 1: Future trends review by Ipsos MORI
Envisioning the library of the future Phase 1: Delphi enquiry by Ipsos MORI and Shared
Intelligence
Envisioning the library of the future Phases 1 and 2: full report by Ipsos MORI and Shared
Intelligence

Phase 3:

Envisioning the library of the future Phase 3: understanding what people value about
libraries by Dialogue by Design and Involve
Envisioning the library of the future Phase 3: online survey by Dialogue by Design
Envisioning the library of the future Phase 3: understanding what young people value about
libraries by Dialogue by Design and Office for Public Management

What the research has told us

This research has found that public libraries are trusted spaces, open to all, in which people
continue to explore and share the joys of reading, information, knowledge and culture. It is
clear that people value the services that libraries provide and will continue to do so. Indeed,
there is a clear message that there is a compelling and continuing need for a publicly funded
library service.
The research also reminds us that public libraries face many challenges in the coming years,
including: advances in technology, which affect the ways in which people want to connect to
information and culture; reduced public expenditure; the increasing involvement of citizens
in the design and delivery of public services; and the needs of an ageing population.

Four priority areas

In order to foster a successful, sustainable library service in light of these challenges, the Arts
Council has set out four priority areas for development which have been tested and
corroborated by stakeholders:

1 place the library as the hub of the community

2 make the most of digital technology and creative media

3 ensure that libraries are resilient and sustainable

4 deliver the right skills for those who work in libraries

Working with partners

The Arts Council is already working with key partners in the sector to use the research
including: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Local Government Association,
Society of Chief Librarians, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
and the British Library. We will focus our energy on these priorities in our work with these
partners and others in the future.

Our work to date

We have already undertaken a lot of work to help libraries to develop in these four priority
areas. This includes:

our Community libraries research, which sets out guiding principles that ensure that
local authorities thinking about involving their communities in the delivery of library
services make sure that the decision is shaped by the needs of their constituency
the 6 million Grants for the arts Libraries fund
sharing good examples from some of the Libraries development initiative projects,
which were completed in March 2013
the Enterprising Libraries projects, in partnership with DCLG and the British Library,
which will be launched in July 2013

More information on the Arts Council's work in developing public libraries will be
announced on our Supporting libraries page.

- See more at: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/supporting-libraries/other-

links/library-of-the-future/#sthash.iEAzY7xy.dpuf