books? why do you need books?

October 23, 2009 9:02 PM

Library of the future?

I run a small community college library (70,000 books, budget after salaries of $150,000). The college is part of a large state university system. Our chancellor is convinced that within the next five years or so all of the books at the Library of Congress will be digitized and online for free. He wants a plan for the library about how we will deal with the coming digital revolution. He asked me what I am going to do with all the room once I get rid of the books in a few years.

Our library is pretty good with technology. We have 20 new or newish computers for students to use, loan Kindles, have Blu-ray DVD players and large HD televisions. In addition to the physical, collection (70K books) we have access to large article and e-book databases.

Can anyone direct me to studies of the libraries of the future? Does anyone have any ideas what I should tell him? I am very good at putting things together and creating impressive reports. I am just having a bit a a problem wrapping my mind around this.

posted by fifilaru to education (25 comments total)

Your chancellor needs to read up on copyright law. Even if they were all digitized, they could not be put online for free unless they were in the public domain.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:10 PM on October 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

I think he's wrong. I do not think that libraries will become wholly digitized institutions. That claim, to me, is ridiculous. Reading a book, physically reading, is too ingrained into culture - all cultures, not just Western cultures. Your chancellor's argument reminds me of the one I have been hearing for years about newspapers. Rumor abounds concerning the complete eradication of printed newspaper. Hogwash!!! Reading a paper is a cultural rite of passage. When I'm sipping my coffee, or riding the train, or hanging out in a cafe, I want a newspaper to pass the time. I want the ink on my fingers. I want to struggle to turn the large pages. I want to fill in the crossword. Where would libraries without all of their equal sensations? I want to spend hours looking through the stacks for the perfect book, the perfect journal, the perfect reference that proves my point. Research can be digital, but it needs to be physical as well.
posted by AlliKat75 at 9:10 PM on October 23 [2 favorites has favorites]

There's tons of this stuff in the library literature. Library Literature (the database) would probably be a good place to start.
posted by box at 9:25 PM on October 23

I know he is wrong. I am trying to find a tactful way to get this through to him.
posted by fifilaru at 9:27 PM on October 23

I think what you might want to do is present the portion of your budget devoted to e-journal licensing. Then note that at least a portion of said journals are in the Library of Congress already. Hopefully he can perform the necessary conjunction 'twixt the two.
posted by adipocere at 9:36 PM on October 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

There's been talk of print-on-demand at bookstores, though not for free. So maybe you could find something about this (the not-free part would be especially helpful).
posted by bluedaisy at 9:53 PM on October 23

Also, people freaked out when U of Texas removed all the books from one of their libraries. Check the Chronicle of Higher Ed for this story.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:54 PM on October 23

A good thing to do would be to have him Google James Tracy the head of ... what was that school... the private school that is going bookless, like NOW. Or at least they're moving that way. It was sort of a bold move and it got a lot of people chattering about it, in sort of "what if" sceanrios but also "why we're so far from there right now" Library Literature [the database] is a good one and I'll hunt around a little tomorrow for some good counterarguments. Being ready for there being less and less print materials in an academic collection is a good idea but we're not looking at anywhere near a five year horizon on that.
posted by jessamyn at 10:14 PM on October 23 [2 favorites has favorites]

people freaked out when U of Texas removed all the books from one of their libraries

As an undergraduate at Texas, every time I had to go to that library to get a book, it was a pain. It's really a good thing that they moved all those books into the main library instead. But I think that's not really comparable unless the chancellor expects the books to move to another library on the same campus.
posted by grouse at 10:48 PM on October 23 [2 favorites has favorites]

Grouse, I don't mean it was a bad idea (I have no idea). But the reaction to it suggested that people were not ready for bookless libraries.

Apparently Barnes & Nobles' new book reader is great. I could see, somehow, libraries moving towards kindles and such (whatever cool thing we use then) and reducing print collections.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:21 PM on October 23

I am trying to find a tactful way to get this through to him.

Send him a link to free book online already. Tell him to read the full book on a screen. By page 24 he'll have either given up and lost interested, rubbed his eyes red, and/or seriously considered printing the entire thing out on paper.

Read on a screen is not easy. Although I've heard the Kindle and other ebook readers are pretty good (I've never tried one myself), it'll be a while until we have something that matches the perfect contrast of black ink on paper. They also can't be quickly skimmed or flipped through which is what libraries are for. Libraries may be changing, but the books will be there for a long time yet.
posted by Kippersoft at 11:35 PM on October 23 [2 favorites has favorites]

My Google-fu is failing me, but a few weeks ago I read that Jeff Bezos' alma mater law school replaced all the books with Kindles. But the students hate it because they can't mark up the texts. That might be a good example.

FWIW, my last library has a big Library of the Future campaign right now. They are planning on a lot of underground storage for less-used books, but the idea is to make the collection that's open more easily browseable and accessible.

And IPR. Is going to kill this idea dead.
posted by wingless_angel at 1:20 AM on October 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

Our chancellor is convinced that within the next five years or so all of the books at the Library of Congress will be digitized and online for free.

Hahahahaha. That's pretty crazy. They'll be digitized, sure, but certainly not available for free. Google already has something like 165 million books digitized.
posted by delmoi at 2:08 AM on October 24

Here's a few cents clinking around in my brain:

If they ditch things that are hidden behind licenses (a lot of journals come to mind), they're going to need to up the budget for those.

5 years seems a bit ambitious to have things completely digitized, IMO.

If you do a lot of ILL stuff and have licensed online only access to some things, I've heard you can't send out those articles. (YMMV, of course, but we've gotten flak from our ILL person about it.)

Believe me, if the space becomes available, there's always someone just waiting to fill it. I'm not sure exactly what your setup is, but since you're part of a big university system, it's likely that they'll want to put their stuff in your empty space. (This is one of the current problems at my place since we're the place materials retire to and has resulted in a number of pissing matches between administrators.)

We've got a fair number of journal subscriptions too, but patrons have mentioned being aggravated with them for a few reasons: crappy scan quality (especially with art and medical images), the moving wall, full text not always being available, not having access to older issues of journals, and having to have internet access to view things.

There may also be the case that having a particular format of something makes it more important. (For example, we have a set of microcards for a Civil War series that you can find pretty much completely online for free through Google Books and Internet Archive, but for some reason, the fact that we have it on microcards makes it important enough to keep it that way. You can get it on fiches as well, but the PTB have decided to stick with the old format, annoying as it is.)

Inertia is likely to be an issue as well. What problems are they trying to fix by ditching books? Not enough space? Wanting to be all techy?

Planning for the future is a wonderful thing, but trying to solve problems that aren't known never ends well.
posted by sperose at 2:12 AM on October 24

Read on a screen is not easy. Although I've heard the Kindle and other ebook readers are pretty good (I've never tried one myself), it'll be a while until we have something that matches the perfect contrast of black ink on paper.

It's not difficult if you have a nice monitor. Full screen reading on a huge, high-contrast LCD actually pretty present. Books are a little nicer because you can sit in lots of different locations, change lighting, etc. But books actually look pretty beautiful full screen (with one page being bigger on the screen then on an 8.5"x11" page.) Whites are brighter on the screen unless I have a ton of light shining right on the page.
posted by delmoi at 2:14 AM on October 24

And, if all else fails, remind him gently of the hype around the paperless office.
posted by x46 at 4:05 AM on October 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yeah, just go back ten years and see what they were predicting then, and whether it resembles the present in any way...
posted by mbrubeck at 6:55 AM on October 24 [2 favorites has favorites]

I do scholarly research and writing as part of my career. I have access to my local University's digital collection, which is great because it is easy to do keyword searches and track down information....but I typically need to print off the article on paper. I like to make notes on the paper, underline stuff and get all the articles out and spread them out in front of me. Research quickly becomes confusing when you are working with digitized copies of stuff viewable only on the computer screen. If you just want to read a short novel, I think a digital book would work great, but for scholars who need information out of 20 or more books and journals, it's a hellish idea that gives me a migraine just thinking about it.

On a positive note, I do like being able to quickly search through a digital book before I go to the library. I've saved time and eliminated the need to locate, handle and check out books because I know they don't have what I need in them.

I think a combination of digital and paper is the way to go.
posted by pluckysparrow at 7:25 AM on October 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

The school jessamyn mentions above was the topic of a Metafilter post last month. You might give the article and MeFi comments a read to get ideas. I believe the space that used to hold books in their library now feature TVs, and the reference desk is a coffeeshop.
posted by Houstonian at 7:28 AM on October 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

I would point him to some articles discussing all the back and forth between Google and the Authors' Guild, to give him a sense of how complicated the copyright issues are and why it is extremely unlikely that in five years all digitalized content will be freely available.

There have also been some articles published recently (here is one example one) discussing how, while often excellent for leisure reading, e-book readers are not yet good vehicles for students' academic reading. There was also an EDUCAUSE report this month about a study done at Gettysburg College about students using various mobiles devices for reading electronic texts but unfortunately I think that you may need to be an EDUCAUSE member to read this.

Honestly, though, it really sounds like your library is pretty on top of all this so it may mostly come down to emphasizing how you really are interested in, and aware of, the issues involved and are flexible and willing to move in the direction of ebooks as the technology improves and as people's comfort with them increases. However, counter this with emphasizing that there will be costs involved with doing so, and this shift may (at least within the next five year) primarily manifest itself in your purchasing more new content in electronic format rather than print, and experimenting with new ereaders, instead of you throwing out all those pesky print books that you already own. Over time, as weeding is done at the library some extra space may well become available but this is likely to be a gradual process. Oh, and you can also throw in some references, as people above have mentioned, how people FREAK OUT when it comes to any mention of getting rid of whole collections, or large portion thereof. But frame it in terms of the politics, not in terms of your own diehard love o' the print.

So, in the end, my approach would be to compile a report that is a long, more classy version of:

"Wow, it is so awesome that you are thinking of the library and how it is going to evolve in the future with all this new technology stuff! So are we! We totally agree that it is super important to think of what is going to happen with electronic texts! We are already doing X,Y, Z that relate to this!

Unfortunately, in the next five years probably everything that is available in digital format will not be free (silly copyright laws!) and there still may be some reasons why not everyone will not want/be able to use digital texts for everything. So, we will most likely need to hang onto some of these musty old books a little longer but we are totally psyched about looking into new approaches to doing things. And should we suddenly have more space available then we currently anticipate then we would love to be able to do X, Y, or Z with it. Thanks so much for asking for our thoughts on this and we look forward to the University's support as we continue to push forward with new initiatives!"
posted by pie_seven at 7:52 AM on October 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

In all seriousness, think about showing him AT&T's notorious "You Will" ads from 1993. Sixteen years ago, AT&T thought we'd be borrowing digital books online in the near future - that vision hasn't quite come to pass. (And note that the computer screen shows what appears to be photographs of individual book pages, not even scans.)

A few of the things in those ads have come about (GPS, EZ-Pass). But many don't exist at all (checking out a whole cart of groceries at once), exist but aren't used (videophones for casual use), exist in a very different form (you can buy concert tickets on your computer, but not from an ATM), or are already obsolete (fax from the beach).

And of course, pretty much none of this was brought to us by AT&T. So, trying to predict the future is damn hard. I'm more than willing to bet that libraries five years from now will look very, very similar to libraries today.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:01 AM on October 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

I don't have it handy, but if you pick up the latest issue of Strategy + Business (Booz's business magazine), there's a section on the future of libraries that might be good to talk with him about.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 12:40 PM on October 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

It's far better to have a chancellor that asks these kinds of questions than one that never asks these kinds of questions. However, many leaders can't be talked out of something; they can only be talked into something.

You can adjust his time estimate by framing your plan around demand; you'll have then books as long as people are using them. But then comes some breakout product or service that rapidly and permanently revolutionizes the consumption of text. There'll be an economic motive to digitize and reference and nonfiction will go first. 5 years may sound a little silly, but 5 years ago facebook was running under a desk in a Harvard dorm room.

So then what? I think the value of libraries in a fully internetworked world is to digitize & organize the local content and offer a permanent, noncommercial set of web products and services to bring the content produced by the community to the world.

So the space becomes software dev shops, usability labs, production studios & scanning rooms; or just comfortable working space with wifi and amenities, as getting out of the house is not likely to go out of style for a good while yet. Also group work is always looking for great spaces; a floor full of screen-equipped walk-in group meeting rooms can become big fast, especially if it's close to coffee.

Really, his wondering about what you're going to do with all that space is like Annie Edson Taylor nearing the edge and planning how she'll invest the honoraria to come. Don't try to tell him there isn't a problem, but present a vision of incremental change from collection to production, at a pace set by demand for and availability of materials, neither of which are really under the library's control, and he'll see that you've given it serious thought and you're ready to change with the world.

Annie Edson Taylor is really apropos here, because her manager ran off with the barrel, and she spent her savings chasing after the barrel. She tried to hit the lecture circuit even without the barrel, but she wasn't a very entertaining speaker, and she kept talking about the lost barrel.

Don't chase after the barrel and the library will be fine.
posted by ulotrichous at 9:50 PM on October 24 [1 favorite has favorites]

Grouse, I don't mean it was a bad idea (I have no idea). But the reaction to it suggested that people were not ready for bookless libraries.

There wasn't a massive outcry at the closing of the Undergraduate Library. The Chronicle found one student who thought it wasn't such a great idea. You can always count on a single uninformed member of the public to give you a quote opposing any sort of change. Most others thought it was a great idea. It just doesn't make a great argument against bookless libraries.
posted by grouse at 11:08 AM on October 25

He wants a plan for the library about how we will deal with the coming digital revolution. He asked me what I am going to do with all the room once I get rid of the books in a few years.

Sometimes administrators just ask these kinds of things. People always like collaborative, student-centered spaces. Draw up plans for something like that. A lot of couches, arranged in small clusters, where students can bring their laptops (or Kindles, I guess) and bounce ideas off each other. Include a student-run cafe. Include collaborations with your other campus units. Perhaps a kind of information desk concept where staff from the health, counseling, career, and other offices might have a staff member available to advise students. A partnership with the art department for student art shows. Maybe also a presentation/lecture/performance area... that will eat up a lot of space. Less space to plan for!

A big information desk staffed with lots of librarians would be good. You want to defend the value that your staff adds to the institution. There will be new digital technologies, digital catalogues, things like that. Someone will need to teach students how to use all those new things, just as once upon a time they needed to be taught how to use card catalogs and microfilm readers (if the chancellor asks, why can't they just search Google? have a ready explanation as to why this is not enough).

I am pro-assessment. Include the formation of an advisory body made up of students.

Then pray that none of it ever comes to pass...
posted by halonine at 8:10 PM on October 25 [1 favorite has favorites]