Libraries, Ebooks, and Competition
Aug 15, 2010| Libraries, Ebooks, and Competition |
| Ebooks and the Retailization of Research |
| Ebook Sanity |
| E-Texts for All (Even Lucy) |
People keep writing articles about how valuable libraries are, even with ebooks and the Internet and all. Well, doh. Of course libraries are important. What people are overlooking is that the reason libraries are having such fits dealing with a changing environment is not that libraries are unrecognized as fountains of value, it's that libraries are so valuable that they attract voracious new competition with every technological advance.
To give you an example, 16 years ago I would go to my local public library to keep track of the latest news about companies whose stocks I owned. The financial information I got at the library was something I could take to the bank, so to speak. It would be pretty silly to do that today. All sorts of finance websites recognized that with advertising support, they could capture some of the value that used to be in libraries. Now, thanks to this competition, I get more timely, better quality financial information, in the middle of the night, from my chair. The library book I best remember reading as a teenager was Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. I borrowed it from the county library and read it on the beach at the New Jersey shore. Today, it's likely that a teenager would get the same book from Project Gutenberg and read it on a smartphone without ever visiting a library.
The Internet has made it possible for businesses and nonprofit websites to beat out libraries and capture value. And vice versa. Free Internet is offered by 82 percent of public libraries in the United States; 67 percent of the libraries report that they are the only place providing that type of access to their communities. The Internet has enabled academic libraries to offer new and more comprehensive services where the need has been greatest. Today, typical students or scholars have access to a much larger swath of knowledge through their library than a pre-Internet library could have imagined offering.
Overall, the Internet has resulted in both increases and decreases in the value delivered by libraries; libraries continued to attract funding from institutions and communities, while many measures of library usage have showed steady increases.
Ebooks: another technology shift
Just as the Internet introduced both competition for existing library services and openings for new library ones, the introduction of ebooks presents additional opportunities for competition with and by libraries. The impact on libraries will be uneven, because libraries deliver value in so many ways. The survival of libraries will depend on their ability to take advantage of ebook technologies to deliver new kinds of value, even as competition arises in the delivery of their traditional services.
The shift to ebook delivery presents a variety of challenges for libraries. They'll have to figure out how to manage ebook reading devices, reader application software, rights management, and licensing. An even larger challenge will be learning how to work alongside publishers and distribution channels to make it as easy for patrons to use ebooks as it is for them to use print books today. Needless to say, there's a lot of work to do, and it's not entirely clear how this work will be supported.
Nurturing ebook culture
Public libraries will find themselves competing with fresh players on multiple fronts, even as they deal with budget cuts and scramble for funding. The economic efficiencies that spring from library lending of print don't easily transfer to ebooks. Ebook business models that replace library lending will enable publishers to capture value directly. For example, direct-to-consumer ebook subscription services may compete directly with lending services offered through libraries.
Public libraries also serve their communities as physical gathering places that nurture culture. But libraries have no monopoly on offering free Wi-Fi Internet and comfortable reading and cultural spaces; it's only a matter of time before Starbucks and others add free ebooks, book clubs, and other content services onto the music and news that they currently offer. Bookstores of all types will not want to be left out of the reading-room market.
It's unlikely, however, that the Starbucks and Borders of the world are going to want to serve the folks who can't afford the $3 lattes or the $20 hardcovers. It would be tragic if communities found themselves divided between ebook-haves and ebook-have-nots.
Deluge of digitization
No one doubts the worth of a great academic library; libraries have long been used as recruiting tools for both faculty and students and given buildings designed by famous architects. They've been building up their book collections for years, and having these books creates a competitive advantage for the institution. Mass book digitization changes that profoundly. People don't care where an ebook is, as long as they can read it.
Most prominent among organizations that have recognized the value of turning academic library volumes into ebooks is Google, with its Google Books service. A key component of the settlement of Google's lawsuit with publishers and authors is an institutional subscription service. Even if the settlement is not approved by the court, expect Google Editions and other digitized-book services, such as the Internet Archive's Open Library, to offer world-class book collections at prices that mid-size and small libraries can afford. There's no reason such services wouldn't be offered directly to individuals as well. These services will compete directly with the print book collections of academic libraries, and libraries will need to reconcile their educational missions with updated roles as subscription administrators, just as they have done with e-journals.
The cheap distribution channels made possible by ebooks will allow libraries to nurture written scholarship in ways that were not possible with print. Cheap digitization will allow libraries to expand the reach of collections, while lowered barriers to publication will help libraries foster written scholarship into the future.
Ebooks in every backpack?
School librarians may well find their space, print collections, and budgets completely devoured by an ebook monster sooner than they imagine; we are only a few years away from ebook reader devices being cheap enough that it will be economically feasible to put an entire school library and all of a school's textbooks into every student's backpack. This could be mortal competition for school libraries as such.
Or maybe not. Now more than ever, children need to learn how to find, access, evaluate, and interact with digital information. Devices don't make that happen by themselves, even if they come with thousands of carefully selected ebooks.
Participate!
These issues stand to alter the face of school, public, and college library service. That's one of the reasons LJ is sponsoring an Ebook Summit on September 29. As part of the lead-up to the summit, this essay and those that follow—in this issue, as well as three more from me in the coming weeks—will take a closer look at some of the themes I've touched upon here.
Obviously, there is still a lot of uncertainty about how and when libraries develop ebook services as well as how libraries might best fit in a world where books are mostly consumed via ebook readers. What seems clear is that if libraries just sit back and wait to see what happens, rather than participating in the cycle of innovation and competition, they will end up with diminished roles in our culture. It's important that we don't let that happen.
| Author Information |
| Eric Hellman (eric@hellman.net, @gluejar on Twitter) has spent the last 12 years developing technology for libraries. He blogs at go-to-hellman.blogspot.com |
