Libraries in the Digital Age

The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently released the latest report in their series Libraries in the Digital Age. The new report is Libraries, patrons, and eBooks and reveals more data on how our customers use our libraries. The authors report on surveys conducted with library users regarding their use of the library, especially how often they use eBooks. As with my previous Librarian Link on the Rise of E-Reading, I’ll comment on the report, but naturally I encourage everyone to read the full report if they are intrigued by the topic.

I have to say, I have a troubled relationship with this series of studies and readers will likely detect a contrarian view from me at times. Despite bearing the name Libraries in the Digital Age, the report heavily weights its survey questions toward the topic of eBooks and e-reading. If one only reads these reports, one will likely suffer from the Biblical mote in one’s eye. There are so much more to libraries in the Digital Age (incidentally, what date did the Information Age end and the Digital Age begin? I checked my Compuserve account and searched Altavista, but I couldn’t find out the date) than eBooks. Obviously, we want to provide eBooks in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible, but the issues are currently in the commercial realm, not in the efficacy of libraries.

eBooks and publishers today are essentially where the music industry and recording labels were in the 2000s. For now most of the main publishers restrict or forbid library checkouts. This despite a 2010 report on the lessons of the “download decade,” which saw the music industry at war with its listeners, from Money said, “The problem for the music industry may actually be its greatest opportunity. Despite the great decline in sales, the Internet has exposed consumers to more music than ever before.” A recording industry spokesman admitted, “We're switching to an access model from a purchase model.”  That meaning they now license material to providers who offer them free to listeners then channel them into sales (you’ve probably listened to Pandora or Spotify and seen the offer to purchase the song you’re hearing). The licensing model is essentially what we have now (though only Amazon offers the selling part) for those publishers who allow library checkouts but who can say how it will all be resolved?

This new report from Pew suggests that e-book use is rising, but mainly in the commercial arena as 58% of Americans have a library card, 69% of whom consider it of great importance, but 62% don’t know that the library even loans eBooks.  Most of the data on the use of eBooks I did not find radical nor was it markedly different from the previous report. But this survey did ask about the future of libraries, although I think it’s somewhat loaded to ask the question of the survey subjects immediately after introducing them to eBooks. I would think you’d get a more pure response if it were asked first or in a separate survey. At any rate they found “some patrons talked about libraries with fewer printed books and more public meeting and learning spaces. Some librarians struggled to see past a murky transition. There was a combination of apprehension and excitement in their answers without a clear consensus about the structure and shape of the institution.”

For me, this survey and the recent actions by publishers in regard to the loaning of eBooks press home the necessity and the importance for us as a system and as a profession to identify our mission and our role and stick with it. Formats come and go and technology constantly evolves but the essence and spirit of the public library remains. We can’t control what the big six publishers do nor Amazon or Google. Those are commercial enterprises that are interested in vending merchandise. We’re in the business of making sure that everyone has free access to information and ideas where, as Andrew Carnegie said, “neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”  We’re the people’s university and the people still need us.