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Why do we allow the goose that could lay a golden egg to
decline? If you could envisage one service , one hub, one recognised body from
today that could do battle with the internet’s digital omnivores and add real value, it would not be the
big chains, nor the media chains, not the independent bookstores and not even
the supermarkets, but could be the public library.
The public library has the real ability to add real value
and to be a real community hub in social network community world. But does it
understand this, or as in the UK, is it obsessed with its statutory obligations
and keeping everything ‘as is’ at all costs? Are the ‘Shhh, no noise’ signs
actually hiding a sleeping environment that is simply not listening to the
market and its customers?
We are witnessing harsh funding cuts, a worrying migration
to voluntary services, the wholesale dumping of every customer facing civic
service into the library’s ‘underused space’ and a general lack of leadership
and digital direction within the public library community.
This last week we read about further potential cuts to
library services in Newcastle, Sheffield and Islington, but today’s budget cuts of today are not so much a result
of the current financial climate but the years of lack of leadership, coherent strategy
which have lead them to be seen as ‘soft targets’ for decline and cuts today. Joining
up the service dots now is proving a challenge in an environment full of
different agendas and too many experts. Many ‘talk the talk’, but few ‘walk the
walk’ and innovation is often viewed as ‘not invented here’. There are as with
any diverse group, exceptions which will get quoted to rebuke this view, but the
majority remain wedded to the past, or find them selves struggling to treat the
patient that is now past plasters and bandages.
Has the media and publishing community really helped? Where
they there when the market started to turn digital, or sitting on the side
looking after their own interests? Why is the only real substantial offer in
the UK libraries from the US Overdrive? Why are some publishers still undecided
on how to licence ebooks to libraries and some more concerned about reorders
for no worn out digital copies than promoting open lending? We will give books
away to promote reading. We will support 15 million unit promotions with junk
food giants, but we still fail to resolve the digital economics of ebooks in a
library world. There is no national incentive to build a UK digital library to
serve all but several initiatives to outsource the core business to others such
as Overdrive.
Perhaps we are dreamers, but replicating digital programmes
in every community and ‘cut and pasting’ Overdrive’s API onto the back of the library
system is not a viable long term solution and is not a sustainable model.
Some have suggested that libraries should only be able to
lend digital books from the physical library. We wish they had used the same
logic on the High Street, but again we all know how ludicrous that argument
would have been. Libraries now have to be available 365 x 24 x 7 and the
internet offer today in many is woefully short of offering that service. It’s
not just about digital its about community service and that should not stop
when the librarian shuts the door.
Some have struggled to define what staffing resources should
be in the front line. Its not about staff but resources and access to them.
Educators are realising that all teachers are not equal and that the ‘best of
class’ resources can be brought in by services like TED Ed. We can’t expect
staff to be experts in everything and have knowledge of all things, they should
be great with people, know where to find the best help, engage are developing why do we believe that every
librarian is perfect? The key is to adopt a uniform approach that engage in
many ways and levels and that owns the interface until the customer is satisfied.
Libraries don’t need an Information Managers but a Customer Mangers with access
to information.
We have to recognise
that Amazon is just one step away from being a universal library today! Look at
FreeTime, LoveFilm, Audible, or their own ebook lending programme and ask what
is different to a library. Google and Wikipedia are accepted as the sources of
information that is good enough for the majority and available in a click.
Google is scanning in the world’s top libraries and amassing a significant body
of work. They will only hold it once and they can serve it to answer any search
, or as a feed, or to sell and of course to growth advertising revenues. If
Amazon has the media and Google the information what does the library have
except the legacy and cost? The key is collective vision and co-operation,
something often foreign to ‘information managers’.
Why do we believe that libraries have a place tomorrow and
can lay that golden egg? How do we think that they can offer real value to the
community? Why do we think that they can fare any better than the doomed chains
when pitted against the Internet omnivores?
They are community hubs, funded by the community for the
community and not merely to satisfy the letter of a law. They are meeting
places and social hubs. They are sources of and access to information. If they
focus on these aspects they can justify there future. However co-operation and
a dramatic reduction of duplication and resources are the keys and the question
should be how the communities can be structured to enable this and deliver that
golden egg.
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1 comment:
I agree with the main point here that public libraries should/could be delivering the golden egg, but not that it’s “not about staff but resources and access to them” only.
Over and over again we see this sentiment that it’s only about the stuff, whether digital, paper, the building, computers, tablets, etc. Merely providing “customer service” with a smile is all one needs to qualify to work in a public library since Google is the premier information provider and anyone can do that. Really?
Don’t people understand that free online sources of information are often marketing devices and that do not always delivery the most reliable data, that most searches come out differently depending on where you are and what the search engine ‘’thinks” you want? You will just be skimming the surface if you think Google or Wikipedia is the end-all and it’s educated librarians who are in the best place to take the searching further. Yep, educated, paid professionals not just volunteers with an “Ask Me” pin stuck to their lapel.
Does it not take education, maturity, commitment, and no less experience to facilitate collective vision and cooperation as well? This is merely customer service too? Who is going to go into their community and facilitate programming and connect with people? Again, are you just going to rely on “customer service” here? Come on, when are we going to get past the commodified, dumbed-down approach to the public good that educators, schools, librarians and libraries should be transcending.
@bflolibrarian
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