another insidious bit of the digital divide: access to customer service for smartphones only

We need another word for it.

The digital divide -- the gap between those with access to modern information and communication technologies and those without -- has been recognized since at least the 1990s. Attempts to narrow this gap are usually publicly funded, always operating from scarcity, or small concessions eked out of corporations. Either way, the bridges are tiny, flimsy, and often temporary. Untold numbers of people have been left behind.

Over time the digital divide has widened and deepened. The words digital divide are grossly inadequate, almost quaint. Digital canyon? Digital chasm? Right now it feels like a digital abyss.

Better living through apps -- or not

I recently stumbled on a bit of this gaping divide. I knew about this vaguely, in some abstract way, but now understand it more clearly: improved access to customer service for smartphone users. Sometimes, access to customer service only for people with smartphones.

I wasn't an early adopter of the smartphone. I like to add technology as I need it, not simply because it exists. I prefer not to fork over any more of my income to mega-corporations unless there's a demonstrable benefit in doing so. New technology should save me time or effort, or bring me joy, or why should I bother? So I do use a smartphone, but I apply this to the use of apps as well.

There are apps that simplify processes, so they're worth using. There are apps that make our lives easier. But many apps appear to be more for a company's access to me, rather than the reverse. For example, when I shop online, I prefer sitting at a computer, using full websites. It's easier to see products, read reviews, compare one company's offerings against another. Which of course is why companies want to drive us to their apps: once we're there, we're captive.

Customer service of privilege

Which brings me to what I recently learned. Perhaps I'm the last person on the haves side of the digital divide to discover this, but I've been astonished to learn what improved customer service I receive through apps.

I had a problem with a credit card, and needed to speak with someone. I called the phone number on the card and on the website. I navigated my way through the menu, went down the wrong path, and was cut off -- more than once. 

When I finally found the correct pathway, I was on hold for 50 minutes. Of course I had the call on speaker, and was doing other things while I waited, but still, I had to listen to the hold "music," and I was limited in what else I could do. 

When at last I spoke with a human, it turned out I would need another phone call to a different department. I asked the customer service rep for a more direct number, and was told: call through the app, you'll get through immediately. Now that is a reason to download and use an app. So I did. I called the bank through the app, and was speaking with a human in less than five minutes.

Some months later, I had a question about Aeroplan miles, which means calling Air Canada. Air Canada is renowned for poor customer service. The company has shred their workforce to the bone, so getting anyone to help you with anything is a nightmare. 

I tried finding the answer to my question online. Fruitless. 

Dreading the next step, I called the Aeroplan number and was on hold for two hours and never got through. I am not exaggerating: I am looking at my call history as I type this: 1 hour, 58 minutes. I gave up.

I then downloaded the Aeroplan app and had my answer in under five minutes. I didn't have to speak with anyone: the information I needed was available through the app, but not through the website.

This is terrible customer service. But beyond that, it's customer service as privilege. What happens to customers who don't have smartphones, who can't afford them, who don't know how to download an app? One would think that companies would still want those people's money, but apparently the savings in labour force outweighs the benefits of reaching potential customers.

It's disgusting. It's wrong. And it's only going to get worse. 

so many left behind: the ever-widening digital divide

Last year, while attempting to get a parking pass during our vacation -- without a phone, my phone having been fried by an update -- I got caught in circuitous and frustrating encounter with information and technology gaps.

About a year later, navigating the brave new world of do-it-yourself airport screening, I used quite a few resources -- skills, devices, time, and patience -- to find, navigate, and complete the covid requirements for both US and Canada cross-border travel.

I deal with technology every day, and I'm about as confident a tech user as you will find. Yet each of these experiences was complicated, time-consuming, and frustrating.

The digital divide is an abyss

How do people without digital skills get by? What happens to folks who can't navigate these mazes?

There are some analog workarounds, required by accessibility laws, but can you find them? How do you find them if you aren't online?

There are people you can hire to expedite these steps for you. But if you're not digitally literate, you probably can't find them and you almost certainly can't afford them.

There may be someone in your life who can ask for help. But what if everyone in your life is from a similar background and social standing, and also lack these skills?

If you're lucky, someone will suggest you go to the public library. You can try that, and hope that resources haven't been slashed to such an extent that no one has the time and focus to help you. (Remember the scene in "I, Daniel Blake", where other library users help Daniel get online?)

These not-really-options don't factor in the shame and embarrassment that, for so many people, comes with asking for help, and they certainly don't factor in anxiety, mental confusion, and the exhaustion of poverty.

The digital divide is not about age

In library school, we talked a lot about the "digital divide" -- the gap between those who have access to technology and those who don't. As time goes on, this gap has become a canyon, and it's getting wider and deeper all the time.

There's a mistaken impression that the digital divide is one of age, with seniors on the have-not side. This is an ageist assumption that should have been retired a long time ago. Baby boomers are in their late 60s and 70s now!

Research (in a US context) shows the percentage of tech users over 65 is still slightly lower than that of other age groups, but the gap is shrinking all the time. In Canada, the percentage of people over the age of 65 using the internet doubled between 2007 and 2016. Stats Can notes (emphasis mine):

The findings suggest that age is a primary determinant of Internet use among seniors, but that differences in educational attainment and other demographic characteristics are also important. . . .

Among young seniors with more advantaged characteristics, Internet use is presently at near-saturation levels and is comparatively high among their counterparts in older age groups as well. Among disadvantaged seniors, Internet use is far lower among younger seniors and sharply declines among older groups.

There's also an assumption that "young people" are somehow born knowing how to use technology. This assumption is even less valid than the one about seniors. Ask anyone who teaches in a low-income area.

Knowing how to use a smartphone and check Facebook does not constitute digital literacy.

None of us are born with skills. If you grow up in a home without internet access and computers -- or you don't even have a home to grow up in -- how would you become digitally literate?

The American Library Association defines digital literacy as "the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills." This includes:

How to type on a keyboard

How to use a basic word-processing program

How to save a document and how to find it later

How to search the internet – not Facebook. Indeed, understanding the difference between the internet and Facebook requires digital literacy. Facebook has capitalized on the general lack of digital skills by creating an environment that requires skills to leave

It's all the same divide

The digital divide is the same divide that plagues all aspects of our capitalist society. It all comes down to money.

For a time I worked in a library in one of the lowest-income areas of Ontario. Families would rush to the library after work -- because the children's homework was only available online.

Every day, I would watch in horror and frustration as children and teens would lose their work because they didn't know how to save a document, or didn't remember that their work wouldn't be saved on a public computer. Of course library staff tried to help, but there are many customers, not many staff.

Analog shouldn't be dead, but it is

Obviously, services of every kind have moved online. This has many positive impacts, as the internet has expanded our reach in ways unimaginable only decades earlier. But at the same time, analog options have disappeared, and this trend continues to accelerate and expand. Some more recent developments include:

Two-step verification, requiring internet access and a mobile phone. These are both expensive propositions, out of reach of many.

Needing an email address to open an email account. What do first-time emailers do? Librarians have collected some solutions, but most people don't have that information.

In Canada, printed tax forms are no longer available publicly. They are available by special request only.

To enter Canada from another country (including if you are Canadian), you must use an app. Not can use an app; you must use it. Using the app requires a truckload of embedded competencies: you have to scan your passport and upload your covid passport, among other things. Like most apps, there are recursive pieces, opaque bits, decisions to be made -- and frustration, including for the most adept users.

The analog tax: making a flight reservation or booking a rental car by phone costs more than booking it yourself online.

Pay-for-tech-help. Have you bought a TV lately? You can't just plug it in and watch TV. You need an app, an account, and -- if you're not careful and savvy -- you are giving a tech giant access to all your data. Without digital skills, chances are you can't even navigate the landing page, and think you have access only through the tech company's portal.

And of course, covid. As public schools went online, what happened to students without home internet access? Mostly, they disappeared.

This is a safety issue, as people without digital skills are infinitely more vulnerable to phishing and other fraud.

This is a poverty issue, as children from less advantaged families will fall ever-farther behind, until the gap is simply insurmountable to all but the extremely gifted. This is the creation of a new kind of underclass.

This is a labour issue, as companies find ever more ways to hire fewer people and force consumers to do unpaid work. You may be so accustomed to this that you don't even realize it's happened.

People used to answer the phone and ask "How may I direct your call?".

Self-checkout would have been unthinkable. Who wants to work as an unpaid cashier?

But more than anything, this is an issue of social exclusion. Those without digital skills are increasingly confined to a smaller range of options, and that sphere only continues to shrink.

I am not anti technology. I'm anti exclusion and anti poverty.

Those of us who use computers as part of our jobs, and are privileged to have leisure time, have picked up our digital skills over time, often barely registering that it was happening.

People who don't encounter computer skills on a regular basis, and whose use is limited to time in a public library -- or not all -- don't get the sustained, daily repetition that builds solid competencies. These may be tradespeople, people who work outdoors, or people who grew up in homes where parents did not use technology.

In a society that valued all people equally, it would not be difficult to change this. It would be complex and multifaceted, but we could significantly shrink the gap.

We would need:

Public-utility internet access. In 2016, the United Nations declared that access to the internet is a human right. In North America, this could be more closely achieved if internet access was a public utility, rather than a for-profit commercial concern.

Double or triple or quadruple funding for the public library, and use most of it for high-speed internet and public-use computers.

Require governments and companies to always retain analog options, and provide disincentives to do otherwise.

Require businesses to maintain minimum staffing levels at touchpoints that currently assume that everyone is DIY.

As a librarian, I am aware of many programs, funded by sources such as the United Way or directly from the province, that address these issues. They are excellent and important programs, but they are short-term, and very limited in scope and reach. They are a tiny drop in an ocean of need.

friends and family reunion road trip: a story about the digital divide

I separated out this story, because I didn't want to give the impression that it ruined our day -- and because I wanted to properly explicate it. The events were of minor consequence to us personally, but of major importance in the world at large.

We hit a technology snag, and it was a perfect example of how the digital world -- and the absence of paper, analog options -- frustrates and excludes people. It was the kind of thing I see happen in the library all the time. This is about access, and the barriers that prevent large segments of our society from full participation.

I am rarely on the other side of this divide, and at least I can afford to lose a little money in the process, but it royally pisses me off on behalf of others. This massive social change has taken place, very rapidly. And in our current society, it's all been designed for the profit of a few companies (and likely a few choice corrupt individuals working in government), and for the "convenience" of educated, middle-class people, with no thought to all the people who the change leaves behind.

Here's what happened. 

We wanted to leave our car at the BART station. The information we found online seemed to indicate that we needed to reserve a parking space. After a while, with time and patience, I found out how to do this online. I paid for three days of parking at $6 per day -- a good deal. 

The website said we needed to print the permits. In the FAQs, I learned there were no machines to print parking receipts at the stations, although these are quite common these days. The FAQs suggested saving the permits as a pdf and printing them yourself. Notice how the "hidden competencies" to navigate this system are piling up.

I'm guessing most people reserve parking on their phones, and I already know that most people don't have printers. Maybe they can print permits at work, but not everyone can do that. 

The link to "print this permit" went to the first screen -- where you begin the process of obtaining a permit -- i.e., it sends you around in circles. There was no way to create a pdf. A screenshot would not have helped. There was no way to print at all, except through a link.

After dropping off the dogs at daycare, we came back to the cottage and happened to see the host. I asked where we could print something -- hoping she would offer to do it -- and she suggested a nearby copy shop. We found that fairly easily. I went inside. I was the only customer there. The owner was on the phone in what sounded like a personal phone call (but perhaps wasn't). He didn't greet me or ask how he could help me or say "I'll be right with you". He just continued talking on the phone.

I said I needed to print something and he gestured towards a sign with the copy shop's email address. I knew what he meant -- that I could email him my document at that address -- but (a) I couldn't do that because I didn't have a file, and (b) that destroys customer privacy, so there must be a more secure way to print. 

With the (presumed) owner still on the phone, I said I didn't have a file, only a link. He waved at a computer. Not only is this absolutely awful customer service, but what if I didn't understand what he meant?!

Here comes the kicker.

I logged into my Gmail account, but because I was using a new device, I needed to verify my access by letting Gmail send a text to my phone. The phone that died on the ferry to Nanaimo. 

I see this happen all the time in the library, with people who cannot afford phones. We are all expected to have smartphones and 24/7 access to the internet. But these everyday essentials are very expensive. They stretch the budgets of some, and are completely out of the question for many.

Back in the car, we discussed our options. By this time, the parking reservation had already expired, so there was no point going to heroic efforts to print the stupid thing.

We drove to the BART station, and were very surprised to find a huge, mostly empty parking lot! There were 20 or 30 cars parked in the reserved section, and many spaces in the non-reserved section. We parked, intending to buy parking for the day -- even though we had already paid for a spot.

Inside the station, we navigated how to buy a Clipper card. Signage was minimal, and the screens had limited information. We did it, of course, but it is clearly a system designed for people who already know how to use the system. Anyone else would need someone walking them through the steps. But of course there is no one to do that, no city pays anyone to do that. (Sometimes in the busiest, most touristed stations in New York and other cities that rely on tourism, there will be an "ambassador" worker to help -- which is awesome. But 99% of stations are not going to have that.) 

We bought a card -- which is $3.00 just to buy, plus the dollar value you add to it. Using the card gives you a discount -- a discount only available to people with who have credit cards and digital skills. At least San Francisco has free transit for kids and seniors. Most cities don't.

Paying for parking? Only available after you've passed the transit turnstiles and only by cash. What. The. Fuck.

I was happy to leave the car there without a parking slip. I could tell that would be fine. Allan was antsy about this, thinking we might get a ticket or be towed, but I had a strong sense that neither would happen. 

On the train on the way into the city, we talked about all of this. Allan said, here's what should happen in order to take public transit: you go to a station and get on a train. 

He's right. Public transit is a public good. It's something we want every town and city to have and every person to use. It should be fully accessible and free.

But private corporations see public transit as an opportunity for profit, and those corporations hold governments in their pockets. So public money -- our taxes -- are shoveled over to private companies. Those companies then take perfectly workable systems, systems that have been working for decades, and in some cases for more than 100 years, and "modernize" them to make them "convenient". And in the process of modernizing, governments allow systems to be created that exclude huge segments of our society. 

I personally love transit cards and I use them whenever possible. But I recognize that they are exclusionary. They are instruments of privilege. And wherever these cards are introduced, they very quickly become not options, but necessities. The parallel, analog system is allowed to wither and die. (See also, two-tiered health care.)

We did not get a parking ticket, and we now know we can leave the car in the BART parking lot for "free", thereby not completely wasting the $18 we spent on invisible permits. But, as I hope I have made clear, that is not the point.

"at your library" in the north island eagle: columns published since re-opening, parts 2 and 3

Ancestry Library: Your Library Can Help You Discover Your Roots

As the lockdown began, I posted some "At Your Library" columns that were suddenly irrelevant, among them a column about Ancestry Library, then only available from a library branch -- and the branches were all closed.

Shortly after that, Ancestry was made available from all computers -- but the newspaper wasn't publishing. 

As it turns out, that column didn't run before the lockdown. I submitted with some changes in July, and I was able to announce that this e-resource is now available from any computer. So I'll check that off my list.

*  *  *  *

The next column feels sadly ironic. As more library services move online, we can reach more people. But the "digital divide" grows wider, and we fail our most vulnerable customers. Libraries everywhere are working on ways to address this, but it's another sad ripple effect of the pandemic.

Your Library Online: fun and safe ways to enjoy your library this summer (plus increased Takeout hours in Port Hardy and Port McNeill)

This is a tough summer for libraries. We miss our branches being a hub of activity, and having people of all ages and interests flock to our doors. Whether it’s beach reading, Summer Reading Club, or a series on audiobook, libraries have always helped make summer entertaining (and dare I say, educational). This summer – like everyone else – we are discovering new ways to connect.

The good news is that the library is still here! When you need something new to read or watch, you can use our Takeout service. Soon deliveries will resume and you’ll be able to order materials from any VIRL location. That should make many customers happy!

Although our library programs have moved online, they are still the programs you know and love – but in a different format. 

Kids up to 12 years old can “Explore Our Universe” with the 2020 Summer Reading Club. You can register your children by visiting https://bcsrc.ca/. There are lots of virtual events to explore. The easiest way to find out more is through the “Virtual SRC 2020 Explore Our Universe!” Facebook group. Families without internet at home can call 1-877-415-VIRL to register.

Readers age 12-18 can join the Teen Summer Challenge, completing tasks to win prizes. You can see the complete task list and instructions at https://virl.bc.ca/teen-summer-challenge/.

We’re now offering three virtual book clubs. All the titles for the clubs are available as eBooks with no waiting and no holds, throughout the month of July. 

    • The Shared Shelf is a book club for the whole family. The focus will be on children’s chapter books, to read and talk about together. The July title is Kenneth Oppel’s Silverwing.

    • The Take A Break book club reads lighter fiction and informative, enjoyable nonfiction. The July book “The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared” by Jonas Jonasson is a crowd favourite.

    • Books & Beyond focuses on taking action. After each title, members will have an opportunity to try a local challenge or a task to help them better understand or address topics covered in the book. The July title is “I’m Not Dying With You Tonight,” by Kim Jones and Gilly Segal.

There are also online storytimes. Check out the Storytime Corner Facebook Group at 10:30 a.m. every Monday and Friday, and Babytimes every Tuesday. Children of all ages can enjoy storytimes.

Questions? Feedback? Ideas for virtual programs? Call us at 1-877-415-VIRL (8475). 

[Sidebar with branch open hours.]

things i heard at the library: digital divide edition (#20)

In library school we talked a lot about the digital divide, the ever-increasing gap between those who have access to information and communication technology, and those who do not. Public libraries are one of the very few institutions that exist to bridge that gap, however imperfectly.

What does the digital divide look like on the ground? In my library, located in one of the lowest-income communities in Ontario (and in Canada), we see the digital divide in action every single day.

This week a family worked on a visa application for the United States. They had to come to the library first thing in the morning, so we could special-book them a computer, as the process would take much longer than a standard computer reservation. With intermittent staff help, they worked on their application for three hours. There was no way to download and save the application, and no paper version. When they tried to save and submit the application, either the computer or the site malfunctioned (we don't know which) and they lost all their work.

Two days ago I helped a couple, two refugee claimants, access their application for legal residency in Canada. Prior to arriving in Canada, they had no computer experience at all. Their application is only available online. I was able to offer one-on-one help for 30 minutes - very unusual, and the only reason they were able to accomplish what they needed.

Yesterday a girl asked for my help saving her homework and emailing it to herself. She waited patiently for help, while the time on her computer reservation ticked down. She did not have a USB stick. As I helped her save her work, her computer time ended. Our public computers wipe out all customer information with each login. Her homework was lost.

Lost homework is a daily occurrence. Almost all homework is accessed and completed online. Teachers are supposed to "confirm that students have access to the technology required for the homework assignment". Having a library card is considered adequate access.

Much frustration and heartbreak could be avoided if families invested in a few USB storage sticks and gave each child her own. But parents have no idea this is needed. We can't speak to the parents about this because they're not in the library. They are either at work or home with younger children. Their older children ask to use our reference-desk phone to call home when they need a ride.

Another daily occurrence: children who cannot find an available computer on which to do their homework. Our library has 22 public-use computers. We could double or triple that number and they would all be in use every hour of every day.

libraries and ebooks: a good fit, but a very bad deal, or why library users should just say no to ebooks

Do you ever borrow ebooks from your public library? Do you have any idea how your library adds ebooks to its collection, or at what cost?

The number of library customers who borrow ebooks is growing all the time. How many of them, I wonder, are aware of how their library gets screwed every time they do.

Even some library staff is unaware of the raw deal libraries are getting when it comes to ebooks. Library-themed journals, blogs, and conferences are filled with talk about digital technology and resources. Yet in this deluge of discussion, there is too little exposing - and opposing - the unfair and unnecessary economics of ebooks for public libraries.

Here it is simply. Digital access to a single title - one ebook - costs the public library $85. That $85 is good for only 26 downloads. And only one customer can borrow the ebook at a time.

Under this arrangement, publishers have the best of both worlds. For borrowing purposes, the ebook is treated like a single copy of a print book: only one customer can borrow one title at any given time. But for licensing purposes, the ebook is treated as a controlled digital resource that must be licensed and continually renewed.

Libraries already pay more than full price for print books. There's no volume discount, or non-profit discount. But in the case of ebooks, libraries pay exorbitant fees, anywhere from eight times to 500 times as much as the general public. A print book is available to a theoretically infinite number of library customers, until it physically falls apart. An $85 ebook is available for 26 downloads. After that, the library has the option of licensing it again - essentially re-buying it - for another $85, good for another 26 customers.

This is a blatant ripoff and a terrible use of public funds.

Canadian author and blogger Cory Doctorow has been instrumental in trying to focus attention on this issue.

While I was in Chicago, I sat down with some of the ALA strategists to talk about how libraries are getting a raw deal on e-books. When libraries want to buy an ebook from the publisher, they find themselves paying as much as five times the price you or I pay for the same book. Literally – librarians are paying $60-80, and sometimes more, to include current release frontlist titles in their collections. Each of these ebooks can only be lent to one patron at a time, which means that libraries are sometimes buying a dozen – or more – of these overpriced text-files.

Not only that, but libraries have to buy these books with DRM on them, and invest in expensive, proprietary collection-management software from companies like Overdrive in order to ensure that only one patron at a time can check out any given ebook. These ebooks come with restrictions that don’t appear on regular print books; they can’t be sold on as used books once their circulations drop below a certain threshold; neither can they be shared with another library’s patrons though standard practices like interlibrary loan, a mainstay of libraries for more than a century.

To add insult to injury, HarperCollins insists that libraries delete their ebooks after they are circulated 26 times. This has been pitched as having some parallel to the fact that many library books eventually disintegrate and have to be discarded. But this is both wrong and perverse. Wrong because the 26-circulation cutoff bears no relationship to how many times a book can circulate before it falls to bits. It amazes me to think that HarperCollins wants to frame its products as so badly manufactured that they can’t withstand being read 27 or more times. But beyond the factual problems with a 26-circ cap, there is the fundamental perversity of celebrating and importing the limitations of physical media into the digital world. It’s like insisting that electric bulbs be limited to outputting no more than one lumen of light, since that’s all a comparably-sized candle would manage. The fact that books don’t last forever is not a feature to be preserved through the digital transition: it’s a bug, and the sooner we eliminate it, the better.

The American Library Association, the parent organization of all North American library associations, formed a group called Authors for Library Ebooks (@Authors4LE on Twitter), which seeks to enlist writers to the cause.

Did you know that many ebooks are not available to most libraries at any price? Of those we can buy, libraries frequently pay 150 to 500% more than the consumer price, forcing us to purchase fewer copies for library readers to discover. As more books appear only in electronic form, the situation will become intolerable for our nation’s readers. . . .

The Authors for Library Ebooks campaign seeks to add author voices to those of librarians and readers in support of equitable access to digital content through libraries. There are many ways you can support this effort:

Sign on to the Authors Stand with Libraries statement.

Help us raise awareness of this issue with publishers, other authors and the general public.

Learn more about what’s at stake.

Art Brodsky, in an excellent piece in Wired, explains how the "collusion of large ebook distributors in pricing...contribute[s] to the ever-growing divide between the literary haves and have-nots."

How do such restrictions reinforce the divide between haves and have-nots?

Imagine walking into a library or bookstore and needing three or four pairs of different glasses to read different books manufactured to specific viewing equipment. Or buying a book and then having to arbitrarily destroy it after say, two weeks. That’s just nuts. But it’s the current situation we’re in with ebooks. . . .

Sadly, pricing changes the game for library access altogether because ebook distributors have radically changed the pricing from that of regular books.

Take the example of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous book, Cuckoo’s Calling. For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 from book distributor Baker & Taylor — close to the consumer price of $15.49 from Barnes & Noble and of $15.19 from Amazon. But even though the ebook will cost consumers $6.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, libraries would pay $78 (through library ebook distributors Overdrive and 3M) for the same thing.

Somehow the “e” in ebooks changes the pricing game, and drastically. How else does one explain libraries paying a $0.79 to $1.09 difference for a physical book to paying a difference of $71.50 just because it’s the electronic version? It’s not like being digital makes a difference for when and how they can lend it out.

In another wrinkle: Random House jacked up its ebook prices to libraries 300 percent last year, and HarperCollins limits the number of check-outs per ebook. This means libraries have to lease another “copy” when they reach a certain threshold … as if the ebook had died or something. In fact, that’s the problem some authors have with ebooks — not just that they earn less money on them, but that “They never degrade. They are perpetual. That harms writers directly,” as historian and novelist David O. Stewart has observed.

These authors don’t mind the high prices charged to libraries because they don’t even like libraries to begin with. Stewart has called libraries “undeniably socialist” because books can be loaned out (for free!) many times, costing writers money from presumably lost sales. This is the same justification book publishers use for their distorted ebook pricing.

But that’s just wrong. Most physical books in libraries aren’t tattered and worn out, particularly hardbacks. And just because an ebook may last forever doesn’t mean it will be read. Reader demand changes with the cultural context: When The Help was at the top of the Times’ fiction best-seller list for 15 weeks in 2011, readers had to wait weeks for copies to come back to their libraries; but now, 39 out of the 79 copies of the book in my local library system are available for checkout.

There are some enlightened authors, like Jodi Picoult and Cory Doctorow, who have joined the Authors for Library E-books campaign, which adds author voices to those of librarians and readers in support of equitable access to digital content. As their site notes, not only are many books not even available to libraries at any price, but those that are can only be purchased at 150 to 500 percent more than the consumer price — “forcing us to purchase fewer copies for library readers to discover.”

Once I learned how ebooks were gobbling up library budgets, I wished the library world had turned its collective back on ebooks altogether. I would rather see the entire ebooks budget spent on print resources, or even on DVDs and videogames. That would certainly bring more resources to more people, which is part of our mission. But that ship has sailed. Libraries cannot afford to be perceived as antiquated or anti-technology, and library customers deserve access to all available formats. The problem is not ebooks: it's publishers and distributors - and overly restrictive digital-rights management.

Way back when, when wmtc featured "we like lists" posts, there was a post called "it was the best of lists, it was the worst of lists". We identified both the good and the bad in the same thing. One of those lists, courtesy of M@, was about ebooks.

I like that:

1. They tend to be cheaper.

2. There's an opportunity, currently being somewhat fulfilled but possibly to improve, for authors to be better compensated for their work.

3. The democratization of publishing is possible in the way that the democratization of music happened in the last 10 years or so.

4. They really are very convenient to buy and read.

5. Every book can be available to every internet-connected person on earth.

But:

1. I like the tangible properties of books.

2. I love browsing bookshelves, both in stores and in people's homes. Browsing virtual bookshelves doesn't even compare.

3. Book prices have not stabilized. Currently many e-books cost more than their trade paperback equivalents, not less. There is no good reason for this.

4. I find flipping through reference books a great way to find things I didn't know I wanted to learn; I find flipping through any book a good way to get a sense of whether it's worth reading or not. There is no equivalent in an e-book.

5. I can't figure out how to sign electronic copies of my books.

I agree with everything on this list, although I have grave concerns about a democratization movement that depends on access to and comfort with technology, since those are not democratically distributed.

But for me personally, I wouldn't care if I never read another ebook again. The only advantage I find is the ease of carrying them around: they lighten the load on my shoulder or in my backpack. Other than that, I agree with the more than 60% of young readers surveyed in the UK: I prefer print books.

I get 100% of my news and other reading online - no broadcast or cable TV, no print newspapers, no print magazines. But when it comes to books, I prefer print. And when it comes to libraries, I prefer our budgets not be held hostage to profit-driven digital-rights-management schemes.

how a reinvented dutch library set new attendance records and why is this still controversial?

This is a library! (Image found here.)

This article about the incredible Nieuwe Bibliotheek (New Library) in the Netherlands got me thinking about the current state of libraries - and library staff and library customers - and people's attitudes towards change.

Facing declining visitors and uncertainty about what to do about it, library administrators in the new town of Almere in the Netherlands did something extraordinary. They redesigned their libraries based on the changing needs and desires of library users and, in 2010, opened the Nieuwe Bibliotheek (New Library), a thriving community hub that looks more like a bookstore than a library.

Guided by patron surveys, administrators tossed out traditional methods of library organization, turning to retail design and merchandising for inspiration. They now group books by areas of interest, combining fiction and nonfiction; they display books face-out to catch the eye of browsers; and they train staff members in marketing and customer service techniques.

The library is also a Seats2meet (S2M) location where patrons are empowered to help one another in exchange for free, permanent, coworking space, and they utilize the S2M Serendipity Machine to connect library users in real-time. They also have a bustling cafe, an extensive events and music program, a gaming facility, a reading garden and more. The result? The New Library surpassed all expectation about usage with over 100,000 visitors in the first two months. It is now considered one of the most innovative libraries in the world.

Check out the article, and the photos of the community enjoying Nieuwe Bibliotheek's eye-popping spaces. Now imagine: there are library staff and customers who dislike and oppose this. It's not necessarily a generational divide, either. Many older librarians have embraced the new library ethos while some younger librarians gaze fondly back at some imagined golden age.

Although the library in which I work can only dream of the kind of innovation achieved by Nieuwe Bibliotheek, there are staff who complain about any step towards it. Generous book display tables, clear signage based on topic (as opposed to Dewey), innovative programs - they hate it all. Fortunately, those people are not in decision-making positions, and innovation moves ahead despite their grumbling. But the more I try to understand the reasoning of old-school librarians, the more I think they either don't understand the pressures facing libraries today, or they simply oppose change.

* * * *

Once upon a time - that is, for most of the modern era - public libraries were repositories of information that couldn't be found anywhere else. Most ordinary people did not have access to reference tools, and needed the library for all manner of research and learning. When I was a child, we would call the New York Public Library helpline with questions we couldn't find in our family's set of encyclopedias. Now, of course, we would simply go online for the answer. We've undergone a revolution in information access.

To many people, this digital revolution makes the public library irrelevant.

Of course, library supporters know this is not true. First of all, not everyone can afford the tools of home-based internet access, and public libraries are the only bulwark against that yawning chasm known as "the digital divide". Beyond that, there's quality and depth of research, something at least students still need.

And there's reading. I'm giving that its own line. Avid readers and families who understand the critical importance of reading cannot possibly purchase all the books they need!

Yet the mere existence of a quick way to find answers to simple questions leads many people to believe libraries are irrelevant. More importantly for libraries, powerful interests that don't value public services and would prefer to see everything for-profit and privatized can use the digital revolution as a convenient smokescreen to slash funding.

* * * *

In the current era, public libraries have reinvented themselves in order to remain relevant to their communities. As often happens, change originally borne out of survival turns out to be a very positive development.

My own library is alive with this kind of activity - family storytimes, resume help, language learning, book clubs, movie screenings, you name it. The most recent trend, makerspaces in libraries, turns the library into a place where people learn new skills and create things, using tools and resources normally unavailable to them. (Did I tell you I'm now on the Maker Mississauga committee? More in a future post.) The library also provides free leisure options. Some people find it quaint and outdated, but thousands of people borrow CDs, DVDs, and video games.

* * * *

Not all change is good, of course. Change needs direction and purpose. It needs to add value for customers and make economic sense for the investment of public funds. But change is life. In the case of the public library, it's change or die. Healthy innovation is the only alternative.

three library issues, part 1: the all-digital library

An enormous number of library-related stories cross my path, either through school or this blog. A few have stayed on my mind and seem worth fleshing out.

A San Antonio, Texas public library will become the first in the US (and possibly in the world) to go completely bookless - that is, its collection will have no paper books, only digital books.

Much has been written about the pros and cons of digital books, and without recapping all that here, I think it's important to realize that there are both positives and negatives. The digital book, like all technology, is not a panacea, not without issues, and some of those issues are very relevant to the public library.

For one thing, e-books are incredibly expensive for libraries. For the price of one digital edition, the library can order as many as ten paper editions. Many digital titles are not available for library use, and at least three major publishers are not making e-books available to libraries at all. This means there's no way the all-digital public library can offer as many titles as a public library that collects both paper and digital editions.

More important, I think, is the digital divide. We live in a society of tremendous inequality, and that inequality extends to technology - access, the regular use that builds comfort levels, the ability to stay up to date, and so on. The digital divide doesn't map exactly onto income inequality, but there is certainly a great overlap. The digital divide excludes many seniors, no matter what their income level, and many people who work at non-computer-related jobs, who struggle to manage computer time in between work and family.

The public library has an obligation to mitigate the digital divide. Offering free internet access is part of that, as is lending e-readers so that people can experience digital books at no cost. But the library also has an obligation to serve people who are not reading e-books and who may never want to. Because despite the impressive sales figures for Kindles and Readers, most people the world over are still reading paper books. We shouldn't lose sight of that.

To read a paper book, all you need is literacy and a book. No other technical skill or equipment is required. No format is proprietary. No downloading is needed, no file conversions.

Those of us who are adept with technology - which includes me, by the way - may barely take note of our many digital interactions. Last night, Allan downloaded an episode of a TV series, converted the file, transferred it to a USB drive, plugged the USB into our Roku streaming device, which is already connected to our wireless network. And we watched the show. To us, this was simple and easy (and far superior to ordinary television). But to my mother, for example, it would be a complete impossibility. To her, watching TV means turning on the TV set and selecting from what's on.

I don't read e-books and I have no great desire to do so. I'm perfectly satisfied reading paper books; I don't buy gadgets simply because a lot of other people are buying them, if I don't see an advantage to adoption. Most books I want to read aren't even offered in digital format. However, if I have read some digital books and could easily continue to do so if I wanted to. My mother, on the other hand, would find making the switch to e-books a source of great anxiety.

This is a digital divide, and a library that doesn't work both sides of the digital divide has lost its way. The Bexar County Public Library will probably help some people discover what its like to read in digital format. Whether or not that helps those people become more adept at and comfortable with technology is open to question. One doesn't necessarily follow the other. I'm sure you know many people, as I do, who have learned to deal with email but who still fear and avoid new technology. And many other library users will be completely excluded.

Why should libraries choose between paper and digital? Isn't there room for both?

books on books, part 1: robert darnton, the case for books

This is the first in a trio of "what i'm reading" posts falling under the general category of books about books, or reading about reading. After Roddy Doyle, these books are the top three books on my spring-summer to-read list. I started with The Case for Books: Past, Present and Future by Robert Darnton.

I was introduced to the work of Robert Darnton in an elective course, "The History of Books and Printing," then encountered him again in my Foundations of Library and Information Science course. Darnton's long career is impressive indeed. He's one of the leading scholars in the field called History of the Book. He taught history at Princeton University for nearly 40 years, he's a past president of the American Historical Association, he's worked as a journalist and in publishing, has been a trustee of the New York Public Library, and is the founder of two innovative digital publishing programs, the Electronic Enlightenment and Gutenberg-e. Most recently, Darnton is the head librarian of Harvard University.

What's most interesting to me about Darnton is that he is both eminently scholarly and erudite, yet practical and down-to-earth. He has a consistently progressive perspective, never forgetting that the world he and his readers inhabit is one of privilege, and always striving for greater access and the democratization of learning. His writing is clean and elegant, free of academic jargon and obfuscation - a joy to read.

"The Case for Books" is a collection of essays that have been previously published in the New York Review of Books and other venues. It's divided into three sections: Future - thoughts on where books fit in to the digital age, and especially on the Google Book Settlement, Present - tales from the transition to digitization, and Past - concerning the study of writing, reading and the History of the Book. I suspect most general, non-specialist readers will be most interested in the first part, but the whole book is worth reading. There are gems throughout.

As Librarian of Harvard, Darnton's dream was a national digital library, and eventually a global digital library, accessible to everyone with internet access, free of charge. To pave the way, he pioneered a program of digitization and openness at Harvard, one that both respected copyright and promoted access. This was enthusiastically embraced by the faculty.

Darnton proposed a national program to invest in digitization - an enormous digital Library of Congress. But somewhere along the way, Darnton's dream was co-opted, and morphed into Google Books. It's not the same thing. As Darnton explains, the primary purpose of libraries is to bring information to users. Google's primary purpose is profit. The two goals may sometimes dovetail, but they are essentially different. As it stands, a private, for-profit, proprietary (non-transparent) enterprise controls access to an enormous amount of information, and for various legal reasons, is poised to have exclusive control of even more information for the foreseeable future and beyond.

Darnton is not anti-Google. But he is concerned - as we all should be - about a private company having what amounts to monopoly control over so much information. His conclusions about the current state of digital access leave me saddened, because our profit-driven society missed a unique opportunity for public access to education on a grand scale.

On the subject of e-books, I notice that many readers' opinions tend towards the simplistic. "E-books are great because they take up less space and use less paper, and have lots of fun features." "E-books are less satisfying than print. Who wants to curl up with a Kindle?" And so on. Darnton shows the issues to be much more complex; his essays offer a much fuller, more nuanced understanding of the differences between the two.

The Case for Books makes a very strong argument for why e-books cannot and should not replace paper, even as it fully embraces the possibilities and wonder of the digital age. Even if think you understand all the implications of e-books, chances are you will learn something from Darnton. At the very least, he will challenge your perspectives and assumptions.

Darnton places the digital era in the context of the three previous major shifts in information technology - the invention of writing, the movement from scroll to codex (that is, book form), and the advent of printing. When I wrote about Elizabeth Eisenstein (for the course I mentioned above) - arguing that the shift from manuscript to print was a greater change than the shift from print to digital - I read some of Darnton's critiques of Eisenstein's work. His assertion that the movement from scroll to codex was an even greater change than the advent of printing surprised and fascinated me.

Darnton believes - and I agreed, long before I read this book - that, despite the name given our present time, every age has been an "information age".

When I try to foresee the future, I look into the past. Here, for example, is a futuristic fantasy published in 1771 by Louse Sébastien Mercier in his best-selling utopian tract, The Year 2440. Mercier falls asleep and wakes up in the Paris that will exist seven centuries after his birth in 1740. He finds himself in a society purged of all the evils from the ancient régime. In the climactic chapter of volume one, he visits the national library, expecting to see thousands of volumes splendidly arrayed as in the Bibliothèque du roi

Mercier was a militant advocate of enlightenment and a true believer in the printed word as an agent of progress. He did not favor book burning. But his fantasy expressed a sentiment that was already strong in the eighteenth century and has now become an obsession - the sense of being overwhelmed with information and of helplessness before the need to find relevant material amidst a mountain of ephemera.

As all of human history is a vast Information Age, Darnton expresses his awe of the sum of human knowledge, his humbleness in how little any of us can really know, and our urgent need to preserve - and make accessible - all we can.

Any author knows how much must be eliminated before a text is ready for printing, and any researcher knows how little can be studied in the archives before the text is written. The manuscripts seem to stretch into infinity. You open a box, take out a folder, open the folder, take out a letter, read the letter, and wonder what connects it with all the other letters in all the other folders in all the boxes, not just in this repository but in all the archives everywhere. The overwhelming majority have never been read by researchers. And most people never wrote letters. Most human beings have vanished into the past without leaving a trace of their existence. To write history from the archives is to piece together what little we can grasp in as meaningful a picture as we can compose. But the result, the form of a history book, can no more capture the infinity of experience than [St.] Augustine could comprehend the mind of God.

Darnton makes a strong case for extreme skepticism of all sources, be they digital or print: "In short, the traditional media have no greater claim than the electronic media to mastery of the past." "News is not what happened but a story about what happened." He describes his days as a young journalist, and how stories were chosen and composed, then concludes:

Having learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surprised by historians who take them as primary sources for knowing what really happened. I think newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events themselves.

The later essays in The Case for Books are more specific and somewhat more academic. I didn't understand all the references, and many readers may glaze over a bit. But even when the specific topic is a bit esoteric, there are lovely, interesting tidbits. For example, in "The Mysteries of Reading," Darnton reviews some studies of "commonplace books". These were notebooks kept by readers, especially in the 17th and 18th Centuries. When a reader came upon a passage that particularly resonated for him (these were usually kept by men), he would copy it into the notebook and add his own observations and annotations. I had never heard of the commonplace book, but it gave historical context to my own books of quotations, in which I copied song lyrics and passages from novels. I added to them for decades, and have saved them all, a kind of running record of what I found meaningful and beautiful at various times of my life.

The introduction to commonplace books also revealed that 17th and 18th Century readers, in some respects, had more in common than with readers in the early 20th Century.

Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end . . . early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they re-read the copies and re-arranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities.

In other words: proto-web 2.0 and 17th Century mashups.

This in turn reminded me of what I learned from reading Elizabeth Eisenstein: that the essential nature of reading has changed many times in history, with the advent of different information technology, or changing social and cultural context.

...reading by turning the leaves of a codex as opposed to reading by unrolling a volume, reading printed texts in contrast to reading manuscripts, silent reading as distinct from reading aloud, reading alone rather than reading in groups, reading extensively by racing through different kinds of material vs reading intensively by perusing a few books many times. Now that the research has shifted to commonplace books, we may add segmental vs sequential reading to the list.

The Case for Books ends with the essay that introduced me to Darnton's work, in which he describes the field of History of the Book, and offers a model for future study. I had never heard of History of the Book, and I found it a difficult concept to grasp. Darnton says:

It might even be called the social and cultural history of communication by print, if that were not such a mouthful, because its purpose is to understand how ideas were transmitted through print and how exposure to the printed word affected the thought and behaviour of mankind during the last five hundred years.

In a time when people are preparing funeral rites for the printed word, reflecting on the importance of print and of reading is a very valuable exercise.

Darnton online sampler:

Google & the Future of Books, New York Review of Books

A Digital Library Better Than Google's, New York Times Op-Ed

What didn't happen: An Interview with Robert Darnton on the Digital Public Library of America, The Historical Society, and companion videos, part one and part two (about 10 minutes each)

IT Panel: Information Overload in a Digitized World, video (9:44)

towards a freer internet: eben moglen and the freedom box

One of the more interesting ideas I've encountered at the iSchool is questioning why internet access is controlled through private corporations.

Broadband internet access is now a necessity, but we must pay private, for-profit services for access. From the start, internet access could have been fashioned as a public utility, much the way access to water and electricity is, or - depending on where you live - should be. If our governments were more interested in public access (democracy) than in corporate access (free-market capitalism), it might be. Much as been written and said about this (a sample of the issues can be heard in this debate on NPR); I mention it only to note that the concept was new to me, and immediately made perfect sense.

Expensive monthly fees for broadband access is only one of many roots of the digital divide, the chasm that separates the internet-literate haves from the internet-illiterate have-nots, but it's an important one. The digital divide is often conceived of solely in terms of access, such as in the Wikipedia definition, but many other issues factor into confidence in a digital environment - age, education, job status, gender, language skills, and others.

The idea that internet access should be free from dovetails with our desire to free the internet of censorship and either government or corporate control. Many of us use free platforms like Blogger or Facebook without a second thought as to who controls these applications. When we do think about it, we generally shudder or shake our heads, then go back to the same platforms. That's what we know and that's where our friends - and our information - are. Again, this is a huge topic that I'm not tackling here. But I do want to highlight what one person is suggesting as an alternative.

Meet The Freedom Box.

Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Can’t Find You

By Jim Dwyer [ed note: hooray for Jim Dwyer, excellent progressive writer]

On Tuesday afternoon, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke in Washington about the Internet and human liberty, a Columbia law professor in Manhattan, Eben Moglen, was putting together a shopping list to rebuild the Internet — this time, without governments and big companies able to watch every twitch of our fingers.

The list begins with “cheap, small, low-power plug servers,” Mr. Moglen said. “A small device the size of a cellphone charger, running on a low-power chip. You plug it into the wall and forget about it.”

Almost anyone could have one of these tiny servers, which are now produced for limited purposes but could be adapted to a full range of Internet applications, he said.

“They will get very cheap, very quick,” Mr. Moglen said. “They’re $99; they will go to $69. Once everyone is getting them, they will cost $29.”

The missing ingredients are software packages, which are available at no cost but have to be made easy to use. “You would have a whole system with privacy and security built in for the civil world we are living in,” he said. “It stores everything you care about.”

Put free software into the little plug server in the wall, and you would have a Freedom Box that would decentralize information and power, Mr. Moglen said. This month, he created the Freedom Box Foundation to organize the software.

“We have to aim our engineering more directly at politics now,” he said. “What has happened in Egypt is enormously inspiring, but the Egyptian state was late to the attempt to control the Net and not ready to be as remorseless as it could have been.”

. . .

In the first days of the personal computer era, many scoffed at the idea that free software could have an important place in the modern world. Today, it is the digital genome for millions of phones, printers, cameras, MP3 players, televisions, the Pentagon, the New York Stock Exchange and the computers that underpin Google’s empire.

This month, Mr. Moglen, who now runs the Software Freedom Law Center, spoke to a convention of 2,000 free-software programmers in Brussels, urging them to get to work on the Freedom Box.

Social networking has changed the balance of political power, he said, “but everything we know about technology tells us that the current forms of social network communication, despite their enormous current value for politics, are also intensely dangerous to use. They are too centralized; they are too vulnerable to state retaliation and control.”

In January, investors were said to have put a value of about $50 billion on Facebook, the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg. If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy.

“It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse,” Mr. Moglen said.

By contrast, with tens of thousands of individual encrypted servers, there would be no one place where a repressive government could find out who was publishing or reading “subversive” material. . . .

The decentralized social network platform Diaspora was conceived in response to an earlier talk by Moglen. Now he's trying to raise half a million dollars to get The Freedom Box off the ground. Read it here.

how to save the public library (a fry truck experience)

I have two papers due on the same day, and one of them is the most dreaded assignment for the most dreaded class of my entire degree. At least that will soon be over with! Unfortunately, though, this leaves me with little brain or time to blog.

I will use this as an opportunity to post one of my papers. The last time I posted a paper, it sparked some interesting discussion. At the very least, this will help me feel like my blog is not a total waste of pixels. Plus, this paper earned me fries! I got them yesterday. They were just the way I like them: super well-done, crispy.

This was my final paper for the course Foundations of Library and Information Science. From a choice of topics I chose this:

Select one type of library or information centre. Discuss the most serious challenges facing that institution today, paying particular attention to its foundational values, principles and assumptions. What kinds of activities (research, services, education, staffing, funding, etc) might turn these challenges into opportunities?

I've removed the citations or turned them into links where possible.

* * * *

Privatization, Digitization, and How the Public Library Can Survive:
the Four Rs

The most serious challenges facing the public library today are unchecked capitalism, the disintermediation brought by digital technologies, and the intersection of the two. This paper explores the present and potential effects of those challenges on the health and future of public libraries in North America. With a nod to the Canadian Library Association's President’s Council on the 8Rs, this paper proposes the 4Rs needed to turn these challenges into opportunities: relevancy, reinvention, raising awareness, and resistance.

The dominant economic model and social spending priorities

When discussing the challenges facing public libraries, funding generally tops the list. Funding, however, is a symptom of an underlying disease. First-world societies around the globe are suffering through drastic cutbacks of public-sector spending. In the United Kingdom, 500,000 workers will be jettisoned from public payrolls in the next four years. Widespread library closures are expected; as many as one out of every four librarians may lose her job over the next year. In the United States, cities and states cannot afford adequate public services; public libraries have resorted to charging fees, reducing hours and closing branches to survive. Although the situation is Canada is not as dire, Canadian municipalities have never recovered from the spending cuts of earlier decades. At the same time, in 2010 U.S. businesses earned profits at the highest rate since statistics have been kept, totaling $1.66 trillion in the third quarter alone. The tax structure ensures that the public coffers enjoy no corresponding rise in wealth, and a full 54% of the U.S. federal budget feeds a military-industrial complex that is largely privatized. Viewed through this lens, the public library suffers not from a mere lack of funds, but from an economic system that privileges private-sector profit over public welfare.

Digitization leading to a perception of obsolescence

The public library is also challenged by digitization and the disintermediation of the internet. In information school classes, professional journals and library blogs, one constantly encounters the question, "Can Google replace the library?". Titles such as "Where is the librarian in the digital library?" and "Competing with Google in a special library" abound. While many professions grapple with the encroachment of technology on jobs once thought to be immune to automation, librarians are unusual in the persistent gap between the librarian's understanding of her job and the public's understanding of it. Class discussions and student field reports demonstrate that library users underestimate and under-value the work of librarians, observations supported by research. While citizens may research medical or legal questions online, they still see a doctor when they are ill or hire a lawyer to represent them in court. After gathering information online, how many people consult a librarian? Indeed, our profession's core values may unintentionally contribute to our own demise, as we encourage independent information-seeking.

The perception that the internet has rendered librarians obsolete creates an easy, if mistaken, budget solution: their expensive professional salaries become a logical target for the budget axe. Without professional staff, the library becomes a mere book repository run by clerks. In several U.S. cities, human interaction has been eliminated entirely with the introduction of automated "book lockers," which resemble vending machines. The demise of the public library speaks to issues much larger than protecting our profession; it widens the digital divide. Many people depend upon the library for both computer use and internet access. Inadequate funding decreases public access to education and information – an injustice to the community, and a danger to democratic values. If we want a society that values education, inquiry, self-government and freedom of information for all citizens, regardless of socioeconomic status, then we must protect the public library as an essential service.

Four Rs: relevancy, reinvention, raising awareness, resistance

Public libraries can address this challenge with a four-pronged approach:
* relevancy – stay relevant to the community,
* reinvention – make the library an indispensable community centre,
* raising awareness – promote the reinvented library, and
* resistance – fight for a society that values public services.

Relevancy. If libraries are to continue to receive public funding, they must remain relevant to the communities they serve – a seemingly simple statement, but a complex, controversial, and sometimes contradictory mandate. Relevancy may focus on collection development, with a robust collection of popular novels and movies. Or relevancy may be framed in educational terms: Baldwin feels the "'give 'em what they want' philosophy" is a dangerous mistake, and proposes librarians become "knowledge provocateurs," helping users access "real information" through alternate news sources. For Birdi, Wilson and Tso, relevancy presupposes empathy – the human touch that distinguishes the library from an internet search engine. Not only will relevancy be defined differently by different libraries, that definition should evolve with each community's needs. Relevancy should be an ongoing conversation – a process more than a product – that includes input from users, gathered through surveys, usage tracking, focus groups, and other methods. In an era when the need for the public library is being questioned, librarians cannot afford to ignore or dismiss this discussion.

Reinvention. This paper proposes that the best way for libraries to remain relevant is to reinvent themselves as community centres – a one-stop shop, so to speak, for a variety of services tailored to the needs of its community. Free computer classes, high-speed internet access, resume workshops, education and career research, and space for book clubs are only a few obvious possibilities. McKenzie et. al study libraries that offer storytime for parents and toddlers, and a meeting space for a knitting group. Fisher, Durrance and Hinton describe the rich programs of New York City's Queens Borough Public Library (QBPL), aimed at the borough’s burgeoning and diverse immigrant population. The QBPL's workshops in language, literacy, employment, and cultural understanding offer tremendous potential for users, and position the library as an indispensable resource. In the Mississauga Library System, users can join an English conversation circle, research their ancestry, or borrow a pedometer as part of a program to encourage physical activity. The possibilities are limited only by imagination and budget, and creative programming may result in increased funding.

Raising awareness. Programs are useless if people don't know they exist. Libraries must exploit every means available to promote their programs – social networking media, community newspapers, outdoor signage, email alerts, public school visits, brochures. The QBPL, for example, distributes millions of multilingual brochures annually and taps into ethnic media outlets. We must be alert to new and creative ways to trumpet our services and present libraries as the essential service we believe they are. Combining the first three Rs – reinventing the public library as a community centre with an emphasis on relevancy, then promoting those programs in the community – will ultimately translate into more library users. More users help justify continued funding.

Resistance. The final "R" in the 4R plan is resistance, used in the political sense: actively opposing government policies that destroy public services. Rather than see ourselves in competition with other public-sector employees for a slice of a shrinking public-sector pie, we should strive to make a larger pie. Author Philip Pullman made this connection when speaking out against the massive cuts to library services announced in the U.K.:

Those who think that every expert can be replaced by a cheerful volunteer who can step in and do a complex task for nothing but a cup of tea are those who fundamentally want to see every single public service sold off, closed down, abolished. . . . [T]he delusion that has gripped every politician in the western world for 30 years or so now is that when you lower taxes, the commercial world will take care of everything. The destruction of the library service is part of a wider malaise.

This activism can take many forms – lobbying the government, working to elect representatives committed to the public sector, writing letters to newspapers, blogging, leafletting. Resistance should especially include supporting other municipal workers in their struggles – teachers, transit workers, nurses, sanitation workers. We must look beyond the issues of our own profession, and help create a society that is willing to support public services. If we want a world that values public libraries, we have to create it.

Conclusion

While it may appear that the greatest challenge facing public libraries today is a shortage of resources, the developed world has sufficient wealth to maintain stellar libraries. However, the dominant economic system impedes the adequate funding of libraries and other essential public services. If libraries are to survive and thrive, librarians must keep libraries relevant and must raise awareness of library programs within their communities. This paper proposes a reinvention of the public library as a multifaceted community centre. From a broader perspective, librarians must join the struggle to create a society that values and maintains healthy public services.

[references not linked above]

Abram, S. (2005). Competing with Google in a special library. Information Outlook, 9(11), 46-47.

Baldwin, M. (2006). Librarians as knowledge provocateurs. Verso, 11(4), 11-14.

Birdi, B., Wilson, K., & Tso, H. M. (2009). The nature and role of empathy in public librarianship. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 41(2), 81-89.

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