Thingology (LibraryThing's ideas blog)

The Brigadoon Library!

2010-04-23T00:19:00.008-04:00

Techcrunch just reported an interesting development with Barnes and Noble's Nook eReader, a feature called "Read in Store."

The idea is simple. If you've got a Nook and you're in a physical Barnes and Noble store, you can read any ebook they carry. When you leave the store, the book goes away. As TechCrunch writes, "It’s the Brigadoon of ebook reading." (allusion explanation)

There are limitations, of course. Just as the Nook's "lending" feature only works once per book, and then never again, Read in Store is only good for an hour of book reading per day, plus another 20 minutes for magazine and newspaper content.

Retail sense. It certainly makes retail sense. There was always something risky about the Nook. Was Barnes and Noble preparing for a future without stores or just speeding its own demise? Many ereader owners give up on physical bookstores.(1) Read in Store is designed to keep them there. As the press release puts it, "Our digital customers will feel at home in our stores" where they can read books on their Nook while "enjoying their favorite beverage in our café."(2)

Best of all, this is territory Amazon and Apple can't follow. Amazon has no stores, and will never add them. (As Indie Booksellers never tire of pointing out, Amazon's success depends in part upon avoiding sales tax, which requires having no physical presence in a state.) Amazon has stores, but they're not exactly set up for reading.

If I were Apple, I'd be talking to Borders right now. If I were Apple, there was no disease, and animals didn't eat each other, I'd be talking to independent booksellers. Maybe it's time indies got together, presumably through IndieBound, and tried to wring a similar deal with someone--Kobo, Sony, or the congruently social Copia.

An answer for libraries? What works for Barnes and Noble could also work for libraries. Indeed, since every Barnes and Noble has suddenly turned into a limitless library, real libraries risk losing a core value to a mere bookstore.

Fortunately, the change to a "Brigadoon Library" would be gentle. Libraries are already accustomed to in-library database access. This would be an extension of an established concept--very helpful in selling new ideas to institutions that are too often hostile to them. And it should be easy to set up--just submit your wifi's IP address to an ereader's website and you're good to go.

Best of all, this is a library solution that makes sense to publishers and could therefore actually happen.(4) Publishers signed on with Barnes and Noble because they calculated that the sales they lost from free reading would be more than offset by the sales they gained from people who bought the book after tiring of the physical limitation--and by the extra word of mouth.(5) With libraries, the publisher incentive is less, but still significant. Readers cannot turn from an ereader to buy a physical copy, as they could at a Barnes and Noble store. But, as at a store, they can buy the ebook. There's no reason publishers wouldn't provide such a service for free, or, more probably, a low cost.(6)

What about outside the library? Will many in libraryland object to "read in the library for free but pay to take it home"? Certainly. But here's where ebook rental comes in. The library will pay to have some books available for take-home rental.

As I've pointed out in the past, ebook rental is a serious down-elevator for libraries. Through the magic of the First Sale doctrine, libraries could extract a lot more value from paper books that "regular" buyers--something like nine times as much. This surplus value was to a large degree why libraries came about, and why they continue to make economic sense. But now that publishers aren't bound by First Sale, they have no incentive whatsoever to allow libraries similarly generous terms. Libraries will have to pay full price for the value they deliver. Once that happens libraries will have little advantage over renting the book yourself.(7) Libraries become a "simple" book subsidy, not a magical one.

I don't see this regime ending. Publishers will never allow libraries to circulate digital books under the older, physical terms. They will charge for it, and charge what it's worth.(8) But in-library reading can augment necessarily restricted and circumscribed ebook lending. Thus, the library itself--the physical library--can serve as a limitless portal to the world. And, in addition, the library can allow paper books, and some digital books to be taken out.

Library dystopia. The Brigadoon Library holds out some hope that libraries can avoid "library dystopia"--a world in which the loss of First-Sale value and the virtualization of everything undermines public support for the library, and for the other enduring values libraries deliver. It's a world without libraries, or a world with libraries that provide much less.

For me, these enduring values include helping patrons find and understand information, and providing a vibrant community space. Many would also include the provision of free computers, but I see this as a downward race against technology prices--a service that will disappear as the need disappears, much like the telephone service libraries in rural areas once provided.(9)

Instead of a library depleted of books--not to mention CDs and DVDs(10)--and of library patrons not there for babysitting or free computers, the Brigadoon Library would be a full library. It would be full of patrons browsing the entire world of books.

Library utopia? This isn't library utopia. The Brigadoon Library would be a sort of updated closed-stacks library, and closed stacks library are limited libraries. It isn't the universal library, the expected future library where everything is available everywhere--and for free.

I didn't get a shot of the reading room, but here's my son, with the lions. No libraries, no lions. For God's sake, think of the children!

But it's a healthy one. It's healthy for authors and publishers. It's healthy for library budgets. And it's healthy for patrons.

I got a sense of how healthy a closed-stacks library can be a recent trip to the Boston Public Library's Research Library--the beautiful old building next to the ugly modern one. The reading room was full of people studying and browsing the web, but a core group was there because the "Research Collections" at the Boston Public Library are only available for use in-library. Kept from going elsewhere, they were truly limited.

But the limits had their benefits. Researchers and non-researchers enjoyed the air conditioning, the gorgeous room, and the company of others. The building and the people added something. And that's not even mentioning all the restaurants and bookstores nearby, or the library-sponsored readings and music events. The "anywhere library" of solitary individuals in their underwear is not really a better library.

I'll stop there. My blog posts all way to be essays, and my readers prefer they were Twitter posts.

To recap the Brigadoon Library is:

Technically easy, so doable.
Good for publishers, so possible.
Great for patrons, who get access to a world of books.
Not expensive.
Likely to produce full, vibrant physical spaces.
Likely to foster the connection between taxpayer and library.
Might save libraries.
Named after a Broadway Musical.

Come talk about it in the comments, or on Talk here.

1. Those that don't often use them very cynically--soaking up the nice displays and friendly smiles of the booksellers without the least intention to buy. There is, I think, a special circle of hell for people who do this, alongside the people who browse stores in order to figure out what they're going to buy on Amazon.

2. Does any human being not standing in front of a table with a pad of paper uses the word "beverage."

3. In some cases, libraries would probably have to pay outright for a read-in-library feature. Few patrons are going to buy an encyclopedia, for example. But the payment would be minimized by the limitation.

4. Here and elsewhere I'm going to use "publisher" to mean whoever sells the book. "Publisher" may eventually mean author directly, or some intermediary with no editorial or curatorial role. I despise phrases like "content provider."

5. This ignores the likelihood that publishers were also influenced by Barnes and Noble's outside share of their own book sales.

6. In some cases, libraries would probably have to pay outright for a read-in-library feature. Few patrons are going to buy an encyclopedia, for example. But the payment would be minimized if the item could only be read while in the library.

7. The exception is market power and price discrimination. Libraries buy a lot of books, so they may be able to command moderate discounts. As for price discrimination, it only applies if you need to go to the library to get the book. Price discrimination works by targeting some type of consumer or by imposing some barrier that does the same; for example, paperbacks are price discrimination, big fans and people with money buy the hardback; lesser fans and the cost-conscious wait to buy the paperback.

8. The only real hope is legislation. If Congress passed a bill that forced publishers to sell to libraries at a certain cost, with certain rights, that would change everything. I don't see that happening, and if it did, the costs and rights would be closer to real value extracted than to the First Sale price.

9. That doesn't mean libraries will stop providing computers, just as many will still let you make a phone call. Computers may well be necessary for this or that library-related task. And since libraries will probably continue to be used for low-quality babysitting, computers will keep the children entertained. But the provision of free computers and internet cannot remain a core mission of libraries when the "free" part has become superfluous.

10. CDs and DVDs are going virtual much faster than books. And for all the interest in libraries providing ebook rental nobody is talking about libraries providing free music of video streaming. That will never happen.

Nook photo credit goes to jennifertomaloff on Flickr.

Computers in Libraries 2010

2010-04-11T11:37:00.004-04:00

Tim and I are in DC (ok, Arlington, VA) for the Computers in Libraries conference. We're booth 217 in the exhibit hall, so come by and visit us. (We're the ones with the rhinos, as always!)

We're here to show off LibraryThing for Libraries (enhance your OPAC with tags, reviews, shelf browse, recommendations, and more) and our new product, Library Anywhere.

Library Anywhere is a mobile catalog for everyone—it gives you a web version of your OPAC optimized for cell phones, as well as native applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. It requires no installation, and is cheap (see the public price list here).

We're extremely proud and excited about Library Anywhere. We released our beta version to over 100 libraries last week, and response has been great. We're busy tweaking and building. Stop by the booth and we'll show you it live.

Reading alone: How ebooks will kill the smallest libraries

2010-04-09T02:11:00.005-04:00

A shelf at a church library catalogued by LibraryThing members. (See other flash-mob cataloging events.)

I've argued before (1, 2) that ebooks will hurt or even kill traditional libraries. I'd like to present the even stronger case that ebooks will kill off the small "community" libraries all around us--the shelves and rooms at churches, health centers and many other similar places.

These little, informal lending libraries grow like weeds all around us and contribute to the fabric of social life and community identity. It will be a shame to lose them, but it is probably inevitable.

Ebooks hurt traditional libraries. In brief, the argument is that paper-book libraries made economic sense because libraries owned books like anyone else, but could efficiently organize them to be lent out many times.

This "First Sale Doctrine" falls before the licensed-usage model of contemporary ebooks. It's not in publishers' or writers' interests to allow libraries to buy an item once at a consumer or near-consumer price and lend it out to many people, even serially, forever. Libraries will be forced to pay something closer to the true value of their lending activity, which will cost much more. It will convert libraries from an almost magical value multiplier, into a "simple" book subsidy.

Why are they dead? Ebooks kill small community libraries for the same basic reason—ebooks are and will remain a licensed good, not a freely owned one. The smallest libraries rely on the rights implicit in physical ownership. eBooks change—take back—many of those rights.

This boils down a little differently:

Small libraries depend to a large degree on cast-offs and donations. But consumers can't give their ebooks to anyone when they're done with them. They're technically and/or legally locked to a device or personal account.
Small collections grow organically and lazily without a "librarian." It's unlikely they will be able to negotiate and organize whatever "institutional subscriptions" will be available for public libraries.
If community libraries often can't pay for new paper books, it's unlikely they will have the funds to engage in high-priced site- or multi-use licensing of books.
Public libraries have market power. Even if they can't preserve first-sale value, they can use their collective and even individual scale to negotiate deals. Small community libraries are too fragmented and casual for market power.
Public libraries are connected to real moral and political power, and it pays dividends. For example, although public libraries weren't even involved in the infamous Google deal, the parties thought it politic to grant public libraries free access to copyrighted books at one terminal per building. This power may come in handy if publishers put the squeeze on them, but the smallest community have neither market or political power.

Counter-arguments. The argument could be made that ebooks will eventually revert to a more traditional "ownership" model. But why? Consumers have already made it clear that they will trade convenience and price to give up traditional rights of resale, lending, donation and inheritance. There has been no large-scale clamor for such rights, and I don't see one emerging. Rather, as ebooks advance, the personal, non-transferable nature of the medium will become increasingly accepted.

It has also been suggested that, although ebook DRM and contracts will stiffle lending, rampant piracy can function as a sort of rough substitute. If ebook piracy reaches music-piracy levels, this may come about--together with a sharp decline in quality writing which, unlike music, can't fall back on concert tickets and t-shirts to make ends meet. But either way, small communities will not be involved. Private citizens may trade ebooks, but a church or a senior center will not put its legal neck on the line to engage in a secondary activity like book lending.

What will we lose? At lot more than you might think, particularly if you're healthy, young and not much of a joiner. But here's a partial inventory of some the small lending libraries within a mile of two of my home:

A dozen churches, some with significant libraries
Two synagogues
A muslim community center
A natural birthing and parenting center
An Irish heritage center
A handful of exclusive private clubs
A Masonic temple
An arts and theatre center
A welter of general health centers
A cancer center
A center for grieving children
A hospice
A homeless shelter
A left-wing political action center
An advocacy group for Maine children
A center for transgender youth
A fiber-arts group
An Audubon Society
The YMCA
Semi-ornamental collections in a legion of coffee shops, hotels, restaurants, bars and so forth
Two "Bookcrossing zones," where strangers leave and grab used books
A tiny, poor, seldom-open private library that's been around since 1815 but mostly stocks recent bestsellers

Gloom and Doom? There is another side, of course. We shouldn't forget that ebooks may well turn out to be an overall boon. Convenience, universal selection and writer-reader disintermediation are powerful, largely positive forces.

It may also turn out that, all things being equal, the "ownership premium"—the extra that books cost because they could be transferred to others—was an unnecessary drag on our lives. If we aren't paying for true ownership, we can perhaps rent—and read—more. Maybe with books, as with tuxedos, most people are better off renting.(1) Or, to take another example, where we once dug wells, and "owned our own water supply," we eventually found it was more efficient to socialize the cost of the infrastructure, and pay for usage.

I even expect we don't even know all the good things ebooks will bring about. I'm not even being sarcastic.

But if something is gained, something will definitely be lost. The list of ebook "externalities" is long: the death of physical bookstores, the wounding or death of traditional public libraries, the concentration of retail power in a few hands, surrendering your reading history to corporations, privacy and censorship issues in undemocratic states, leaving your books to your kids, lending books to friends, showing off, subway voyeurism, etc.

So, to that list, add the death of the smallest libraries.

1. I own my own tuxedo, however, and I wear it whenever I can, dammit.

Library Anywhere at PLA

2010-03-25T13:01:00.005-04:00

PLA is happening right now in Portland, OR. We don't have our own booth, but Casey is hanging out at the ProQuest booth (booth 2032), along with the Bowker folks. Stop by to talk about LibraryThing for Libraries, and to see live demos of Library Anywhere—a mobile catalog for any library!

(click to see larger images)

The exhibits are open until 5pm today, and from 9:30-4 tomorrow.

Library Anywhere write-up on ALA TechSource blog

2010-03-04T13:09:00.008-05:00

Library Anywhere, our upcoming product that provides a mobile catalog (both mobile web and native apps) for any library, just got an excellent write-up on the ALA TechSource blog: LibraryThing Delivers Mobile Access to Library Catalogs.

The article, by Marshall Breeding, will also appear in the March 2010 issue of Smart Libraries Newsletter.

Breeding says of Library Anywhere,

"With the high level of functionality and the low pricing, this competition will lower the threshold for mobile technology into the reach of almost any library."

We're certainly excited about Library Anywhere, and are busy at work on it. We'll have more to show off soon!

March Legacy Mob: U.S.S. California

2010-03-02T21:56:00.004-05:00

After the success of cataloging the 1963 White House Library, we've made it into a monthly thing.

This month, starting at 12:00 noon EST Wednesday, March 3, and continuing for 24 hours, we're going to be cataloging the on-board library of the U.S.S. California, as it was in 1905.

This California's library catalog were written up and published by the Government Printing Office, and has been scanned by the Internet Archive. Designed to serve the California's 830-odd officers and men—the libraries were separate—it offers a unique view of the navy of the time, and of the country. The ship, then rechristened the San Diego, and its library, went to the bottom of the ocean in 1918, the victim of a German U-boat. Six sailors died.

Check out the talk thread
Jeremy has set up a wiki page
All see the USSCalifornia library as it develops

The "Legacy Mob" is an amalgam of two LibraryThing inventions:

The Legacy Library, where members catalog famous or notable past collections, like that of Jefferson, Hemingway or the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The Flash-Mob Cataloging, where members show up to catalog a small collection, like the Rhode Island Audubon or St. John's Church in Beverly, MA

CoverGuess: The game that helps people find books...

2010-03-02T09:09:00.001-05:00

See the main blog. (Posted to the wrong blog and too many links to this to just delete it.)

400,000 LTFL Reviews

2010-03-01T10:47:00.005-05:00

We now have over 400,000 reviews vetted and available for LibraryThing for Libraries. (Last June we hit 300,000, so over 100,000 reviews have been added in the past 8 months—not bad.)

400,000 is a lot of reviews. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, for example, has 117 reviews. Now you probably don't need to read over 100 reviews. But if a popular book gets that many, then the more obscure books in your catalog could have 20, 10, or 5 reviews. LTFL reviews cover the bestsellers but they also reach down the long tail.

The LTFL Reviews Enhancement also comes with blog widgets and a Facebook application allow your patrons to show off their reviews—and their love for your library—where they "live" online.

The Reviews Enhancement is currently available for Horizon, iBistro, Webvoyage, Voyager 7, Koha, Evergreen, WebPac, WebPac Pro, and Polaris 3.6. We're always expanding this list, so if your OPAC isn't one of these, email abby@librarything.com and we can work on adding support for it.

For more information, email me (abby@librarything.com). For ordering information, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—877-340-2400 or Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

Tasmanian radio interview and talk

2010-02-16T01:22:00.005-05:00

John Dalton, our man in Australia, did a snappy 12-minute radio interview for ABC Hobart show "Afternoons" with Michael Veitch. (Apparently, although John's thousands of miles away from the rest of us, and working from home, he doesn't get to "bludge around" very much.)

Here's a link to a recording: recording

The appearance was related to the State Library of Tasmania, a long-time LibraryThing for Libraries member, adding our "Reviews" enhancement, and public talk John is giving on Wednesday at the State Library in Hobart tomorrow, Wednesday at 4:00pm.

More on the talk here.

An example book at the State Library, with reviews, here.

Why are you for killing libraries?

2010-02-05T00:56:00.004-05:00

Publishing idea-man Mike Shatzkin recently wrote a provocative blog post, "Why are you for killing bookstores?"

He lays out the uncomfortable facts:

"Although there are probably few people reading this blog who expect bookstores to be around in 15 or 20 years (and those who do will undoubtedly leave a comment!), there are many who would like to keep them around as long as possible. There is a magic to being in a building surrounded by 40,000, 60,000, 100,000 different books. Bookstores are inherently community centers. They make possible the wide dissemination and promotion of great writing. They enable people to see heavily-illustrated books before they purchase them.

But have you thought about this? If you are for bookstores lasting as long as possible, you want to slow down the uptake of ebooks."

He goes on to explain the broad dynamics of the situation—the way Amazon, the big physical retailers and publishing look at the future, and which side they're on—faster ebooks or not. It's a stimulating read. And a depressing one.

Particularly depressing for me is the fact that Shatzkin never mentions libraries. (As one commenter on his post wrote, "Those buildings with 1000s of books that you speak so fondly of are called libraries.") It's not his fault, really. It's a short blog post. But I think it shows the extent of the problem for libraries. When a top industry analyst looks at the book world, libraries don't figure very prominently. There is a war going on, and libraries are going to be collateral damage.

They don't deserve it. US libraries circulated some 2.1 billion books last year, compared to 3.1 billion books sold. But they don't have much of a profile in the commercial world.(1) Being responsible for something like 39% of reading, bookstores only are about 4% of book sales.(2)

The difference is, of course, that libraries don't pay every time they circulate a book. Under the First Sale doctrine—the idea that you, well, own the things you own—libraries can pay once, and lend a book out multiple times.

Ebooks change this. As ebooks advance, libraries are going to lose their "First Sale" advantage. Publishers will never allow a library to "own" an ebook absolutely, just as consumers don't really own their ebooks. Libraries are going to be renting them, in fact or in effect, and they're going to paying a lot more to do it. They're going to be paying for the use they get out of them, not spending what consumers spend and getting more use. (I've written on the economics here before, so check that out first if you disagree with me.)

As the logic takes hold, libraries will be transformed into "simple" book-subsidy machines, not the special, advantaged ones they are now. That means they're either be forced to subscribe to fewer books, invest a lot more in their holdings or, for public libraries, convince voters to give them a lot more money. Those are bad options.

Other factors exacerbate the problem. Libraries are losing the "aggregation advantage." When every book is available anywhere, why go to the library to get it? And piracy hurts. Digitization has cut the music industry in half in the last decade, and there's no reason to believe books will become the first digital medium to avoid it. When you can not only get a book anywhere, but get it for free, why go to the library?

There are some reasons. Unlike bookstores, of course, libraries do other solid, valuable things. They employ librarians, who help you find and understand things. They provide free internet access. They hold story times and author readings. They lend out other things, although, excepting tools and people, digitization is going to wipe those markets out too.(3) And they're funded indirectly. Bookstores monetize their community value—whether it's an author reading or just the value of meeting cool people—by selling valuable objects. They create more value than they can realize. Public libraries, by contrast, monetize through government taxation, which is to say by periodically asking voters if they value them. As of now, despite some budgetary cuts, voters mostly do.

But, overall, I think libraries are headed in the same direction as bookstores and in obedience to the same logic—falling in tandem with the rise of ebooks. If they survive, it'll be for everything else they offer and so, for me at least, apart from the librarians, whose value won't fall, ebook libraries won't be full-fledged libraries anymore.

Shatzkin concludes:

"I don’t think anybody would want to be accused of being in favor of killing bookstores faster. And very few of us would be comfortable having it said we were trying to slow down the progress of digital technology, strategizing to slow down ebook uptake. But you are for one or the other, unless you don’t have any opinion at all."

Isn't the same thing true for libraries and ebooks?

Update 1: If you want to reply, you can leave a comment, but I also started a topic in Talk about the topic.

Well, that's about the most depressing thing I've written. I hope I'm wrong. And I even have some hopeful, positive things to say too. But I'll save them for another day.

1. These numbers are all very wiggly. Eric Hellman, formerly of OCLC, has been working on them for a while. Start with this, this and this.
2. As founder of LibraryThing, which doesn't cede the term "library" to institution collections of books alone, I need to mention that "lending" isn't just an institutional library phenomenon. Regular people lend and share books too, probably in numbers to rival libraries. That phenomenon will be largely ended by ebook DRM—and revived by piracy.
3. It's actually digitization plus virtualization. CDs are digital, but they're also physical objects, so libraries can own them for real. When CDs are gone—and they're going—libraries will have to contract with digital music services. The dynamics are similar to the ebook dynamics.

Something is the Future

2010-02-02T10:57:00.012-05:00

Wayne Bivens-Tatum, a Princeton librarian and blogger, wrote an excellent post, called "Nothing is the Future." It attacks a certain sort of insipid library futurism—and is going all over the "Twittersphere":

The kindest interpretation of statements like "the future is mobile" or "the future of reference is SMS" or "the future is librarians in pods" or whatever is that the librarians are trying to create that future by speaking it. The incantation will somehow make it so.... The less kind interpretation is that the authors of such statements are reductionist promoters, reducing a complex field to whatever marginal utility they're focused on and claiming that this is the future, while simultaneously promoting themselves as seers.

The obvious and most likely statement is that nothing is the future, as in no thing is the future, period. Anyone who tells you different is just plain wrong. With technology, it should be clear to anyone who bothers to see past their obsessions that formats and tools die hard. Some people like to imply that if librarians don't take up every new trend they'll become like buggy whip makers. I should point out that there are still people who make buggy whips. Buggy whips aren't as popular as they once were, but they're still around. There are even buggies to accompany them.

I started to reply in comments, but my words added up. So here they are:

Though a purveyor of "Web 2.0" ideas—I founded LibraryThing, what can I say?—I think it's a great post.

The rhetoric you describe rings true. It starts, I think, from the popularizers and enthusiasts who take up new technologies and communicate them to the great mass of librarians whose life revolves around other things. To get through the clutter—to be one of the things you take back from a weekend of ALA or PLA talks—the message is simplified and the rhetoric ratchets up. "This is useful" loses out to "this will save you." As it passes through libraryland the cycle repeats in spirals of simplification and amplification. Over and over I see broader intellectual discussions of technology and the future of libraries reduced to trivial and ephemeral exhortations like "every library needs to be on Meebo!" or "the future is SMS!"

It's depressing, but it's not unique to library technology. You see it in other trends, like "green libraries" (they're the future, didn't you get the memo?). It's in the dynamics of communication. Your post is a good corrective to it.

At the same time, you're missing something. I don't know if you're missing it for real, or just in this focused expression. But there's a powerful "yes but" here, and it needs saying—shouting even!—lest people take the wrong thing from your post.

For all the nonsense and hype, librares are subject to an extraordinary and rapid cultural change. They have already changed drastically—especially if "libraries" means what libraries mean to culture generally, and people who don't work in them.

Libraries are in the "information business" and this business is in one of the most profound transformations in human history. This isn't buggies vs. Stanley Steamers—different ways of getting to the habberdasher. It's horse-and-buggy culture vs. everything the car has brought—mass production, suburban living, the Blitzkreig, the global economy, global warming and the sexual revolution. Certainly, as you say, carriges continue to exist as objects that convey people, but their meaning has been utterly transformed. If libraries end up as a way for rich people to indulge children on a visit to a big city—what carriages mean today—well, crap! How did that happen?!

The world is changing, and for all the noise about this or that technology, I don't think libraries are dealing with it squarely. (Forget Web 2.0; libraries haven't really ingested Web 1.0 yet.) "The future is X" isn't the best response to that change, but it's a response.

I expect your post will get wide circulation. It says something that hasn't been said before as well. But if it prompts librarians to dismiss technology's impact on the future of libraries, it will do great harm. Instead, I hope people use your essay as a way to "kick it up a notch" intellectually, get past the small stuff and confront the very real changes ahead.

PS: By the way, LibraryThing is releasing a universal mobile catalog. It's the future. No, really! :)

Shelf Browse live at High Plains

2010-02-01T11:03:00.005-05:00

Shelf Browse—which we announced last week—is now live in High Plains Library District's catalog. As we mentioned in our brief ALA announcement, Shelf Browse lets you browse your library's shelves visually, just as you would do in the physical library.

Shelf Browse lets your patrons see where a book sits on your actual shelves, and what's near it. It includes a "mini-browser" that sits on your detail pages, and a full-screen version, launched from the detail page.

See it in action at High Plains Library District. Some jumping off points:

Scroll back and forth, serendipitously browsing through the shelves. If lists are more your speed, in the full-screen version, you can switch between shelf and list mode.

For ordering information contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

Library Anywhere Prices (Public!)

2010-01-26T10:16:00.005-05:00

As we announced last week at ALA Midwinter, we're about to come out with "Library Anywhere"—a mobile catalog for any library. In short, it provides a mobile catalog, both mobile web and native apps (see the handout).

Price List. We promised that Library Anywhere wouldn't just be cheap, but that we would have published prices. This is a pretty big deal in the library world, where wiggly, negotiable prices and hidden formulae are the norm.

LibraryThing Anywhere Price List!

We key off buildings and locations, to be as dead-simple as possible. It's an annual subscription fee.

Schools
$150, plus $50 for each additional location

Public libraries
$350 for main library, plus $50 per branch

Two and four-year colleges
$750, plus $150 for each additional library building

Universities
$1,000, plus $150 for each additional library building

We're confident this is 1/4 to 1/2 the price of our competition. This makes us very happy. It should also be a good deal better.

Beta Libraries Wanted. We're still looking for beta libraries, especially for some systems. Contact abby@librarything.com if interested.

For ordering information contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

Library Anywhere, a mobile catalog for everyone

2010-01-16T08:57:00.004-05:00

Following on our announcement of Shelf Browse, here's another new product. We think this one's a pretty big deal.

Announcing Library Anywhere! Check it out on our ALA handout (available here).

A mobile catalog for any library, up and running in minutes.
Mobile web and apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Android.
Cheaper than you'd guess.
Search, place holds, and more.
Showcase hours, branches, and events.
No installation process.
Works with 90% of current OPACs.
Comes with an "accessible version" that provides a fully Section 508-compliant version of your existing catalog.

Unlike Shelf Browse, available now, Library Anywhere is "coming soon." So, we're looking for beta libraries.

New stuff: Shelf Browse

2010-01-16T08:49:00.005-05:00

If you're at the American Library Association in Boston, come check us out (booth 1208).

We're going to be showing a bunch of new products. First up is "Shelf Browse," another enhancement for LibraryThing for Libraries.

As our ALA handout (available here) puts it:

"Browse your library’s shelves visually, just as you would do in the physical library. Shelf Browse lets your patrons see where a book sits on your actual shelves, and what’s near it. It includes a “mini-browser” that sits on your detail pages, and a full-screen version, launched from the detail page.

LibraryThing at ALA Midwinter

2010-01-14T10:28:00.005-05:00

We're at ALA Midwinter in Boston this weekend—come by and talk to us! We're in booth 1208 (look for the rhinos).

We'll be showing off LibraryThing for Libraries—reviews, tags, recommendations and some big new features.

New features

Shelf Browse for your OPAC. It shows your covers on a virtual "shelf" for browsing—just as you would do in the physical library. Shelf Browse lets you see where a book sits on your actual shelves, and what's near it.

Library Anywhere: A mobile catalog for everyone. Library Anywhere gives you a web version of your OPAC optimized for cell phones, as well as native applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. It requires no installation, and will be cheap.

Scoping for Consortia. LTFL now has improved consortium support which allows for "scoping"—patrons searching within a scoped location will only see, for example, LTFL recommending books that are held at that location.

This is just a quick overview, we'll blog each of these in much more depth in a few days, stay tuned for more details and screenshots. Or just stop by the booth and we'll show everything to you in action.

Party
Saturday after the show, come have some baked brie and talk books and libraries with us.

Saturday the 16th, 5:30-8pm at The Green Dragon Tavern.

Appetizers, drinks, and good conversation. Details in this blog post. We'll also have little cards with directions at the booth.

Free exhibit passes
If you just want to go to the exhibit hall (no sessions), you can get a free pass here.

Crosspost: LibraryThing party in Boston

2010-01-12T16:14:00.004-05:00

Crossposted from the LibraryThing blog:

LibraryThing party in Boston:
Gather with librarians and LibraryThing members alike to eat, drink and talk books.

Date: January 16th, 2010
Time: 5:30-8:00 pm
Location: The Green Dragon (see Local event) – 11 Marshall St Boston, MA 02108
Updates: Follow @conferencething on Twitter

We'll be at the ALA midwinter conference exhibit hall at booth 1208, so stop by to say hi and grab a flier with info and directions.

ALA Midwinter—free exhibit passes

2010-01-12T10:10:00.001-05:00

We'll be at ALA Midwinter this weekend, and so should you! We have free passes to give out (to the exhibits only) if anyone in the Boston area wants to attend.

You just have to go here and register.

While you're there, stop by to say hi. We'll be in booth 1208—just look for the rhinos.

More announcements coming soon, including a few new LibraryThing for Libraries features, and an update on the party we're hosting Saturday evening. Stay tuned.

"What is Social Cataloging?"

2009-12-01T13:35:00.004-05:00

I've just posted a full video of my talk "What is Social Cataloging?" on YouTube.

Update: I've posted the whole thing as a single clip on Vimeo. I'd go there instead of YouTube.

The best way to watch it is to click this playlist link.

I talk about LibraryThing, social cataloging, the "social cataloging ladder," Library 2.0, how libraries are failing at library 1.0 and I insult OCLC and cheer libraries on a bunch near the end. Fun for the whole family.

ConferenceThing at ALA Midwinter

2009-11-24T09:11:00.006-05:00

Announcing "ConferenceThing," a free, mini-conference we're organizing to coincide with ALA Midwinter in Boston.*

When:	Friday, January 15, 2010
Where:	South Boston, very close to ALA Midwinter
Structure:	Mixed conference/unconference
Admission:	Free

We've wanted to do something like this for ages. Now that ALA is in Boston, home for Abby and Sonya, and a short drive from the main office in Portland, ME, we have the chance to do it—and do it up. We've chosen Friday, before the exhibitions open at 5pm.**

What we're planning:

"Higher-level" conversations about the topics we care about—Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future of libraries and books. Many librarians are ready to move past the basics. A lot of us now spend most of our time thinking about this stuff!
Learning, but no instruction. If you want to set up a Facebook page, get a book. If you want to talk about what works and what really doesn't in library social media, show up.
Non-library people. The event will be open to everyone—LibraryThing members, librarians, etc. We're going to bring some interesting bookstore and publishing people. We think we're all in the same boat. And we're drifting. Let's talk about whom to eat first.
Some sort of LibraryThing meetup and ALA party. We're looking around for something different. It might just be drinks at Bukowski's, but we're looking for something cooler. (We're shooting for the Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose books LibraryThing members cataloged.)

What to do

Join the ConferenceThing LibraryThing group to talk about it, and plan things
Follow @ConferenceThing on Twitter

*ConferenceThing is not affiliated with ALA Midwinter in any way, although we have the same tailor.
**Friday is also when most of the special sessions are planned. We're bumping up against a couple of events, including some by our friends in LITA. We're sorry about that, but there weren't any better options.

Ring the bell! We hit 50,000 venues in Local!

2009-11-20T15:44:00.003-05:00

During our mad rush to add all the used book stores at Abebook (blog post) and all the Barnes & Noble stores (Talk thread), Dan added the 50,000th entry into LibraryThing Local.

So where is http://www.librarything.com/venue/50000? A Barnes & Noble in Morgantown, WV.

There's no photo up yet, if someone near Morgantown wants to go and take a picture with a piece of paper that says 50,000! on it.

(crossposted from the other blog)

Speaking at Charleston Conference

2009-11-04T15:41:00.002-05:00

Abby was slated to give a talk about LibraryThing at the Charleston Conference, tomorrow. Then, she came down with the flu. So, I'm heading to Charleston, SC as I blog now. I'll be speaking at 12:30.

Anyone who happens to be there, and can lend me an Apple video dongle gets a free teeshirt.

Simultaneous flash-mob cataloging

2009-10-26T22:16:00.004-04:00

On the weekend of October 3-4, we had two simultaneous, two-day, flash-mob cataloging events. Here's the wrap-up:

Central Park School for Children – a small public charter elementary school in Durham, NC
(centralparkschoolforchildren.org, centralparkschool on LT, blog post announcing event)

1,391 books cataloged, barcoded, assigned Dewey numbers, physically labeled the volumes for shelving, uploaded cover images, and shelved. All this was done by 22 catalogers on Saturday and 10 on Sunday.

It's easy to underestimate how many books are in a library, and children's books are particularly notorious (skinny little volumes that they can be), so this flash-mob is heading back to finish up the collection. They don't have a date set (they're thinking early November), so if you live in the area and you'd like to help, you can email erin_stalberg@ncsu.edu for details.

Erin and Laura Abraham presented "Cataloging: Who Knew it was a Community Service?" at the North Carolina Library Association conference this past week. You can download the PowerPoint here.

The Canton Museum of Art in Ohio
(CantonArt.org, CantonArt on LT, blog post announcing event)

Over two days, catalogers managed to add 1,090 books in a total of about 7.5 hours. They had seven catalogers on Saturday, four on Sunday, and a dedicated book lugger (also the father of the flash-mob organizer) for both days.

See more photos here.

Ebook economics: Are libraries screwed?

2009-10-07T02:09:00.012-04:00

"Kindling" by Flickr user oskay

The advance of ebooks will no doubt bring much good. As often with technological change, we probably can't even predict what wonderful new things will emerge! But we can see some serious dangers ahead, and try to deal with them. I see three major areas of concern: to libraries, to physical bookstores and to the freedom to read in unfree countries.

This post explores the first of these—the danger to libraries. There are, of course, arguments to be made about the viability of physical libraries in a digital age—that while libraries aren't just buildings, the building still define much of what they do. That is not my point here.

Instead, I want to advance a pricing argument: that ebooks will end up costing libraries far more than paper books ever did.

Premise: Libraries will need a "library model" for ebooks.

A few libraries, such as NCSU have been experimenting with ebooks. Without exception, they are following a "consumer model," buying a large pool of devices and then buying books locked to individual devices in the pool.

This model is great for experimentation—to test what patrons think of ebooks and figure out what to do with them—but it's not a long-term solution. Digital books locked to individual physical devices are worse than physical books. That is, when you take out a physical book, one book is unavailable. When you take out a Kindle with 100 books on it, 100 books are unavailable. NCSU has bought extra copies when students need another copy in circulation. Obviously that's not a long-term solution.

Because the "consumer model" won't work, libraries will need—and publishers and ebook providers—will create a "library model." The library model will involve a "site license" model—a pool of books, with rights to use them on X devices at a time. Publishers are already talking about this.

Thus, libraries and consumers will be using different models. The market will "split." (I understand that Netlibrary and Ebrary, two library-centered ebook vendors, already used by many libraries, work this way now.)

Economic effect: Libraries are screwed.

With regular books, libraries took advantage of the same deal regular people got, but extracted a lot more value of that deal. That is, a regular person mostly got a single use out of a book; libraries got many more uses. We didn't think of it this way, but libraies had a "site license" of sorts—the so-called "first-sale doctrine."

With the first-sale doctrine sidelined by digital rights management (DRM), publishers will seek to extract the higher value of their books within a library context. This will cause prices to rise.

With physical books, library price discrimination was impossible. Libraries and regular people bought the same stuff, and paid the same prices. If a given edition was pitched to libraries, its price was held in check by the availability of non-library editions. As a result, only purely academic titles had run-away libary prices—think Brill with its $300 monographs.

Once the market is "split," price discrimination is possible. Publishers will charge libraries more for the extra value they get because they can do so without hurting the consumer market. This will cause prices to rise.

The cost of paper books have traditionally been held down by the existence of a secondary market. Copyright is, of course, a legal monopoly on the production of a given work, but once paper copies have been sold, new sales compete to some degree with the used copies out there. If you don't want to pay $242 for Brill's Collected Papers on Greek Colonization, BookFinder lists 25 used copies under $215.

Because ebooks are non-transferable—and if such ability is added, it surely won't allow a consumer to pass an ebook to a library under library terms—no secondary market will exist. Until copyright expires, libraries will have to go to a single source—the publishers who have the copyright monopoly. This will cause prices to rise.

The "library model" will be inevitably pushed toward "rental" not "ownership." As many have remarked, ebooks are already more like "renting" than "owning," with no right of resale and at least the technical ability for the book to vanish at whim. Libraries, afraid of buying goods that a technological change or company bankruptcy will obliterate, will seek to avoid the "lock in" of ownership. Publishers will also see opportunity in offering large "packages" to libraries—packages that provide rental access to a collection that would take years to build up in a traditional buying-and-owning model.

This logic is how libraries were pushed to renting their journals. It's also at work in enterprise software, either de jure or—through regular version upgrade payments—de facto. Libraries will rent, not buy, their ebooks.

The combination of monopoly and rental is dangerous. It's how journal subscriptions have risen faster than inflation for 40 years, and spiked precipitously upward in the last decade. (The classic ARL graphic can be found here.)

The logic of journals is the logic of the site-licensed ebook. Prices will rise unchecked. Some relief may come if the open-access movement goes past scholarly journals into other scholarly publishing—there's really no reason Brill books need to cost $300! But this will take a while, and it will only affect scholarly titles.

Rental means prices will rise.

In the past, libraries could "coast." Collection development was a long-term thing, and libraries could, if necessary, restrict their acquisitions budget in line with financial realities. When times are bad, you buy less. When times are good, you buy more. As long as you have both ups and downs, the library as a whole stays healthy.

Rental will change this. Libraries will only be as good as their last subscription check. This will change the nature of collection development (in both good and bad ways), and give politicians new opportunities for both unsustainable budget growth and budget-cutting during crisis. This may not cost libraries more, but it will put their value on the knife-edge.

What do you think? I've started a discussion topic in the "Librarians who LibraryThing" group.

I'm sure there are lots of good arguments against this post. Here are two that came up as people read earlier drafts.

Jason Griffey argues (by Twitter) that prices will be kept in check by wide availability of pirated versions. This is a good argument. The counter-argument is corporate software. It's not hard to get a free copy of InDesign or Photoshop, but corporations continue to shell out nearly $1,000 for each, because the penalties are so steep.

Another correspondent suggested the "dawning age of biblioplenty"—a world in which "millions of books will be available from almost anywhere"—will act to hold down prices, presumably through what economists call indirect competition.

1,512 libraries in LibraryThing for Libraries

2009-09-29T10:18:00.000-04:00

LibraryThing for Libraries, our enhancements to public and academic library catalogs, continues to advance. The official list shows some 159 "libraries" getting our tags, recommendations and reviews in their catalogs. But many of those 159 "libraries" are really much larger systems.

So, we thought we'd figure out how many individual libraries were using LibraryThing for Libraries, and add them all to LibraryThing Local. It wasn't until we started searching out every member library of every consortium and adding every branch to LibraryThing Local that we realized we had WAY more libraries than we had thought: 1,512!

Some of the biggies include ALS/RSA in Illinois, with over 250 member libraries, NOBLE in Massachusetts, with 28, and the King County Library System in Washington, with 43. Over in Australia, the State Library of Tasmania pretty much covers the island, with some 50 libraries.

LTFL in LibraryThing Local. To get this number, we had to add all the libraries to LibraryThing Local. All LibraryThing for Libraries members get this badge:

We have some other plans for this, of course. But for now we're going to sit back—and dream about an around-the-world trip to visit all of them...