I’m entirely unsurprised by this.
Great post reminding us all about the diversity and variety of libraries out there. Also, a good reminder that different libraries will serve different publics and this is important to keep in mind when discussing or critiquing them.
This makes me exceedingly happy. I hope more institutions make this decision.
Christian Zabriskie: Confronting The Biggest Threat To The Public Library
Yup. It is the systematic de-funding of libraries by mostly uncaring politicians that will kill libraries.
In what has to be one of the most interesting proposal for what future libraries (and libraries right now) could be doing, the Library Journal notes this:
But, Sanchez noted that independent content producers often need help with distribution. Libraries could offer assistance transforming a Microsoft Word document into an EPUB file, and offer the resulting ebook for lending.
The key is that sentence at the end. Help people create things, then distribute. Roll those non-traditionally created items into the collection. If libraries were to start collecting patron created content, cataloguing it, and making it available this would be a truly value function.
This would be a real disruption in the model of how things work.
I really think that it is time that Yahoo just died. The answer to saving them isn’t acquiring companies and services that people like, since they have a track record of doing this and ruining those services (Flickr and Delicious are great examples).
The use of authority control as an example is absolutely fantastic and on point. It also points to the type of behind the scene work librarians are so good at.
This is a great initiative. And just the right sort of thing to encourage fairness between publishers, creators, and their audiences.
The author has this to say:
Because I realize that if this e-book phenomenon continues … and certainly it will … it will kill public libraries. Yes, kill them.
Earlier he notes that more people are reading ebooks than are reading paper books. And certainly, the stats seem to indicate that ebooks are growing the number of people reading.
This is a good thing and something librarians should support, if we are for literacy. As we should be. Even if it comes at the expense of ourselves. People reading is good.
Some great food for thought here about remembering that ‘big’ data can mean a large portion of tiny, mundane digital objects. And storing, retrieving, preserving, and mining repositories like this still has its challenges.
