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Libraries are a barrier to reading
January 7, 2009 | 9:59 am
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By Paul Biba
So says a fascinating blog post by Donald Clark. Here are a few excerpts, and I suggest you read the whole thing. He makes a lot of sense, especially when he talks about publishers confusing the medium with the content. I must also admit that I’ve had some of the same thoughts about libraries myself. Any rebuttal?
Thanks to author Richard Herley for finding this post.
100 Classic Books on Nintendo
Who would have thought? I’ve just seen the ‘100 Classic Books’ title advertised on prime time TV, just after Big Brother, for the Nintendo DS. Brain Training was a hinge product. It changed the entire games market. Nothing will ever be the same again. But this is even bolder.
Of course, the traditionalists will be waving their reading glasses in horror, as usual. But to turn books into a fetish is simply to deny learning and access by those who need it most. Real books are great, but let’s not confuse the medium with the content. Just as journalists and newspaper owners fail to realise they’re in the ‘news’ not the ‘newspaper’ business, so book fans and publishers fail to realise that this is about reading, not books. Books are simple a piece of technology. A damn good piece of technology, but one that has some strengths and lots of weaknesses. In time its weaknesses will outweigh its current strengths.… Why lock up knowledge and the ability to learn in libraries and schools, when we can publish and distribute it at marginal cost to everyone. As long as we publish in open standards, the devices will just keep on coming. Leave the device design to the experts, like Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun, I believe that Moore’s Law will produce $10 devices by 2020, possibly a lot earlier – we just need to focus on free content.
… Take 1000 or 10,000 books, all of the BBC Bitesize content (we the public have paid for it, surely we own it), lots of e-learning, at all levels, language learning, and give it away to every schoolchild for free. Just hand over the entire canon, all GCSE and A-level subjects and lots of juicy extras. The cost would be a tiny fraction of the overall education budget. In fact, I think it can be done at no cost at all.Libraries as expensive warehouses
How? This may sound like a contradiction – encourage reading by closing the most costly libraries. There are lots of them. The cost of borrowing a book in some public libraries is greater than the cost of the book itself. This may be hard to believe, but it’s true. Divide the actual cost of the library by the number of borrows per year – it’s shockingly high. I don’t mean all libraries or university libraries, just costly public libraries.
Public libraries are no longer encourage reading. In the age of digital abundance, and cheap books, they’re an expensive obstacle to reading. Libraries spend inordinate amounts of time trying to fine people and recover books that people just find too inconvenient to take back. They stop reading from libraries as they criminalise readers. Librarians have become debt collectors.…
Then there are the book wardens – sorry librarians. Let’s be honest, they’re mostly just warehouse workers ordering, stacking, handing out, taking in and stacking again. Yet they cost the earth. As graduates (in stacking?) they demand salaries way beyond what the job requires. And many are seriously deficient on the customer care side. The main cost of any public library is the inflated salary costs. This is why the borrowing cost per book in many libraries has become absurd.
OK, I’m sure there’s a few tramps out there and those earnest parents who drag their children along every Saturday, when they’d much rather be playing football or playing computer games, who’ll be seeing this as an affront to civilisation, so I’ll try another tack.
Close down a whole swathe of libraries and encourage, even subsidise, the big bookshops, such as Borders or Waterstones, to expand their activities. They have all the best sites, good coffee, helpful and knowledgeable staff, and better book collections. Give us all some tax breaks on buying books.
Editor’s note: If you come across a post you think would fit well at TeleRead feel free to send me the link. Or, even better, if you’d like to make a post yourself send me an email and I’ll post it. You can find my email address in the sidebar.
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Comments:
While I usually quite enjoy reading TeleRead via Google Reader this post shows a serious lack of thought. Ok, I know that his is not something that you read but by reprinting it you are in some ways vouching for the content.
First, I am a librarian. I rarely stack books. I have two master’s degrees and I use them to design and acquire a collection that meets the needs of my patrons (at a university). I also use my skills to help patrons find the best resource (be it book, website, or whatever) to meet their information need. I also spend considerable amounts of time finding ways to pass these skills on to the patron so that they can be more productive without assistance. I do all of this for a salary less than I earned as a consultant with only one MA.
Bookstores clerks do not care if you find the best book for your purposes just that you buy one. They are not educated in advanced search techniques nor do they have access to a collection with anything near the depth of even a small public library. They have not been taught how to evaluate materials for reliability. In fact they are probably just between jobs at fast food locations where they can be paid higher wages.
Finally, your correspondent seems blissfully unaware of the important role that public libraries play in early literacy education. Ask any grade school teacher and they will talk at length about the efforts school and public librarians put into teaching children to read. Without these efforts we would have far fewer readers.
If local governments shut down libraries, they’d use the cost savings for something not reading-related. Rather than advocating for the shuttering of libraries (and demeaning librarians in the process), we’d be better off advocating changes to the library structure that would more effectively promote reading among the general public. If you have an institution like the library, you don’t trash it and start from scratch (you’ll never get anything like it back anyway). Instead, fix you what you already have.
Why are you picking up something like this? The logic of libraries blocking anything is ridiculous. If you don’t return a book or damage it, whose fault is that? Why are libraries dragged through the mud when they are the ONLY one providing access? Project Gutenberg is great, but I would prefer to read books printed since 1922.
This post seems to be from somewhere other than the United States so I can’t really speak to the details. However, I will say that the average person pays $18 for library services annually in my community. They actually only pay $3 per book. Are you really saying that you can get better access online with $3 or even $18?
I get really tired of people thinking all reading is on the web when I can attest that it isn’t. As a librarian, I am frustrated by the fact that it isn’t. Libraries are still the only place providing free and new content. Online there are thousands for free, all old and outdated. You still have to pay for new things, but your library provides them for free. Where’s the logic here? I am baffled!
Questionable “facts” about the economies of libraries AND publishing. Don should talk to the folks in Philadelphia.
SHEESH! I can think of no sense in which books in a public library are “locked up.”
Ahem. Give me time to forumulate my angry hornet thoughts and I’ll get back to you.
Oh, I’d also like to add that prisons are expensive warehouses. Libraries are not.
Yeah, the logic in this piece is unfortunately lacking. And to jump on a point that I was with him on until I thought about it: “Real books are great, but let’s not confuse the medium with the content.”
Yeah, Let’s not confuse medium with content. Journalists are people who get paid to write the news for a publishing company that does there best to put out a high-quality package of content. They are in fact in it for the Newspaper (ie. the package of content) If people were in it to write the news for free without the title of journalist, they could do that any time they like and put out pieces of paper with news stories on it or post it on the web. When you go to a site, or a newspaper or a book, you are not just paying for what’s inside you are paying for a well-researched, Edited, polished product. Libraries buy them and provide them to you for free. Being a journalist is not a Public Service. Being a Public Servant who will volunteer their time and free information/knowledge is something different.
Yes, if you are not trying to make money and be a heart-warming volunteer to civilization, then great, write your thoughts, put the work into polishing them, then teach them to children. But Publishers at their heart need to make money. Libraries at their heart are trying to provide comfortable access to knowledge to everyone.
And yes Librarians are wayyyy more than just wardens. The programs they create, the knowledge they hold, the search techniques (which is a skill unto itself- trust me); a Librarian does not just hold a book for you. And they are a Hundred times more knowledgeable than anyone you will find at a Book store.
I am huge proponent of EReading and EBooks, as I am sure everyone else reading this blog is, but let’s not forget that as a Package a Library is more than just a warehouse to hold books.
Ok. I’m back:
Inflated salaries?
Excuse me?
Many librarians I know are barely making above minimum wage. As for librarians with degrees, many of them aren’t even making what they should be for their degree level. If you want to talk inflated salaries, go talk to your politicians, your movie stars and your company CEOs.
And do you really think you could walk into a big bookstore, find a clerk and ask them about a book you’ve forgotten the title of and the author’s name (though you remember the plot), and be able to find it?
Does this person even realize just how many kids frequent public libraries? Does he even realize how important the library is for kids who have no one to go home to?
I would like to know what library this author has actually been in to give him such a negative viewpoint, because I strongly suspect he’s going off outdated, misleading stereotypes. No librarian today would intentionally “criminalize” a reader for bringing back an overdue book. And as for fines, just like in everyday life, there are consequences for mistakes. When you sign up for a library card, the patron is expected to abide by certain rules — just like your parents expected you to do things, just like your boss or your children expect you to do things, just like your local police department expect you to abide by their laws. In a library, one of these rules is to bring back your books before they become due, and if you can’t bring them back, to make arrangements with the library (i.e. renewal, or some other way of return). When you signed that card application, you agreed to this. And all the librarians I’ve met are more than willing to accommodate special circumstances, if only the patron will ask.
Libraries work hard to serve their communities. In this age of growing digital technology, they are working harder than ever to provide relevant services to their patrons. The problems facing libraries today are the same ones that have the ebook community in an uproar — costly devices, obnoxious DRM, supply, demand, and universality of format. Many librarians I know want to offer more and more digital content.
They just can’t afford to. They can’t afford to be locked into something that won’t be available a year or two or three down the road.
And so, they stick with books. They work on perfecting their searching techniques, they work to implement social software, they work to provide the community with a central hub where everyone can find what they’re looking for — be it entertainment, facts, or figures.
Libraries aren’t the villain here.
And furthermore, the primary focus of a library is against censorship (I suggest the author read the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights). Do you really think that, once the government gets a hold of the funds from a closed library that the materials provided through your “subsidized bookstores” will remain uncensored?
Fat chance.
And also, if a library is funded by a county (city, etc.), it is a line item in the budget. Cut those dollars, and the money returns/stays with the people.
Unless you’re Communist, that is.
On a personal (and final) note, I am appalled by the total lack of credible fact in this article.
Heather S. Ingemar
Fascinating post, Paul. Clark makes some interesting points in the comments section; well worth reading all the way through. He’s clearly a fan of the TeleRead idea — a national digital library, available to all. What an idea — closing some brick-and-mortar libraries to pay for it; I haven’t heard DR advocate that yet.
And do you really think you could walk into a big bookstore, find a clerk and ask them about a book you’ve forgotten the title of and the author’s name (though you remember the plot), and be able to find it?
Done just that more than once. Thanks to late lamented Stacey’s in Palo Alto, and the still thriving Schwartz’s in Mequon, both staffed by people who read!
I have an MLS; I worked in academic and public libraries, and also worked just under 9 years at the late lamented Kroch’s & Brentano’s bookstore in Chicago. Professionalism and competence aren’t dependent on the academic degree. Quite a few of the folks I worked with at that store could easily answer the customers’ questions about forgotten titles. My co-workers in the paperback department were easily the equals of most of the librarians I’ve known (and a few of them were superior). I’ve also seen drones and space-wasters in both bookstores and libraries — that ability to answer such questions from customers isn’t universal, and you won’t find it in every bookshop; you’re supposed to find it in libraries, which is why when I’ve got to find information I’ll start looking in a library before I’ll start looking in a bookstore.
The notion that the libraries are expendable, that good bookstores (brick-and-mortar and/or digital) are enough, and we don’t need all that high-priced library staff (high-priced? I want what Clark’s been smoking) is simply absurd. For reference and research purposes, a good library is superior to a good bookstore. Ditto for depth of collection — Barnes and Noble superstores, delightful though they are, carry what’s in print. Libraries will keep books as long as the titles are being used by their patrons, long past the time the publishers drop them.
And a number of those people using the computers at the libraries will be using them to access the library’s periodical and newspaper databases that aren’t always open to the general internet user.
Books? I can walk into the local public library and into the local college library and find plenty of titles, serious and light, that I won’t find in regional bookstores and can’t order any more from their publishers, and nobody in the libraries will stand in the way of my reading them.
And why in these articles (Clark’s isn’t the first of these, and won’t be the last) do they always bring up coffee? Who gives a damn? You can get coffee anywhere.
Bests to all,
-tr
Bill Jansen: Really? There isn’t a bookstore in a 100 mile radius with staff that can do that where I am. You’re lucky.
Bill: And you won’t—that is, hear me advocate closing library branches to pay for TeleRead. I’d love to see libraries spend more on neighborhood branches, which serve F2F social functions that e-books can’t replace.
Thanks,
David