Libraries & Open Publishing

My last post was about the fight over intellectual property.  A few weeks before that I wrote about what a book is in a digital age and suggested that librarians could become the equivalent of DJs for books.

Pulling those two themes together, this post is about what some libraries are already doing that can shift the balance in book publishing.

But, first a bit of history.  When public libraries were first established well over a hundred years ago, one of their primary responsibilities was purchase books on behalf of their community.  Then the community members could share all these books, without having to buy separate copies.

Until the mid-20th Century, this worked in favor of publishers since libraries were, in general, their most reliable market for books.  Libraries also helped build markets of readers that the publishers would sell to or that many people eventually bought the books they borrowed because they liked them so much.  The library was a kind of try-and-buy location.

As the industry grew, selling direct to an ever more educated public in the latter half of the 20th Century, many book publishers started thinking that libraries reduced their sales, rather than enhancing them.  But that was a battle the publishers had lost long ago and couldn’t do much about.  

Moreover, it is a moot point in this century when e-books have overtaking traditional print book publishing.  Even if that growth trend has slowed a bit recently, the battle between publishers and libraries has been renewed around e-books, not printed books.

The traditional publishers – the Big 5 – have taken an especially restrictive approach to e-books, perhaps in the hopes of turning away from the historical role that public libraries have played for printed books.  Until less than two years ago, some publishers even refused to sell e-books to libraries.  They still restrict the number of times an e-book could be lent or charge extraordinary prices for them.  

This pattern continues despite some good arguments that publishers could benefit from a more supportive relationship with libraries, as laid out by the marketing expert, David Vinjamuri.  

But any significant change, like e-books, can be a two-edged sword.  They may be an opportunity for big publishers to change the rules.  But they are also an opportunity for libraries.  

Unlike printed books, there is effectively no limitation on how many e-books a library can store.  And librarians have noticed that many of their patrons are writing e-books.  Much of the spectacular growth in e-books has been among self-published authors.  (Amazon even makes this easy with its Createspace service.)

With this background, there has developed a movement among libraries to become the publishing platform for authors or to, at least, partner with self-publishing services.

Although he lost by a little, one of the candidates in the election a few days ago for president of the American Library Association was Jamie LaRue, who has built his reputation in large part as a leader of the library publishing movement.  

There are already several interesting examples across the country.  The Los Gatos Public Library has joined with the Smashwords self-publishing company.  The Provincetown, Massachusetts library – proudly “Ranked #1 in the US by Library Journal” – has created its own self-publishing agency, Provincetown Press.

The much larger Los Angeles Public Library is using the Self-e platform from Library Journal and BiblioBoard.  The February 2015 issue of Library Journal quotes John Szabo, LAPL’s director and one of the most innovative national library leaders:

“We are and will continue to be a place for content creation… It’s a huge role for libraries. … I want to see our authors not just all over California but circulating from Pascagoula, MS, to Keokuk, IA.”

Too often, news of new library services does not get widely publicized and is only seen by those already patronizing libraries.  So it was helpful that LAPL’s platform for local authors was reported a couple of weeks ago in a publication they might well read – LA Weekly.  

With the Internet enabling easier collaboration and co-creation than ever before, as I’ve noted in this blog, we are also seeing examples of self-publishing that go beyond an individual author.  

Topeka Community Novel Project describes its ideal: “A community novel is one that is collaboratively conceptualized, written, illustrated, narrated, edited and published by members of your community.”

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Publishing by academic libraries and other non-traditional publishers is an increasing factor in research, as well.  While it publishes papers that are peer-reviewed as in traditional journals, PLOS (Public Library of Science) is perhaps the best known adherent of “open access” publishing.  Open Access means that there are no restrictions on the use of the articles, available online, free to read.  

Academic journals and books have been very expensive and not all of that cost can be eliminated by this new approach.  For example, the peer review process still has to be managed.  However, the cost is much lower.   PLOS charges authors a relatively minimal fee.

Rebecca Kennison of Columbia University Libraries and Lisa Norberg of the Barnard College Library have plans to extend the PLOS model, with a more cooperative funding arrangement, to “A Scalable and Sustainable Approach to Open Access Publishing and Archiving for Humanities and Social Sciences”.

Overall, all of the initiatives that I’ve highlighted here are a part of a digital age trend in which we’ll see more librarians going beyond being mere collectors of big publishing companies’ books to being curators and creators of content. 

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© 2015 Norman Jacknis

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Re-envisioning Public Libraries?

Yesterday, in the stately Trustee Room of the New York Public Library, the Aspen Institute released its report “Rising To The Challenge: Re-envisioning Public Libraries."  It was based on the results of their Dialogue on Public Libraries.  (Full disclosure: I’ve been a member of their Working Group and I even helped out with the draft report a bit, including one of its sidebar stories.)

They also unveiled a new video about this future at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh5E2VConxc

Readers of this blog will not be surprised that I’m clearly in synch with the central foundation of the report that "public libraries [are] at the center of the digital age”, our era.

The project was led by Amy Garmer of Aspen, who also wrote the report and who deserves enormous credit for this work.  As Deborah Jacobs, Director of the Gates Foundation Global Library Initiative said, Amy Garmer is now the most influential non-librarian in the library world. 

She begins the report by setting the stage this way:

“The process of re-envisioning public libraries to maximize their impact reflects:

  • Principles that have always been at the center of the public library’s mission—equity, access, opportunity, openness and participation
  • The library’s capacity to drive opportunity and success in today’s knowledge-based society
  • An emerging model of networked libraries that promotes economies of scale and broadens the library’s resource reach while preserving its local presence

The library’s fundamental people, place and platform assets”

In addition to these points, another strategic, but infrequently stated, point was made in the report – there needs to be a new model for sustainable funding for library services that recognizes and supports their fundamental role in our society and economy.

As part of the event surrounding the report’s release, there was a panel discussion with some more interesting observations:

  • Linda Johnson, CEO of the Brooklyn Public Library, said that we need to understand that libraries are not centers for books but for learning – and centers of enjoyment.
  • Ralph Smith, SVP of the Casey Foundation and Managing Director of its Campaign For Grade Level Reading, said he had learned over time that libraries have a unique combination of “hi tech and hi touch” which is what is required for education these days.
  • Nashville/Davidson County Mayor Dean said that “building libraries is the most popular thing I do.  Demand always outstrips supply.”

Although not directly related to this event, the Atlantic Magazine also had a recent article about the public library of Columbus, Ohio, titled “Not Your Mother’s Library”. 

What immediately stood out were two contrasting word clouds.  First, the words people associated with past libraries, the libraries of their childhood. 

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Then the words they used to describe the library of the future …

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In a more elegant and profound way, the Aspen report expanded on these simple descriptions:

“The Dialogue’s perspective on the 21st-century library builds on the public library’s proven track record in strengthening communities and calls for libraries to be centers of learning, creativity and innovation in the digital age. No longer a nice-to-have amenity, the public library is a key partner in sustaining the educational, economic and civic health of the community during a time of dramatic change. Public libraries inspire learning and empower people of all ages. They promote a better trained and educated workforce. They ensure equitable access and provide important civic space for advancing democracy and the common good. Public libraries are engines of development within their communities.”

Aspen intends to follow up to implement and move the vision forward, so look for these ideas to take root in your city with your help.

Note: The report is at http://as.pn/libraries

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

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How Can Libraries Respond To Technology Trends?

On May 3, the Library Trustee Association of New York State held its annual trustee institute.  I ran a session on the intersection of technology trends and changes in libraries.  I made a presentation, titled “Creating The Library’s Future”, to get people to start thinking about this intersection.

While there is always change in information technology, I chose to highlight these clusters of trends as being most relevant to the mission of libraries.  Here’s a quick summary:

  1. Digitization Of Written, Oral and Visual Materials: the worldwide effort to digitize paper documents as well as the increase in media that are born digital; the budding Digital Public Library of America; the end of the self-contained book which makes possible an infinite variety of mashups; the various ways that “big data” in libraries can be used
  2. Artificial Intelligence & Robotics: such applications as speech recognition, the Army’s artificially intelligent guide and its implications for Ask A Librarian; robotics, especially in warehouses that have implications for larger libraries
  3. High Quality Visual Communications: noting the importance of non-verbal communications and how we are not yet at a stage where this is a ubiquitous aspect of the Internet, but it will be; the extension with videoconferencing of the groups, literacy training, public services that libraries have always provided
  4. Ubiquitous Internet: the various ways that access to the Internet is escaping the limitations of the traditional PC display/keyboard/mouse where any surface can be a display or a keyboard or a mouse or you don’t even need a surface at all with arm movements or eye tracking; augmented reality
  5. Billions Of People Who Produce And Consume Content: the concepts of the “Pro-Sumer” and the long tail; the ways that this is opening up opportunities for authors and content creators that are not limited to the traditional publishers; the role of readers and library patrons in enhancing the traditional hierarchical catalog; the various forms of user involvement and creation at libraries in the US and abroad, including 3D printing and entrepreneurial spaces

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Then I shifted to thinking about libraries in this future world.  I noted the warnings have been around for a long time, with a quote about the Internet’s impact almost twenty years ago.  I asked about a series of websites that seem to offer services which librarians have defined as their role.

All of this requires librarians to enhance that role to keep ahead of what are now commodity services and to think about library services as pervasive throughout the community – not confined to what goes on in the library building or even what is local.

Then taking a World Café approach, we broke up into groups focused on three questions:

  • How will technology change the expectations of patrons?
  • How could/should future technology trends affect the way individual libraries budget and spend their money?
  • What are the organizational implications of changing technology? (including the role of the individual libraries vs. the systems vs. the RRRs vs. the State vs. the national networks)

Here are some of the possibly contradictory highlights from the discussion that followed:

  • Expectations of patrons are rising because of what they exposed to, outside the library – at work and at home.
  • Libraries as often lead patrons to new technologies and uses of tech, rather than the other way around
  • Budgets need to shift, setting a minimum percentage for digital collections and providing staff training.
  • As library activities become more varied, there may need to be more private spaces for music, videoconferencing, etc.
  • The availability of resources directly from the Internet is upsetting the traditional hierarchy of the library world.  So individual libraries may see alternatives to the cooperative systems or the State librarians that used to be the primary suppliers of technology.

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

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Moving To A National Digital Library?

In a post last year, http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/66967472797/a-national-future-for-libraries , I discussed the increasing volume of digital text, video and audio, produced by millions more writers and artists than have been supported by the big publishing and media corporations in the past.  These trends have important implications for libraries, especially the need to offer library patrons a national collection and reference to materials located anywhere.  That’s why I titled the post “A National Future For Libraries”.

So it was great that the US Government’s Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS) conducted their “Strategic Priorities 2014” conference with a focus on a National Digital Platform. 

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The meeting, held at the main building of the New York Public Library on Tuesday this week, featured most of the key leaders in the world of libraries and other non-profit cultural and information organizations as you can see below.

Jason Kucsma, ‎Executive Director of the Metropolitan New York Library Council, was one of the speakers – a nice recognition for the innovative work that METRO is doing under his leadership and METRO’s role as the New York State hub for the Digital Public Library of America.  (Note: I’m President of the board, but Jason and the staff of METRO actually do the work.)

It was very encouraging to see these leaders working together with a generally positive frame of mind, trying to figure out how to create and, more important, sustain a national digital library.  There’s clearly lots of work ahead of us – including much more than the usual community of librarians – but this was a good start.

You can see the conference video at http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/imls/140429/.  Since it was a whole day event, I’ve put the agenda below so you can watch particular sections.

Welcome and Framing the Day

Anthony Marx, President and CEO, New York Public Library – @NYPL

Maura Marx, Deputy Director for Libraries, IMLS – @mauramarx / @US_IMLS

Play Flash Video


INFRASTRUCTURE: Examining the Hubs Model

Moderated by:
Jim Neal, VP for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University, @columbialib

Panel:
Dan Cohen, Executive Director, Digital Public Library of America – @dancohen / @dpla

Brett Bobley, Chief Information Officer, National Endowment for the Humanities – @brettbobley / @NEH_ODH

Elliott Shore, Executive Director, Association of Research Libraries – @ARLnews

Play Flash Video


CONTENT: Beyond the low hanging fruit: Strategies on Providing Access to Complicated Content

Moderated by
Rachel Frick, Director, Digital Library Federation – @RLFrick / @CLIRDLF

Panel:
Sari Feldman, Executive Director, Cuyahoga County Public Libraries – @Sari_Feldman / @CuyahogaLib

Katherine Skinner, Executive Director, Educopia Institute – @Educopia

Clifford Lynch, Director, Coalition for Networked Information – @CNI_org

Play Flash Video


USE: Challenges and Opportunities to Broad Use of Digital Content

Moderated by:
Susan Hildreth, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services – @IMLSDirector / @US_IMLS

Panel:
Susan Gibbons, University Librarian, Yale University – @YaleLibrary

Bernie Margolis, New York State Librarian and Assistant Commissioner for Libraries

Play Flash Video


TOOLS: Encouraging Innovation

Moderated by:
Mary Lee Kennedy, Chief Library Officer, New York Public Library – @NYPL

Panel:
Ben Vershbow, Manager, NYPL Labs – @subsublibrary / @NYPL_Labs

Martin Kalfatovic, Associate Director Smithsonian Libraries, Program Director BHL – @UDCMRK / @SILibraries

Tom Scheinfeldt , Associate Professor of Digital Media / Director of Digital Humanities at University of Connecticut – @foundhistory / @UConn

Play Flash Video


ACCESS AT SCALE

Moderated by:
Josh Greenberg, Program Director for Digital Information Technology, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation – @epistemographer / @SloanFoundation

Panel:
MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian, University of California at Davis

Jason Kucsma, ?Executive Director at Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) – @J450NK / @mnylc

Dan Chudnov, Director, Scholarly Technology, George Washington University Libraries – @dchud / @gelmanlibrary

Play Flash Video


SKILLS

Moderated by:
Bob Horton, Associate Deputy Director for Library Services, IMLS – @US_IMLS

Panel:
Nancy McGovern , Head, Curation and Preservation Services, MIT Libraries – @mitlibraries

Jack Martin, Executive Director, Providence Public Library – @provlib

Play Flash Video


CONCLUSION AND CLOSING DISCUSSION

Maura Marx, Susan Hildreth and Bob Horton – @mauramarx, @IMLSDirector / @US_IMLS

Play Flash Video

©2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/84466500047/moving-to-a-national-digital-library]

Intellectual Property?

Last, the Metropolitan New York Library Council held its Annual Meeting at the vertical campus of Baruch College/CUNY.  [Disclosure: I’m President of the board, although the staff does all the real work.]

METRO has turned this into quite an event, filled all day with various breakout sessions.  But there is still a keynote address, given this year by Jessamyn West who discussed her views on copyrights and how libraries are and will continue to be affected by copyright law.

You can see the slides from her presentation at http://www.librarian.net/talks/metro/ , although you can’t see and hear what she had to say about each.  You can get a flavor for her entertaining presentation style by noting her concluding slide.

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If I had to summarize her message to the library world and to others in one sentence, it is this: aggressively apply your “fair use” rights for copyrighted material.  (You can read this article for a summary of “fair use”.)

The Wikipedia entry on fair use provides this conventional summary:

“In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship.”

The traditional copyright that the writers of the US Constitution had in mind – fourteen years for printed material – has been buffeted by the pressures of copyright owners, on the one hand, and developments in technology on the other.

The copyright owners have succeeded in extending the life of copyrights to seven decades after the death of the original copyright holder.  They have also tended to generalize what was a fairly limited monopoly into the much larger concept of “intellectual property”, which often translates into a monopoly on an idea. 

The Internet, of course, has made things more complicated. There is the increasing digitization (scanning) of existing printed material.  There is also an ever increasing percentage of published material that is born digital.  The Internet has also made possible a boom in self-published works, usually in e-book form.

All of these trends mean that traditional copyrights, which were managed by a small set of big publishers of printed books can no longer be so easily managed.  Readers can more easily copy digital books than printed books, so having a copyright is no longer as strong a protection of a monopoly as it used to be.

Indeed, the very idea of a fixed book – something with a finite number of printed pages, contained within hard covers – is challenged by the digital form.  We are already seen and can expect to see more mash-ups that might take a paragraph or a chapter here and another from there and so on in order to create something that some readers might find more efficient than reading all the original material.

Who owns what in that mash-up? How much can be used from the original sources?  How are rights affected if the original material is modified in some way?  What if those original sources are also some form of mash-up?   These are just some of the questions that will grist for the legal mills in the future.

Indeed, whether ideas can be considered non-sharable, protectable property will be one of the big policy debates of this century – perhaps on a par with the labor vs. capital conflicts of the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Ms. West’s presentation gave the attendees of METRO’s meeting a taste of what that battle will be like.

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/74279930335/intellectual-property ]

A National Future For Libraries?

The second and final meeting of the Aspen Institute workgroup on the future of libraries was held last week.

[What follows does not necessarily represent views of anyone else there or even the discussion that took place.  These are purely my reflections when the meeting was over and continue what I started in a previous post.  I also apologize in advance for the length of this post.]

The question that kept crossing my mind is simple: given the obvious trends in the library world and, more broadly, the world of knowledge, is some form of national network of library services inevitable?

When books were physical items primarily produced by established book publishers, the local library was the place local residents needed to go to get access to those books (assuming they couldn’t afford to buy everything they wanted to read).

There are still many printed books in local libraries around the country.  We are, after all, in a transitional period and we can expect to see some printed books lasting long after almost everyone will be reading digitally – 2050? 

But books are changing.  It’s not just that there are digital versions of printed books.  Self-published books and co-created texts already are more numerous than traditionally published books, even including e-books.  With so much digital content, produced by so many different sources, the purely local collections in a local library can easily be outmatched in both quantity and quality. 

The Digital Public Library of America is one important response to this accelerating condition.  Indeed, DPLA is as much the future of libraries as anything on the horizon right now.  DPLA doesn’t centralize all of the digital collections, but it makes them available to everyone.  It uses local library resources (and regional consortia) to collect and organize digital content created locally, but it lets that content escape the constraints of the physical building in which they have been stored.

Another sign of the times is the use of virtual reference librarians.  These were first established to share the load of patron requests especially at odd hours. 

However, the potential of a network of reference librarians is much greater than that.  Consider the deep knowledge that a reference librarian in one part of the country can have about some subject – say Hellenic pottery as an example.  Why shouldn’t she or he get the reference questions that come up about that subject no matter where the patron is?  Can the reference desk in the local library match this knowledge?  Of course not.  Is it possible that the reference librarian locally happens to be that expert in a subject? Of course.  Why not let her specialize?

In a future world where most content will be digital, a national network of reference librarians would provide patrons with the best possible service and pointers to the best places to find the content they are searching for.

DPLA and specialized virtual reference librarians are just two significant ways that library services are no longer limited to the local library building.

So, if not as the collector of printed books or the location for an all knowing reference librarian sitting at a desk there, what will be the purpose of local library buildings in the decades ahead? 

Already we see the library building being used as a meeting place.  Even more exciting, many libraries are becoming centers for create content and culture in various ways – offering Maker Spaces (with 3D printers), poetry rooms, video/audio studios, etc.

Consider also that the national digital collection that is being pioneered by DPLA will need much more manpower to become useful than DPLA and its hubs can provide.  The local library building can be one place where the staff can help with the task of tagging/classifying and otherwise making sense of all the new content produced by others.

The local library can also be the outreach center to get volunteers to help with this enormous task and thus be the local chapters of a national pool of librarians and colleagues.

As with any other sea change, the shift to a national library network will not come without strife.  The most obvious trouble is that libraries have been inherently local institutions supported by local taxes.  There is currently a very small amount of Federal money devoted to library services, mostly in the form of a fraction of the e-rate program.

As library services become not merely local, but an interstate concern, the Federal government or some other national organization is going to have to step up funding for the national institutions that will make those services work.

***

The Aspen Institute has also been involved in projects about citizenship so it worth remembering that our founding fathers strongly supported libraries as the cornerstone of an educated citizenry, which they thought, in turn, was essential for democratic government to survive. 

Our national leaders today don’t explicitly share that understanding and seem to find it easier to deal with a less engaged citizenry.  Perhaps the nationalization of libraries will make it easier for American citizens all over the country to gain the knowledge necessary to play their proper role in our democracy and thereby improve the way that our national government functions.  Now there’s a long term goal!

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

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