May 13, 08Why Libraries Matter to the Future of Publishing
1. Somewhere I will find the statistic of how many books are read when borrowed from libraries, versus those reach when purchased. I could try a number now: 20%? 80%? Most likely it’s somewhere in between. However, indisputably, libraries have in the last century been a primary resource to the reading public. And research libraries have filled a role that even Google has yet to supplant. The publishing industry, in particular the book publishing industry, would not have flourished without public libraries.
2. In the last several years libraries have bravely moved into strange new worlds: CDs, DVDs, Internet access and more. Despite these moves their role remains severely challenged.
3. If – and I do mean “if” – libraries fail to master the challenge posed by the Internet, than what function will they fill in the future of publishing? Many learned papers are wrestling with this question – no clear answers have emerged.
Like the rest of the publishing and information industries libraries are struggling to redefine their roles in this time of abrupt transition. Libraries are exploring a host of options, from offering free online access to the Web and online access to (traditionally expensive) proprietary databases, all the while fighting attempts to restrict access to information, and to protect the identities of those who access sensitive information.
To me the most fascinating and representative story about the changing roles of libraries is the reopening of Egypt’s Alexandria Library, launched with great fanfare in late 2002 after a 1,600-year hiatus. Rechristened the Bibliotheca Alexandria, it had been a beacon of knowledge for the ancient world over a span of seven centuries before its demise in the year AD 415.
Twenty years in the planning and built at a cost of more than $200-million (U.S.), the result is an 11-storey building, located on the spot where scholars believe the ancient library stood before it was destroyed. The building was designed to represent the sum of human knowledge, in keeping with the reputation of the Greek Ptolemies, who erected the original in 290 B.C.
When it opened to the public five years ago it had just 200,000 volumes on its shelves — not the million-plus envisaged. But the director, Ismail Serageldin, dismissed criticism that the library is intellectually impoverished.
“The number of books we have is really not very important,” he said. “We have the only backup copy of the Internet archive between 1996 and 2001, which has 10 billion pages. We live in a digital age. Virtual knowledge will be our strength.”
The library, as an institution, is surely as challenged as any in the age of the Internet. How should we best define its historical role? Original it was probably as the “keeper of knowledge” – a place that protects all available printed information against any attempt to destroy it, or reduce its value.
As print extended its reach, philanthropists like the American Andrew Carnegie, reinvented the library as a purveyor of information to a broad public. Printing presses could now economically create multiple copies of a single volume – let the library be the distribution mechanism that made these multiple copies accessible to the public at large.
While some publishing efforts, like the paperback book, made literature and other information widely available without a guarded repository such as a library, throughout the ages, up until today, some of the most important data was controlled by private companies that charged exorbitant fees for access. The university, and sometimes the public library, were mechanisms whereby students and an interested public could get past these fees on an individual basis.
It has been an interesting transition. “Library science” a creation of the modern information era, reflected as much the complex ways that information was offered to the public as it did the complexity of the information itself. Google has probably been the most anarchic of the information developments impacting the public library.
While unquestionably a well-trained librarian can outperform your average Googler, your average Googler can gain access to far more information than the untrained searcher of the pre-Web era.
What business model should libraries best emulate? Should they work with proprietary information providers to ensure that certain data can only be accessed through public institutions or at great cost privately? Should they become masters of all data available through all public and private sources: becomes maestros of information retrieval? It’s hard to say.
The librarians’ current role is surely in question, and will continue to rapidly evolve in the years to come.
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