PVLD Director's Blog

The future of reading - teen edition

In all of the discussion about e-books and the future of readng, one thing that is starting to emerge is that teens and young adults still want to read and own physical books.

We've seen this in our family as my high school and college-aged nieces and nephew put a trip to the library book sales high on their list of things to do when they visit from Canada, and invariably go home with bags so loaded with books that we run the risk of excess baggage charges. Younger family members also request books as gifts and welcome gift cards that they can use to purchase "real books". To my knowledge none of our family members under the age of 30 owns an e-reader, and those that have tablets don't seem to use them for reading.

At the library we recently explored using teen volunteers to help teach adults how to use e-readers, only to learn that most of the teens don't have or use an e-reader.

This recent article from publishers weekly highlights that while many teens do read digital content, in part because it satisfies their desire for instant gratification, they also want to own the paper version....it seems to be "and" rather than "or" with this age group. And while the article notes that in the recent holiday season Barnes and Noble sold five times as many e-books of Young Adult titles as print ones online, and Amazon also reports that sales of Young Adult e-books outstrip those for e-books overall, I have to wonder how much of that is because of the growing popularity of Young Adult fiction with adults who no longer could be described as young. Just witness the current popularity of The Hunger Games, which is being read by adults across the country, including many book clubs...or these observations from an article in the Los Angeles Times a couple of years ago.

If teens and Young Adults represent the future, then the future of reading may not be as different as some would have us believe!

Reading Is Not Optional

Great interview with author Walter Dean Myers, the new Ambassador for Youth Literature, on Morning Edition this morning.  Click here to listen to compelling story about why reading is important to success in life, the importance of reading to kids early, and why gritty realism is an important element of Young Adult fiction.  Good luck in your new post Mr. Myers!

A hopeful view of the future of libraries

My friends Rosario and Carolyn shared this of Facebook, and it is too good not to pass along. It's a great description of what libraries are and can be...as the author puts it places of new ideas, not old books. Happy reading, and happy New Year!

http://toptrends.nowandnext.com/2011/12/28/in-praise-of-libraries-and-librarians/

The E-Book Wave

For the first 7 of my nearly 8 years at PVLD the most common question I got out in the community was "We have the Internet, why do we need libraries?"  This past year, the question has changed.  It's now one of several variations of "Why do we need libraries if we can get nearly every book we want on our Kindle?"

My response usually touches on the digital divide and the role libraries play in bridging it, the aesthetic value of print, and the fact that libraries also offer e-books and they are free...but I have to confess that my words usually sound weak even to me.

The truth is that, especially as we face the first holiday season in which the price point of decent e-readers is low enough to make them an extremely popular gift, it feels a bit like iwhen I am heading into the ocean for a swim and look up to see a giant wave about to break on top of me.

This time the wave is a technological one, but I suspect that the only safe response is going to be the same - dive as deep as you can, , let the wave tumble you around without fighting it, and hope you can keep your balance once you are able to get your feet on solid ground and your head above water.

The signs of profound change are everywhere, and as articles and blog posts like these make clear, they are disrupting the entire writing/publishing/content distribution ecosystem:

http://www.idealog.com/blog/how-many-christmases-until-we-see-a-whole-new-industry notes that the % reduction in sales at bricks and mortar bookstores is doubling every year -from a 1% decline in '09 to a 2% decline in '10 to an estimated 4-5% decline in '11....and probably 10% or more in '12

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/39210/  identifies the rise of consumer e-books as one of the 5 disruptive technologies of 2011

 http://ebookfriendly.com/2011/12/15/3-out-of-top-10-best-selling-kindle-books-of-2011-are-self-published/ points out that 3 of the top 10 bestselling Kindle books are self-published

http://copyrightandtechnology.com/2011/12/04/a-bleak-future-for-public-libraries-and-e-books/ provides insight into just how vulnerable public libraries are to some of the new e-book distribution models arising in the public sector

Just the fact t that these links reflect just a sampling of articles and blog posts that have been published in December alone is scary enough, but when I read the contents all I can think is that libraries are in no way prepared for the wave that is about to hit.

I'm pretty sure that the PVLD staff is not alone in heading into the holiday season knowing that as fast as we've tried to grow it our e-book collection can't meet current demand much less what we expect once all of those Kindle's are unwrapped; Overdrive, our e-book lending system, is not easy to use (especially when contrasted to just downloading an e-book from Amazon); and our staff is struggling to learn the quirks of all of the devices and is not as well-equipped as we would like to help patrons learn how to use them.

We're putting some plans in place to help us cope with the post-holiday wave, and we'll make it through the near term rough surf...but I'm honetly not sure how we, and all public libraries, will adapt to the fundamental changes rocking our world.  The one thing I do know, is that getting out of the water is not the answer... 

(Thank you California State Library for sharing the above links)

 

 

Library Books on the Kindle

Over the past year or so the thing I have most frequently asked by community members is "Can I download library books to my Kindle" which is why I was very pleased when our Ebook vendor, Overdrive, announced a few weeks ago that our library patrons would now be able to download most of our e-book collection to their Kindles.

While our patrons are thrilled, some in our profession have been quick to point out some of the possible pitfalls of having Amazon as a commercial partner...one prime example being this video rant by Librarian In Black Sarah Houghton Jann.

I have to say, though, that while I wish libraries had access to cheaper, more user-friendly, and platform independent options for offering e-books I simply don't share many of Sarah's concerns. I guess you can count me as one of the librarians who she describes as making a "greedy attempt to get content into our users hands."

I was going to write a post articulating why I don't think Sarah's anger is truly justified, but discovered that Andy Woodworth of the Agnostic, Maybe blog had written it better than I ever could...in two posts:

Library Books on the Kindle, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Amazon and

Amazon, Overdrive, and Other Reasons to Be Pissed

Andy's posts are a pragmatic argument that the sky is not falling just because we are giving people what they have been asking for. They are both great reads, and the second one raises a truly interesting point about whether Amazon is actually collecting confidential library records...one that both Amazon/Overdrive and the library community needs to resolve.

In the second post Andy makes the point that many of the things generating outrage on the part of some of our colleagues are analagous to many long-standing library practices and commercial arrangements but it is his statement in the first post that really matched what I have been wanting to say:

"While it may not be the ideal, it cannot be denied that bringing Amazon (and its 40% of the eReader market share) on board with library lending doesn’t raise the profile of libraries with it. Rather than simply buying every book, Kindle users now have the option of borrowing it through their local library. It’s not perfect, but even in giving that capability it puts libraries back into the minds of people who might not otherwise be library users. For them, it’s another selling point; for us, it’s another visit to our website where we advertise our programs, services, and materials. It’s an exposure opportunity that didn’t previously exist."

If the choice is being greedy to put content in the hands of community members, and in the process expanding access and maybe exposing more people to the library and what we offer, or being fearful of the shadow of possible risks to professional principles that may in fact be falling victim to changing social mores no matter what librarians do....count me among the greedy.

Reading - the first freedom

My friend Eileen, owner of the fabulous White Square Fine Books and Art in Easthampton, MA, shared this blog post via Facebook today.

It's  a salutory reminder to librarians of the unintended consequences of policies that we might implement with the best of intentions, like requiring a child to be able to print their name before they can get a library card (which I should stress is not PVLD's policy), but more importantly it is a beautiful description of the tension between the adult responsibility to protect young people, and the joy that comes from  "reading - the careful selection of books and being given enough privacy to quietly read them myself" which is, as the author points out one of a child's "first freedoms".

I can so vividly remember getting my first library card, and the joy of picking out a big stack of books to take home...books that I chose my very self.  Can you?

 

 

 

 

A next-generation e-book

An amazing look at how digital technology is transforming the experience of "reading"....now to figure out how libraries will participate.... 

Are some kinds of books becoming obsolete?

In all of the discussion of e-books vs print books one fact is seldom stated - that with the rise of digital technology some kinds of books are becoming obsolete as the information they contain is freely available online in "non-book" form.

This reality has become apparent at PVLD as the Librarians have been taking a hard look at our "Reference Collection" - the fact- and data-rich, non-circulating, items that historically have been the "go to"resource to answer the array of questions that get asked at the Reference Desk or for which some combination of high cost and high demand mean that it made most sense for them to be readily available within the library rather than circulating.  Encyclopedias, dictionaries, and almanacs are good examples of the former, while the Value Line Investment service is a good example of the latter. 

The Reference collection has proven fertile ground for cost-savings as with close scrutiny it has become apparent that many of the items in it contain information that is readily available online (either freely on the Internet or via the library's subscription databases) and simply aren't being used.  We are saving thousands of dollars annually by no longer purchasing these items.

Even with that knowledge I was surprised by this post from The Clutter Diet blog suggesting that one day to reduce household clutter is to get rid of books that contain information readily available online.  It wasn't the idea that you don't need to keep hard copies of some of these items that surprised me, it was the types of books included in the list.

On the one hand, I know from my own behavior that when I want to look something up - whether a fact, directions, a definition, a recipe, or how to do something the first place I turn is the Internet.   That's how I found the recipe for the asparagus risotto I cooked last night, and a video showing how to prune our peach tree, and the directions to my last out-of-town meeting.  The Internet works great when I have a specific question or a I know what I want to know, and I can easily see print almanacs, medical reference books, and repair manuals becoming obsolete.

With its user reviews and sophisticated algorithms that help provide recommendations tailored to my interests, I can also see the Internet making movie guides obsolete.

At the same time, I love browsing through cookbooks and the serendipity of coming across a recipe that I never would have thought to go look for but that sounds just delicious or flipping through a gardening book for ideas for my yard, and I have many childhood memories of turning to the encyclopedia for specific information for a homework assignment and discovering lots of other fascinating information in adjacent articles.  I can't help but feel that life will be poorer if we think of information resources as just places to get the answers to specific questions.

Maybe e-books will offer the same kind of serendipitous browsing experience that flipping through a paper cookbook or opening an encyclopedia offers today, but I am having trouble imagining it.  In the meantime my bulging shelves of cookbooks and gardening books will continue to be a source of great pleasure.

That said,if you want to take the advice to rid yourself of "obsolete" books just remember that our Friends of the Library would be happy to have any that are in usable condition for their book sales! 

Who wants a first edition Kindle?

As tablet computers and Ebook Readers proliferate and the knashing of teeth in the publishing and library worlds about how to deal with this new technology becomes louder, this article from  Fast Company  provides some refreshing perspective.

The article reports on a survey of reading habits and preferences from the United Kingdom in which, even though 40.8% of teens reported having read a book on a computer and smaller but still sizeable percentages had read books on cell phones, tablet devices like the Ipad, and e-readers, "when asked which media they preferred both adults and teenagers selected the print book ahead of news, magazines, blogs, comics and even e-books."

Is it a case of "The book is dead, long live the book"?

I thought Fast Company's summary of why the book still rules was particularly good:

"If it's indeed true that the kids are gravitating more to the printed book than the e-book, it's not hard to imagine why. The beleaguered book is still a hot, innovative technology. Even the largest tomes are cheaper than an e-reader. You'll never even think about their battery life. Many have sleek displays (though you shouldn't judge a book by its cover), plus full-color illustrations. Pages load instantaneously, may be dog-eared, and are fully enabled for in-margin annotation. Plus, a book, unlike an e-reader, can actually appreciate in value over time, rather than become obsolete. A first-edition Hemingway will fetch thousands of dollars. Who, now, wants a first-edition Kindle?"

Who indeed?

 

 

Libraries and e-books - difficult choices ahead

This is my first day back at work after a week-long vacation in New York City.   

While I was away the blogosphere and colleagues' Facebook pages were awash with the news that HarperCollins is imposing a limit of 26 on the number of checkouts that will be allowed for titles purchased by libraries and made available to patrons via the Overdrive downloadable e-book platform.  As this cartoon, shared by guest blogger Justin Hoenke in this post on Tame the Web, libraries are already  behind the 8-ball when it comes to offering e-books thanks to cumbersome digital rights management and technology:

 

The new limits on the number of checkouts will either make library e-books even more costly for libraries to offer (we'll have to re-buy popular titles once the checkout limit is reached - and e-books purchased through Overdrive already cost about 2x what a physical copy of the same book costs) or inconvenient for patrons (if libraries do not have the funds to re-purchase the item and there is still demand).

The checkout limits present a challenge for libraries like PVLD that have our own subscription to Overdrive, but they present a much greater challenge to the many public libraries who can only afford to offer the Overdrive service as participants in a consortium in which patrons of all member libraries share access to the same e-book collection creating the potential for much greater demand for each individual title. 

While I understand that the publishers are scared about the shift from print to digital and what it might mean for their revenues it seems to me that making it more difficult for libraries to offer e-books is extermely shortsighted. 

As author Courtney Milan so clearly articulates in this blog post on "Eating Your Seed Corn", for many people accessing books (whether print or electronic) at the library is for many people a step on the path to becoming avid readers and book purchasers when they have the means.  Limiting access to e-books via the public library  may protect publishers' near-term revenue at the cost of cutting out entire generations of future customers...as Courtney so eloquently puts it, in effect eating their seed corn.

It seems to me that the company most likely to be the publishing equivalent of the bookstore world's Barnes and Noble (as opposed to Borders) will make it as easy for people to access e-books at the library as it is to access library books in print (and as an aside I don't think it is a coincidence that Barnes and Noble designed their e-reader to work with library e-books). 

Using library books will never be as easy or convenient as just buying books - you still have to wait your turn for in-demand titles, have access for only a limited time, etc.  That's why so many avid adult readers in our community tell me that their kids use the library, and they themselves loved the library when they were younger, but now that they have jobs, family commitments and more disposible income they prefer to just buy their books.  Like Courtney I wonder if they would be the book consumers that they are today if they had not had the earlier experience of using the library? 

In the meantime, PVLD like all other affected libraries, will be carefully monitoring e-book usage and being even more careful about what titles we "buy" (which really means "rent" in the HarperCollins model) and will likely have to either make the most popular titles less available so that we can privde access to a broad collection to suit diverse interests or spend more money on the most popular titles so we can meet demand at the expense of collection breadth.

Difficult choices indeed.