Justin from 8bitlibrary posted a question to Twitter this morning, wondering if he should register 8bitliberry and redirect traffic over to the new URL.

This question led me to wonder how difficult it would be to write a browser plugin that would replace every instance of the word “liberry” with “liberry”. A very short Google session later, I learned that w/ Javascript and Greasemonkey, this is very easily done. In fact, I didn’t have to do much of anything. An existing script was available, so all that really needed to be done was to enter in the words I wanted changed.

The resulting Greasemonkey script (liberry_word_change.user) is nothing more than the above script with a list of liberry words to be changed.

It’s small, but fun. When it’s time to climb down off our liberry high horse, this is a fun little trick to help us relax and stop taking ourselves so seriously.

Liberries FTW!!1!

Code:

// ==UserScript==// @name Liberry Changer // @namespace http://guest2424.blogspot.com/2008/12/greasemonkey-replace-words-on-websites.html/ // @include */ // ==/UserScript==

(function() {
var replacements, regex, key, textnodes, node, s;
textnodes = document.evaluate( "//body//text()", document, null,
XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
for (var i = 0; i < textnodes.snapshotLength; i++) {
node = textnodes.snapshotItem(i);
if(node != null && node.nodeName == '#text' && /\S/.test(node.nodeValue))
{

s = node.data;

s = s.replace( /\bWORD OR WORDS TO GET RID OF\b/g, "WORDS THAT IT IS REPLACED WITH OR JUST 2 QUOTES FOR NOTHING");
s = s.replace( /\bWORDS CAN NOT CONTAIN PERIODS OR COMMAS OR SINGLE OR DOUBLE QUOTES\b/g, "IF YOU DO IT WILL NOT WORK");
s = s.replace( /\bBEFORE EACH THING WILL BE A SMALL LETTER B AND END WITH SLASH B AND IF YOU REMOVE ANYTHING BUT THESE BOLD WORLDS IT WONT WORK\b/g, "BELOW ARE SHORTER EXAMPLES");
s = s.replace( /\blibrary\b/g, "liberry");
s = s.replace( /\bLibrary\b/g, "Liberry");
s = s.replace( /\bLibraries\b/g, "Liberries");
s = s.replace( /\blibraries\b/g, "liberries");
s = s.replace( /\bLibrarian\b/g, "Liberrian");
s = s.replace( /\blibrarian\b/g, "liberrian");
s = s.replace( /\bLibrarians\b/g, "Liberrians");
s = s.replace( /\blibrarians\b/g, "liberrians");
node.data = s;

 

}} })();


Libraries are solutions to the problem of information scarcity

Libraries, broadly speaking, are solutions to the problem of information scarcity. Given a world in which information is rare, difficult to acquire, and expensive; collecting information into a central location where it can be shared with a population of users is a very good idea. People who on their own could not afford to purchase all of the books they want to read can pool their money and build institutions that collect, house, and share books. Libraries are genius solutions to the problems posed by information scarcity.

More and more often, however, I’m left wondering what happens when information scarcity is no longer the overriding information issue? It is still a big issue, mind you, and for the present, libraries are still appropriate solution to information scarcity. However, digital information products, the Internet, WordPress and other free self-publication platforms, and Wikipedia have changed this. Or at least have changed this for people w/ computers, smartphones, tablets and ubiquitous broadband connections. As one of my favorite librarians has pointed out: the IMDB app on a smartphone has changed bar-bets about movie casts forever. Wikipedia on a smartphone changes ready-reference for ever. We’re still figuring out the full extent of the disruption, but for many of our patrons this means that they no longer need libraries to discover that Lima is the capitol of Peru or that Val Kilmer starred in Real Genius.

The King James Bible & Wikipedia: information in the hands of the masses

Lisa Miller’s belief.net blog post: My Take: How technology could bring down the church made some connections between the King James Bible and current disruptive technological changes in the information world. I thought it was very interesting to read how other fields are dealing with the same issues libraries face. Bear with me, please, and I’ll explain. The KJV was the first version of the Christians’ scriptures available in the English language to the masses. Before its publication and distribution, members of a church congregation were completely dependent on their priest or minister to both provide and interpret their spiritual information. After it was published and distributed, anyone who was literate and could get their hands on a copy had direct access to the holy text. Before the KJV individuals who wanted information about the scriptures where wholly reliant on their churches and priests/ministers to provide it. After the KJV, they had personal access to the information, but still had use for someone to help them put it into an appropriate context.

Compare this to libraries. Before digital information, ubiquitous broadband, peer-generated content, and self-publishing platforms (hereafter loosely referred to as “the Internet”) libraries were the prime source of information to a community. After the emergence of the Internet, our patrons have less need of us as sources of information, but more need of us as providers of context, of  filters, and as sense-makers for that information. The library of the future must be a solution to the problem of information abundance, since the Internet has rendered many of the problems of information scarcity moot.

This is why I think we can compare today’s libraries with churches in England after the KJV was published.

[ Note: this doesn't mean I'm going to stretch the metaphor to include the round-heads overthrowing the monarchy, the restoration of the monarchy, or the Glorious Revolution; but it may mean I've read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle a few too many times. Every librarian should read Stephenson's Liebniz talk about classification theory and his design for a mechanical catalogs of books.]

Libraries today are an institution that traditionally have had the mission to supply our patrons with access to information. This is still a real need for many in our communities, especially the most economically vulnerable, but technological innovation is changing this mission by starting to solve the core problem that libraries were founded to solve.

Libraries are solutions to the problem of information abundance

Where I’m going with this is simply to point out that the crisis that libraries are facing now has been faced successfully by others in the past. The facts that our patrons have access to a wealth of information before they ever step through our doors or touch an item in our collections, do not inevitably lead to the coming irrelevance of libraries. I think it means that libraries have to shift our focus to solving new kinds of problems. We’re good with descriptive metadata. We’re good at indexing and abstracting. We’re good at talking with people and helping them figure out what information they need and then helping them find it. All of those skills are applicable to the problem of information abundance. We may just need to get used to the idea that our libraries will (someday) no longer own the information we’re helping people find. Instead of cataloging our own collections, maybe we’ll be applying tags to existing content. Maybe we’ll be teaching website creators how to describe and apply descriptive cataloging to their webpages (something the marketers call SEO). Maybe we’ll be collecting the links, networks, and communities of our users and leveraging that data to help make local resources findable. All of these things need doing and we have the skills to do all of them. Many people have said this before (few more eloquently than Eli Neuberger), but it bears repeating: providing access to circulating collections is outmoded. Thankfully, libraries do a lot more than provide access to library collections.

This started as one point of a three-point response to Godin’s piece. When I finished with this piece, it seemed to stand on its own and it worked better to put Godin and Gee directly into conversation about the future and use of reading/books/literacies. It may be a less balanced or complete than my original 3 point outline, but I suppose it is better to leave some unsaid than to drone on at tedious length. Plus, the other two points: Don’t Confuse the Container for the Goods Contained and The Medium is the Massage seem to rather directly contradict each other.

Seth Godin’s look at the future of libraries has become the topic du jour. My initial response was along the lines of “Well, clearly, this may be news to non-librarians, but those of us in the business have been preparing for this change for years.” There have been some articulate counter-arguments, but these don’t seem to dispute Godin’s main point (the future of libraries is not to warehouse books); they just point out that the future hasn’t arrived yet and/or it has already arrived and we’re already doing what he predicts is going to happen.

I am not a public librarian, and this conversation is about public libraries, so I want to take great care not to set myself up as knowing what is good for public libraries more than the talented and experienced professionals who do this for a living. I want to restrict myself to musing about future of libraries. These are just this academic librarian’s thoughts on how we can work to create the best future for libraries without sacrificing the needs of our present patrons along the way.

Reading Godin’s post, I think it can be distilled down to one essential statement about unskilled (general public and grade school through college undergraduate students) researchers. They still need the services of skilled librarians, but they do not need library collections. In his words: “They need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). They need a library not at all.” By “library” I assume he means “library collection”. I agree with this statement. Other than certain specialized collections and archives and certain specialized researchers who need primary sources, the print library collection as a repository of our cultures’ collected knowledge has been, is being, and will be replaced by digital collections kept “in the cloud” or some other buzzword that means “not held locally”. Libraries, according to Godin, aren’t about books. Taking this a step further, I think it is better to say that libraries, aren’t about content, regardless of medium. I take this as good news, since I’m one of those who sees the end of books coming and would rather not see the end of libraries coming with it. In the meantime, however; libraries, librarians, and library patrons have to find a path between here and there.

Books are good for what books are good for

We should not forget (how could we?) that books are still good for what books are good for. This section heading isn’t just to prove I’m a card-carrying member of tautology club. Rather, it is a reminder that despite all the new technological wonders, toys, and gizmos, books still do all of the things that made us love them. The existence of personal tablets that can store an entire library collection, digital distribution, and indie/self publishing platforms do not take anything away from books. They just take away from the book’s monopoly on archiving and sharing written information. For librarians, this means that we need to be intentional about medium. When books are called for, use books. When post-book digital information products can get the job done better, let’s leave our prejudices out of it and do what’s best for the patron. It isn’t (or shouldn’t) be a competition between using establish and familiar technology that we understand thoroughly versus using emerging new technology with lots of promise but we haven’t mastered yet. Instead it should be a matter of dispassionately diagnosing individual information needs and prescribing appropriate solutions.

James Paul Gee is a scholar who understands both traditional literacy and emerging media. His recent blog post: 10 Truths About Books and What They Have to Do With Video Games captures the spirit of this. Books aren’t magic. Books aren’t “smart” and other media like video, games, or trans-media projects aren’t “dumb” or “lazy”. One of his points gets right at the heart of this and I think librarians should pay attention. I know I should, at least.

10.  Books tend to make the “rich” richer and the poor “poorer” (those who read more in the right way get to be better and better readers and get more and more out of reading; those who don’t, get to be poorer and poorer readers and get less and less out of reading. The former get more successful, the latter, less). This is called “the Matthew Principle.”

Books and libraries ARE paths for development and growth that are available across the economic classes. However, we do our patrons a huge disservice to think that we can provide the environment for this development and growth simply by providing content. Books are good for what books are good for, but in order for libraries to be good for what libraries are good for, we have to be about more than simply putting content into our patrons hands. This is what, I think, Godin was getting at in his entry. Content is everywhere, but content isn’t knowlege or understanding. It holds just as true for digital archives as it does for book warehouses. I don’t think Godin is saying anything that good librarians didn’t already know, it’s only a surprise for people who don’t understand what we do. That said, he’s still right when he says we need: “a librarian who can bring domain knowledge and people knowledge and access to information to bear.” THAT is what will lead to better reading, better interacting, better playing, better what-have-you, and THAT is what the library can offer. The media or format of the content these interactions take place with, that could be incidental to the process.

…the publishing industry has lost its technological monopoly on the flow of information. This means that libraries can no longer identify ourselves as purchasing collectives for containers of information.

#HCOD sturm und drang

There has been much sturm und drang in library-land over Harper Collins recent decision to limit ebook circulation of their titles. Harper Collins has decided that after the 26th time one of their ebooks has circulated, it will expire and the library will need to purchase a new copy. A New York Times blog ran a piece on it and Bobbi Newman (Librarian-by-Day) has an excellent digest of the conversation. It has certainly stirred a hornets’ nest, but it remains to be seen whether this is itself a big deal, or whether it is merely a symptom of a deeper problem.

In circumstances like this one I tend to look for root causes and big picture solutions. This means that my contribution to the discussion should not be confused with practical, daily-running-of-the-library kinds of solutions. What I’m interested in sorting out is why is this happening and whatever is happening, where are we on the timeline of its progression? I’ve been trying to think and talk this issue out using twitter (@nnschiller) and my +/- 140 character response would be: Publishers are becoming an anachronism. Libraries risk the same if we single-source our content through the publishing industry. Phrased another way: The real problem can best been seen by analyzing artificial scarcity efforts. Neither really get at the core of the issue, so here is my attempt to connect some dots.

Artificial Scarcity is the real problem. (Or at least a significant manifestation of the real problem)

First things first, let me define some terms and set some background context. I make my overly broad statement about publishers and anachronism based on this analysis. We have publishers in our information streams because publishers originally provided two absolutely necessary services. First, they owned printing presses and employed highly skilled typesetters to run them. Second, they maintained logistical distribution systems that stored, shipped, and delivered the contents of those printing presses to libraries, bookstores, and readers. Publishers (those who make things public) were artifacts of Gutenberg’s mechanical movable type printing press. They replaced the monastery and the scriptorum in the information stream. Today, with digital publishing and distrubution (henceforth referred to as “teh intarwebz”), wordpress (.org & .com) personal publishing platforms, and Amazon Kindle publishing; there are a multitude of examples of writers making their work public without the intersession of ublishers. Some are even profiting. So, while publishers may still provide value-added services, they are no longer absolutely necessary and appear to becoming less and less necessary as time passes.

Second, when I talk about artificial scarcity I am referring to attempts to make digital distribution model mimic the economic model of physical distribution systems. I could just say “DRM” or digitial rights management at this point and most of you would know what I’m referring to, but I think a deeper explanation will be helpful. The economic model of physical books is a familiar one. Objects are exchanged for money. In this specific case, distributors of books make their money by selling physical items and taking a percentage of the sale as profit. In this model, libraries purchased books from distributors because the distributors provided both the physical items and the logistics of printing, storing, and shipping them. This worked very well for a long time. However, when digital formats became valid media for the distribution and consumption of information, the basic math behind this relationship changed.

The model works for physical books because it is difficult and expensive to reproduce a physical book. This is why we do business with publishers, they have the means to do this well. However, it is easy to copy digital items. In fact, using a digital item requires making a copy. We copy it from the library’s server to our computer, we copy it from our computer to our device, or we copy it from Amazon’s database to our Kindle. That is one of the great things about digital items, we can make unlimited perfect copies of them. There is no inherent limit for the number of times any one book, song, article, or picture can be copied. This should be a good thing and I think it will be one day. The short-term problem is that it breaks the revenue model for publishers and content distributors. We all know the law of supply and demand. Prices change to account for changes in either supply or demand. Digital items, with ability to make unlimited perfect copies should then have the effect of bringing the prince per copy to near zero. This is great for consumers but a problem for businesses built on taking a percentage of the financial transactions in the information stream and a problem for the creators of information. We may still need their services, but 5% of free is no way to make a living.

The single biggest challenge of the digital information age has been to find a revenue model that acknowledges the properties of digital objects and still finds a way for creators to be rewarded for the value they create. We have a few stop-gap measures: freemium models, value-added services, giving the content away and selling the customers (the Google/Facebook model). There is also artificial scarcity: the popular method of trying to force digital objects to mimic the limitations of physical objects and thereby preserve economic balance destroyed by digital technology. Artificial scarcity is little more than an agreement for everybody to pretend that the digital revolution never really happened. It benefits the established print-based distributors but harms patrons and libraries. While we need, for now, publishers to remain profitable; does it make sense to sacrifice the benefits and promise of emerging digital technology in order to protect them? The core question appears to be: are you willing to limit patron access to information in order to shore up a failing business model for publishers? If the answer is yes, then #hcod isn’t a problem for you. If your answer is no, our problems are a lot bigger than Harper Collins’ expiring licenses or Overdrives byzantine barriers to access. In the end, the longer we are willing participants in the shared delusion of artificial scarcity, the harder it will be for us to craft a meaningful post-print role for libraries.

Artificial scarcity describes attempts by content vendors to make digital object mimic the physical limitations of physical objects. DRM (digital rights management) is the most recognizable example of an artificial scarcity effort. Since digital items break the economics of supply and demand, artificial scarcity is an attempt to force digital objects to behave like physical objects, losing their unique properties in the process. Simple artificial scarcity efforts include making it difficult to make copies of digital items, limiting the kind or number of devices that will “read” a digital item, or limiting the number of patrons who can access a digital library item at the same time. This makes it much more difficult for out patrons to access content. It doesn’t have to be as hard as Netlibrary or Overdrive make it. There was a physical reason why books had these limitations, but there is no inherent reason for digital items to be subject to these limitations. No reason other than to protect a business model based on physical supply and demand. In other words, these artificial scarcity efforts protect publishers from having to develop working twenty-first century business models but they make accessing digital information much, much more difficult than it needs to be for library patrons and they restrict libraries from developing practices appropriate for today’s technological environment.

My advice is to stop living in the past

The kindest thing I can say about artificial scarcity efforts is that they are not ultimately sustainable. The most unkind thing I can say about artificial scarcity efforts is that they involve librarians selling out their patrons to protect the publishers’ bottom lines. The most accurate statement probably lies somewhere in the middle. Given that we do not have a viable alternative to publishers at this time, it doesn’t make sense to say “since publishers will eventually whither away, like the state in Marxist ideology, we should give up on them now.” That isn’t practical. We know our patrons want what publishers sell. We also know that the alternative to publishers’ content isn’t yet fully arrived. I WANT to live in an open source, open access, “information wants to be free” environment, but I have to live in this world as it is today. Libraries aren’t in a position to tell our patrons that open content, like broccoli, should be consumed because it is good for them and because we say so. We aren’t in loco parentis over our patrons.

On the other hand, I think it absolutely necessary for librarians to come to grips with the idea that the publishing model that has been in existence since Johannes Gutenberg pressed his first bible is endangered. It is a service that has reached end-of-life in its product support timeline. Compare it to IE6: once this product was viewed as flawed but necessary. It is now officially obsolete, but it still carries such a significant install base that cannot be safely ignored. Likewise libraries cannot survive by completely ignoring print publishers or, more accurately, the print publishing model. But if we continue pretending that libraries are, by definition, groups that buy content from publishers and re-distribute it to our patrons, we, like the publishers, will soon find ourselves no longer needed. The network will interpret us as broken and route traffic around us.

So, even though we don’t know what the future looks like, and really, we don’t even know what the present looks like very well; we should stop acting as though the rules that governed the past still apply today. Libraries are full of very smart people trying to solve this problem. We should listen to them. I’m not suggesting we leap blindly after every new bleeding edge fad (Second Life reference anyone?) but we do need to recognize the necessary value of experimenting and trying new approaches until we figure out what works. This means that we need a higher tolerance for failure that we’ve accepted in the past. We have to be willing to make mistakes or else we’ll keep doing what we already know how to do very well until we come to work one day and realize these services are no longer technologically relevant.

Harper Collins is not our enemy

After all I’ve said about obsolete business models, artificial scarcity and how these efforts are harmful to our patrons, I have come to realize that Harper Collins and Overdrive are not our enemies. This particular policy is crap and should result in no library buying products that the crap license applies to, but Harper Collins and Overdrive aren’t our enemies. Libraries and publishers are actually in very similar situations right now. I’ve claimed that digital content and digital information streams do not require publishers to print or distribute them. Before I get too smug, however, it should also be noted that libraries are no better off in the context of digital content and digital information streams. At least, if we continue to subscribe to the tradition definition that states libraries are agencies that pool resources from a population, spend these resources to purchase content from publishers, and make this content available to our population of users. This role is one that developed in a print context. It will not exist unchanged forever. Going forward, our users will still need access to information, they probably will not need, or probably not need to the same extent, access to our collections of information. The question becomes: what are libraries if we are not our collections?

Libraries without collections

Here is where I realize that I have better questions than I have answers. I think I know where the answers can be found, but at this point of the conversation, I think it best to point to thinkers who have influenced me on this subject and ask what you all think about the issue. If libraries are to find a way to become more than just our collections, I think we need to read and understand Yochai Benkler’s thinking on information and networks.

The key title is, I think, his The Wealth of Networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom The following titles all participate in some of the same ideas and all seem to stand on Benkler’s shoulders in some way. They are also, incidentally, written for broader audiences and thus are more accessible.

Clay Shirky: Ontology is Overrated (text w/ images | podcast w/o images)

also: Here comes Everybody and the more recent book on the same theme: Cognitive Surplus

Larry Lessig: Ted Talk on the laws that choke creativity

David Weinberger: Everything is Miscellaneous

More from Benkler:

• Open Source Economics
• After Selfishness – Wikipedia 1, Hobbes 0, after halftime

Conclusions, of a sort.

My conclusion here is that #HCOD isn’t a problem in and of itself. Harper Collins has offered a license agreement that should be unacceptable to libraries because it doesn’t serve our patrons’ interests and connects our patron records with our vendors in a way that violates our professional ethics. That said, it isn’t the real problem. It is a mistake that we should be tolerant of while refusing to play along with it.

What we really need to do is to figure out what libraries are after our collections stop being our raison d’etre. What happens as Google Books continues to offer digital access to the printed page? What happens when the economic value of digital items reflects their supply? One prediction I can confidently make is that our library collections, by themselves, will cease to be a reason to keep library doors open. I don’t think that will happen soon or mean the end of libraries, but the publishing industry has lost its technological monopoly on the flow of information. This means that libraries can no longer identify themselves as purchasing collectives for containers of information. If there is another role for us, one that will be relevant in the future, I think we can find it in Benkler’s work.

(This is a previously unpublished post  from my WordPress drafts folder. I’ve cleaned it up and finished some thoughts, but mostly it stands as written in November 2010)

The user becomes the collection

At this Fall’s ACRL Northwest conference, I had the good fortune to participate in a panel discussing the future of libraries. We were asked what we thought the theme of the conference would be five years in the future. In the month or so since the panel took place, I can’t seem to stop mulling over the answer that I gave. I said something along the lines of “The user becomes the collection”, meaning that libraries, instead of providing access to static content will instead provide access for our users to connect with networks of like minds. I predict this trend will continue to the point where libraries become more about curating networks and connections between thinkers and creators of information and less about the static content we store in our collections.
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