Ebook Summit Preview: If Librarians Ran the Supermarket
If future libraries move toward "big deal" ebook subscription packages, will the Serials Crisis become a Library Crisis? By Eric HellmanSep 13, 2010
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This essay is part of a series leading up to the LJ Ebook Virtual Summit on September 29. |
Music. Journals. Encyclopedias. Movies. Newspapers. Travel reservations. Phone calls. Dating.
As each of these has become Internet-based, a funny thing has happened. The business models underlying the incumbent institutions have either crumbled—or adapted.
There's always something different. Just because record stores disappeared doesn't mean newspapers are doomed. As we consider the future of publishing and libraries, it's tempting to draw conclusions from one industry or another, as if the past and present have already designated the future to come.
Thinking differently about ebook business models
The other day, I needed to buy some vegetables to complete a salad I was making for dinner. The tomatoes in our garden are coming in, you see. As I was squeezing avocados in the supermarket to make sure I could use them that night, I thought of all the business models that would go into my salad bowl.
Avocados come one by one from huge farms in California. I bought a package of baby arugula mix—somewhere there's a packing plant that washes the arugula and adds in some radicchio. My teenage son grew the tomatoes and basil in our front yard. Last week, I made a very successful salad that included some weeds (purslane) from the lawn. The cucumbers came from a farmers market; some friends of ours subscribe to vegetables through a community-supported-agriculture cooperative.
Meanwhile, I'd been trying to find a way to illustrate the potential consequences for libraries of new book buying mechanisms. For example, if books become things that are mixed into large subscription packages, how would society change? If libraries end up spending their acquisition budgets on these "big deals" for ebooks, would the "serials crisis" become a "library crisis"?
With all the business models in my salad, I started to think about how dinner would be different if vegetables were somehow digital products. All the hours of my youth wasted on Star Trek reruns began to flash before my eyes. What business models might evolve to make the food replicators of the future work? My brain gears started turning...
Mixes and packages
...I suddenly had the weirdest sensation. I looked at my hand-held food-pattern module and had the strange feeling that it should be full, but of course it was empty. I had just slotted my personal transport unit into the lot of the local Grocery Lounge. I needed some more patterns for the salad I was going to replicate tonight. Sure, call me old fashioned, but I much prefer my own pattern mash-ups to those pre-formulated mixes, no matter how famous the authors are. Someday, though, I'll splurge for one of those "Alice Waters" menu recreations.
I sat down at one of the workstations in the Lounge, plugged in my food-pattern module and started browsing the catalog. It's amazing how they have patterns for practically every edible thing known to humans; you can even get patterns for things that have never before been replicated!
Still, I think it's kind of weird that you have to show up in person at the Grocery Lounge to get patterns. It's a mixture of security and service; there are just so many food patterns available that you often need a reference chef to match your preferences, needs, and budget to reliable selections.
Of course there's a huge black market for cracked replicators that let you reuse patterns over and over again for free, but if everyone used them, how would food designers ever get paid? And there's always the threat of viruses. Hunger is certainly no excuse for food piracy—anyone can go to a public replicator and get a fill of cake'n'coke. UGHHH! Although sometimes I get so frustrated with the food-rights management system that I feel like taking a sledgehammer to the replicator.
I settled on some pitless, skinless avocado patterns, with three paid replications. I don't understand the traditionalists who say you should replicate them whole, then peel and pit them. Give me a zapping break! I have better uses for my time. For example, I've been authoring some new tomatoes. My son has figured out how to configure a tomato pattern for purple skin, so it should be a pretty interesting salad. It's amazing what the open-sauce tomato community has achieved.
I started to think about a world where the all the food patterns would be free, like those tomatoes. The business models underlying the whole food patterning industry would certainly have to change...
Choice and subsistence
... I suddenly had the weirdest sensation. It was almost is if I had been eating purple tomatoes. I wish! I'm pretty well off, but no way I can afford a food pattern plan that includes purple tomatoes. It's not like I'm one of those greedy food pattern moguls—they're so rich they can probably afford dirt licenses and avoid 'cater crud altogether. It used to be that you could buy just the patterns that you wanted, but when General Food Patterns introduced the all-you-can-eat monthly plan, it pretty much bankrupted the specialty food publishers.
It's funny how things worked out since then. Sure, with one company taking full responsibility for your diet, you know they'll make sure you're eating only healthy and wholesome food. If only it tasted better.
I think I'll have a salad off the Times' bestseller list tonight. Life is too short to waste a meal on something that hasn't been properly vetted, even with all the advertising you have to watch on the selection holo in order to get it. You'd think that at a million bucks per year, they'd spare you the ads. And the green mush that's supposed to be an avocado; I wonder what real avocados tasted like. But we all have to eat, don't we?
As I munched the Nike-logo lettuce, I started thinking about an imaginary world where the money you spent on food supported both the chef who designed your food and the farmer who fabricated its amino acids—at more than subsistence wages. The food pattern conglomerates might not like it, but so what?...
...and I suddenly had a rather normal sensation. Hunger.
I promised myself that I would take some extra time that evening to enjoy the smell, taste, and texture of my hand-tossed, dirt-grown physical salad and to appreciate the magic that created it.
| Author Information |
| Eric Hellman (eric@hellman.net, @gluejar on Twitter) has spent the last 12 years developing technology for libraries. He blogs at go-to-hellman.blogspot.com |
