Ebook Summit Preview: Explosive Change in the Library
Decisions about if and how to deploy ebooks may need to be made without knowing for sure whether ebooks will advance the mission of public libraries By Eric HellmanSep 28, 2010
A little before 9 a.m. on May 2, Maria Norton, the interim director of the Morristown & Morris Township Public Library in New Jersey, was about a block away from work when her cellphone rang. "Will you be here soon?" the voice of a colleague asked. "I think we want to evacuate. The lights are fluctuating and the phone system just went dead."
"Don't wait for me," said Norton. "Get everyone out of there!"
As the library staff collected across the street at their designated meeting spot, they heard a loud noise and saw a smoking manhole cover in front of them pop. Later, they found that an underground explosion had lifted and broken a concrete floor of the library, buckling walls and blowing doors off their hinges. Needless to say, the library lost a significant number of books to the explosion and the subsequent asbestos-laden mess.
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This essay is part of a series leading up to the LJ Ebook Virtual Summit on September 29. |
I was curious to see how Morristown's library was coping in its temporary offices and paid a visit. I imagined that in living for a while without a building or print books, Morristown may have confronted on a small scale some of the questions that public libraries will need to answer over the next five to ten years. Decisions about if, when, and how to deploy ebooks, for example, may need to be made without knowing for sure whether ebooks will advance the mission of public libraries. What I learned was not quite what I expected.
Aftermath
The sudden closure of a library building can really make a community aware of the many ways that public libraries provide value. I found out about the closure from friends and acquaintances who use the library primarily for its inviting workspace and good WiFi. A different sort of value worried the young daughter of one of the firefighters, who quizzed her father about the extent of the damage. "Is the Eagle OK? Is the History Center OK? Those document are important!"
The Eagle she referred to is a large wooden eagle covered in gold leaf which "flies" in the tower of the library's reference room. It was originally in the Morristown Armory as part of a memorial to men who served in World War I. When children tour the library, they are asked questions about the Eagle—"What do you think it's made of? How do you think it got here?" It has become not only a symbol of Morristown's history, but also as an inspiration for curiosity. The North Jersey History & Genealogy Center is housed at the library and contains many unique resources, including material dating from the mid sixteenth century. Both the Eagle and the History Center's collection survived the explosion.
The library's staff was faced with the imposing task of running a library without either a building or access to its collection. Arrangements were made with other libraries in the county so that patrons could return items that had been checked out. Some space in a church across the street was made available so the library could conduct children's programs; reading clubs found alternate spaces to meet. A vacant storefront across the street was rented to provide makeshift office space and storage; laptops from the media center were repurposed as staff workstations. The library building in Morristown may be closed, but the cultural presence of the library is open.
Four months later, the library staff is beginning to reoccupy the undamaged part of their building. It will be much longer before repairs are completed on the damaged section. A reorganized print collection will need to squeeze into a significantly smaller space. A newly revamped website is soon to launch, as a lot of work got done on it thanks to the lack of the usual distractions.
Insurance money will be used to replace the lost material. Some of the volumes can't be replaced; in many cases, particularly in the reference section, money might be better spent on Internet resources. I asked Norton how the library will decide whether to go print or digital. "We'll do our best, but in many cases we don't know," she said. "It's really, really difficult."
Proceed with caution
In considering how to maximize the value of school libraries we can use many studies of libraries and student performance. For public libraries, there's no similar metric that can be used to guide decisions. How do you measure the symbolic value of a town's library, let alone judge whether it is enhanced or degraded by a choice of ebooks versus print? How do you measure the economic development impact of the library's resources? How do you assess the value of a public library's children's programs, or its historical documents, or its website?
In normal times, making these sorts of decisions is like piloting a plane on visual flight rules. You pretty much know where you're going, and you can see with your own eyes where potential dangers lie. Libraries are pretty good at generating statistics such as circulation and visitor counts. By comparing one library with another, they can judge the effectiveness of programs. But the uncertainty surrounding the adoption of ebooks and ereaders is like a huge cloud bank that obscures the pilot's ability to see ahead. Without a good set of instruments, a public library can't tell which way is up. A common reaction is to proceed cautiously, on the theory that a slow moving airplane can't crash into any mountains. A library might think to navigate by looking at the gas-gauge (the budget) or it might just try to keep the passengers comfortable.
Maybe you'd be better off piloting an entirely different sort of library. The Public Libraries of Suffolk County, NY, have just launched a so-called "digital branch" called Līve-brary, which seems like a pretty neat collection of on-line resources for now. But it's not clear to me that a digital branch is a place that communities want their libraries to be.
What kind of instruments does a public library need to be able to make intelligent decisions about digital resources? If I were running a public library, I would want know about the community's interaction with information. What is the broadband Internet penetration? What fraction of the population owns a computer? A Kindle? A smartphone? What fraction is unable to come to the library when it is open? If this information was not available, I would survey the community and find out.
Even with as many eagle-eye sensors deployed as possible, it won't be easy to decide if and when to steer the library towards ebooks and other digital resources. But decisions will be required sooner or later. When you smell smoke, please don't wait for the library to explode!
| 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 |
