The open-stack library: a futuristic technology from the 18th century
resobscura.substack.com
resobscura.substack.com
The libraries one county over though, are still basically books, magazines, and reading tables, and while still decently attended, do not provide nearly the public benefit that their neighboring system seems dedicated to offering. The hubbub of people using the public service just isn't there.
It translate poorly or not at all digitally. And the ratio space / price / time to read it is too high to buy them.
I also like the ability to take 20 of them, and decide at home if it’s good or not
At a print library, the library buys a book. They own that book, and you check out that book for "free" (ignoring taxes and library dues). You do whatever you want with the book on your own time and turn it in. If the library ever goes under, those books are given to other libraries or to the community that funded it.
In a digital library, the library is paying a subscription (read: rent) for the books in their catalog. The publishers set up the fee structures to suck as much money out of the taxpayer as possible. There is an artificial limitation on the number of books lended because libraries do not own their books. You check out "their" book, and are usually babysat by DRM schemes that keep them online only. Your access to a copy of an infinite number of copies eventually expires. Better hope the publishers don't charge more for rent next year, or those books might disappear from the catalog. This is especially a problem in scientific research, where underfunded university libraries might not be able to afford subscriptions to all of the major journals.
Digital libraries are far more inefficient because of overly strong copyright laws and impotent fair use laws, not because there is something intrinsically wrong with the digital format. The only reason you cannot access every book ever scanned at your library is simple: greed.
Libraries also routinely cull their collections. Some go to an annual book sale or whatever--often augmented with donations. Based on what I see of my own library's book sale and how many books are still there near the end of the sale, I expect a large number are pulped every year.
I don't really disagree with your broader point.
> The only reason you cannot access every book ever scanned at your library is simple: greed.
Libraries don't typically scan books themselves. DRM-free music mostly worked (for a while) because digital music was copied so much anyway. Of course, that's almost entirely shifted to streaming services. Every form of content has its own payment and compensation peculiarities and issues.
It saddens me that we are doing our best to destroy the intrinsic advantage of ebooks: availability for anyone to read, nearly anywhere in the world, basically for free.
These are nearly ideal properties for libraries and readers, but are bitterly opposed by authors, publishers, and distributors who depend upon the current publishing business model.
I'm not sure what the right balance is among stakeholders, but it's certainly not what we have now. The loss of value to humanity as a whole is great, and most authors don't seem to have decided to embark upon a new writing spree simply because copyright was extended.
At least we can finally enjoy the bestsellers of 1925 (such as The Great Gatsby) without worrying about copyright or royalties.
So a DRM-encumbered or high-priced ebook, will (for most readers) just find itself lower on the pile of potential reading material.
Over time, that paywalled stuff will either be lost, or (popularity-wise) buried under free / open access material.
I see proposals for changing the nature of libraries to increase public usage. I don't deny that some of the proposed services would be beneficial to the community, but they may not support the core library purpose of supplying information.
Let's convert libraries into on-premise AI supercomputers that anyone can rent time with, would be a good leap into the next age. Or VR rooms (I never have enough space at my house). They need to think bigger than just "info".
The ones that are online just get squatted by publishers who want to collect rent long after the authors have died.
It is frankly absurd to pay $20-$200 for a digital "copy" (so locked down with DRM that you often can't even open it offline) of an out of print book or journal article that you can find at a nearby library.
As years have passed, I found physical books are great for gifting, but terrible to keep. I never read any given book more than once, twice at most. Having those books be occupying space in my home, having to be managed across moves, and then just forgotten, perhaps only to be remembered with some nostalgia when you linger your gaze idly on them from time to time...I find that wasteful.
I've been very happy reading from an ebook device for almost two decades now. I don't think the tactile sensation of a book to be that great anyway. It's much more convenient, and, above all, I don't have the burden of having to manage all that space. The same way that I was burdened by my father's passing and having to manage his books and comics (of course, this was only a minor annoyance, but not something I would have ever wished to do, because of course...I couldn't bring myself to just throw it all out to the recycling boxes, and gifting them all to some place is no that easy now that almost no one is taking in physical books anymore). All of that...for an ephemeral experience. A passing distraction. Much like a movie.
Now...how does this relates to the library disappearing? I think libraries as they're designed don't provide that much value when you can get almost all what you want in a single kindle. Indeed, physical books make no sense to me, specially having to store them in a public building, whose space could be put to better use for the community.
The concept of accessing the literature freely should never disappear, I'm not advocating for that. But I would prefer that this would be done by lending or allowing the use of e-books rather than physical books. Or even just pdf files to be read with the user's own devices. Perhaps a self-deleting pdf if some kind of lending wants to be implemented?
Instead, the physical space currently occupied by books could be used to promote communal activities, between kids and between adults. There are public buildings like that in Barcelona, that can be used by cultural neighborhood associations that allow the people of the city to bond in much the same way that ancient communal places like the church would have performed. So, for example, food distribution citizen cooperatives, or role playing/board game groups, singing and dancing groups, theater play associations or courses, historical recreation societies...the sky's the limit!
All of the previous activities provide more integration and community than what a traditional library could ever provide. Reading being mostly a personal experience, even taking into account potential reading clubs.
And what I've come to believe is that it is much more important to enabling opportunities and social integration, to provide shared spaces rather than trying to cover that need by giving free access to self-learning or leisure resources. I would prefer my public money to be used towards communal integration, rather than reinforcing the solitude crisis that we're all drifting to.
What you're describing is the function of many public libraries in the United States, especially in the last 30 years. At least, one of the major functions: a place to meet, a place to study, a place to take classes, a place to get resources about social services, a place to sit inside when it's raining and you don't have a home to go to.
When I said that switching to a digital model would eventually diminish the role of libraries, I was thinking about this exactly. The literal loss of a shared community resource. But I am also noting that there are almost certainly knock-on effects of having such a place that we don't fully understand, and would not understand until years after we'd lost it.
I am thinking, abstractly, about the consequences of over-indexing on a particular metric, at the cost of everything else. Especially everything else which was not known or considered in the original problem statement. If our metric is "access to information", we could maximize that by getting rid of books and focusing exclusively on digital lending, and we could call it a success. What I'm saying is: have we accounted for everything that would happen if we actually did that?
As a species, we're pretty bad at guessing these things. We thought the internet would make us more civilized, we thought social media would bring us together, etc., etc.
This starts to sound like a Chesterton's Fence argument, and I was trying to avoid that, but there's no denying it now. That's basically what I'm saying I guess!
It’s a private product, called overdrive. Now rebranded as “Libby”. Streamlined iOS/android app, works exactly as a physical books.
Also: Public library are one of the few third space in the US. It’s absolutely way more than lending books.
I don’t know where you live but I’m confident that visiting your local branch you will see a lot of activities taking place there.
Some libraries still use closed stacks. Some now use remote, closed stacks. Perhaps because their stacks are basically too dangerous or ugly for the general public - or too far. It might be debatable whether paging is more costly than self-service but at least that's the library's problem. What I miss is browsing discovery.
As for printed physical media, I view it as rather essential for a society. It may not be vital now, but were the current global society to have another depression in which spinning rust and millions of GPUs were expensive luxuries, the dead trees would still be useful.