what if the future (of libraries)

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Peter Brantley Tampa Internet Archive Florida The Presidio 11.2011

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Discussion of possible ebook lending scenarios for public libraries and the importance of network scale platforms to support ebook services.

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Page 1: What if the future (of libraries)

Peter Brantley Tampa Internet Archive Florida The Presidio 11.2011

Page 2: What if the future (of libraries)

Let’s explore out some of the ramifications for libraries of the ebook market explosion.

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Let’s assume ebook market penetration

continues to grow rather rapidly.

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In fact, let’s assume that the ebook market is around an 80+ percent market in <= 5 yrs. (for trade at least) - via Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical Co.

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Providing access to ebooks requires a

platform based service with an attractive catalog and technical infrastructure.

(‘Cuz you don’t put ebooks on shelves).

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Ebook platforms aggregate user data,

intentionality, preferences, and social information.

(Nothing inherently evil about this; it comes

with the territory).

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Overdrive is current de facto national digital

library platform for public libraries. 3M and others might present effective competition.

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Overdrive occupies a sweet spot, but it

requires sophisticated contract licensing and negotiation skills, and well-developed engineering capacity.

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Overdrive does not function solely as the

intermediary between the library and the publisher. They are also the intermediary between a reading system retailer and the publisher.

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In a manner, they sell rental access to ebooks

to nook and Kobo users, via libraries. It’s just that the libraries pick up the rental fees.

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In other words, they are in acting as a

distributor of books, just like Ingram. (In fact, in book markets, they operate

exactly like Ingram.)

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Overdrive’s ability to support EPUB, an open

standard for digital book packaging, reduces its overhead costs and permits it to serve a wide number of users and reading systems.

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When Overdrive provides access to EPUB-

format ebooks with vanilla Adobe ACS DRM, they can gather usage data across consumers with different reading systems.

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This is why Overdrive has been active in the

digital book standards community. With an open standard, they can host books

in a single format to serve multiple channels: B&N nook, Kobo, and other reading systems.

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But not everyone uses the open standard,

EPUB. Amazon uses its own Kindle format.

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In Overdrive’s new agreement with Amazon,

it is not permitted to distribute Kindle files; it’s role is deprecated to a “network switch” on catalog metadata.

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Amazon provides Kindle ebooks direct to the

library user, via the user’s Amazon account.

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The privileging of Amazon – retaining its

proprietary ebook platform and the data aggregation it generates – is prophetic.

Page 19: What if the future (of libraries)

Overdrive, 3M, and similar vendors are not

unique in having a massive catalog of books with a technical infrastructure capable of serving public libraries.

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Both Amazon and Google have massive and

deep catalogs in digital books, international in scope. (Both companies are establishing ebook stores in other countries).

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Google’s catalog encompasses long historical

period; Amazon’s includes exclusive offerings from current authors.

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In October 2011, Pearson, a very prominent

publisher, announced a partnership with Google that provides access to a free LMS bundled with Google Apps for Education.

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It is easy to imagine a library systems vendor

(III, Sirsi, Ex Libris) partnering with Google to provide library subscription services to GBS.

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(Library subscription was one of the proposed

commercial models in the failed Google Book Search settlement proposals).

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ILS vendors could integrate GBS title access

into library catalog discovery interfaces via APIs. (They do this with the bibliographic APIs for HathiTrust and IA’s Open Library.)

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Amazon has already partnered with a library

systems vendor (that would be Overdrive). But they now also offer renting of titles, or

the lending of titles on a subscription basis, direct to consumer.

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Announced 04/11/2011, Amazon Prime

customers will get “free” borrowing for ebooks (i.e., free rental) through their subscription, just like they get access to streaming movies.

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Amazon Prime Library

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For Amazon, the loss of revenue from lending

(versus selling) is more than compensated for by increased traffic to the Amazon web site.

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That’s the value of a platform.

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You can take a “loss” on one service if you

drive increased traffic to your other services, because some of that traffic will convert.

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So where would this likely leave us?

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Like HE libraries, public libraries license

access to the majority of the electronic content that users request and expect.

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Libraries will continue to license access to

ebooks, vs. buying-to-own, because they need access to platforms.

Page 35: What if the future (of libraries)

Amazon Prime Lending suggests that public

libraries are becoming the public hospitals of ebooks: struggling to finance support for the underprivileged through community dollars.

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Is there an alternative?

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In 10/2011, State librarians through COSLA

endorsed library participation in the Internet Archive’s Open Library lending program.

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Libraries contribute books for digitization and

lending access is provided to the participating libraries. California, North Carolina, and Kansas are already participating.

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The COSLA endorsement, while a first step,

leaves unspecified the funding sources that are required to support a large digital book database.

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It requires significant communal effort and

funding redirection & reallocation by many State and public library systems.

(DPLA seems to be vacuuming up available

private grant funding, fwiw.)

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For IA to develop a comprehensive library, it

would have to aggregate not just older <2001 digitized books, but develop an acquisition program for frontlist titles with publishers.

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Ideally by buying them. But up until now (11/2011) the purchase of

ebooks has been limited to niche distributors (Smashwords, Gale) or alternative presses.

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It is not yet obvious that publishers would

participate in public library title acquisition if there are commercial sector alternatives for lending platforms.

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Libraries would need to demonstrate that

lend does not fully substitute for purchase. I.e.,: the lending market does not greatly impinge upon the book purchase market.

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It also creates curious market issues if Open

Library successfully competes with Overdrive services via collectivization of public library interests.

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If we all band together. If we all work together. It is an interesting future.

Page 47: What if the future (of libraries)

We cannot be confident in this scenario.

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It is not mad for libraries to “write off” ebooks

and focus on services that will be attractive in the future.

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Longer term trends suggest this. An

increasing number of things that today we call “ebooks” will turn into enhanced websites.

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“As EPUB evolves as a format it seems clear that it

would allow for more and more interactivity, more and more functionality, and still work within a broad range of web browsers and/or web-based renders and readers.”

- Brian Sandusky, Kaplan Publishing,

2011 IDPF Board candidate statement.

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You see it everywhere. Not just in Wikipedia

and cookbooks, travel guides, music scores, building codes, and most legal information.

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The Push Pop Press*’ Our Choice by Al Gore Jr

is the most beautifully designed mixed media offering to date.

(*now owned by Facebook, interestingly.)

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In other words, the market for content will

itself diminish the role and importance of books for libraries.

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This suggests that direct (e)book provisioning

by libraries, in all forms, will diminish over the long run – even as we see circulation increase today.

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This isn’t all bad.

Really, it’s true!

Page 57: What if the future (of libraries)

It will permit libraries to invest in the things

that matter, like digital media and learning.

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It will provide added impetus for libraries to

open digital media learning centers in their communities, modeled on Chicago’s YouMedia.

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It will encourage libraries to concentrate on

community resources, such as partnerships with new local newspapers – for example, “Berkeley Side” and “Mission Local” in the Bay Area.

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It will foster investigation of personal data

archiving services and time-lining support.

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The next library: providing digital media services for

community and individual needs.

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It’s a very, very different library. But, these are different times.

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peter brantley director, bookserver project internet archive san francisco ca @naypinya (twitter)