Libraries – The people’s university?

I saw this idea come across the twitterz today — that the library is the people’s university.

Ok, I’ll bite. Let’s take a look at a library as a center of learning for a minute, instead of as a repository for things that are no longer scarce (all kinds of media). What is the job of the library when there is no longer a need for them to be the keepers of scarce media?

Libraries can become places of creation – people come to the library to learn to create things.

Libraries can become places of connection – people come to the library to connect with people, learning resources, their community, the government, the world, the environment.

Libraries become places to express freedom – libraries should be format agnostic, and without DRM. It may be our job to make sure that the tools and formats we recommend are those that promote freedom and flexibility of usage for our patrons.

Libraries are places to experience the world beyond your view, and be challenged by opposing viewpoints – places for safe debate.

Libraries are not about objects, they are about ideas: the sharing, the formation, and the execution of ideas and ideals.

I think that in the last generation we have lost much capacity for independent thought due to the proliferation and widespread adoption of mainstream media (television, internet, mobile, print). Literally, we are amusing ourselves to the point that we don’t care about anything but further amusement. We live in filter bubbles, created by algorithms that predict what we’ll like and show us only that — we are not challenged in our beliefs. Libraries can be a place where people come to be challenged.

I believe libraries should be that place where people are safe to challenge their beliefs, and be free to explore all areas of human knowledge. Such things are vital to our continued survival as a species, and libraries are one of the last bastions for people to engage in (mostly) unfettered exploration.

eBook (ePub) Users Bill of Rights

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights is a statement of the basic freedoms that should be granted to all eBook users.

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations
the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses
the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright
the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks
I believe in the free market of information and ideas.

I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can thrive when readers are given the maximum amount of freedom to access, annotate, and share with other readers, helping this content find new audiences and markets. I believe that eBook purchasers should enjoy the rights of the first-sale doctrine because eBooks are part of the greater cultural cornerstone of literacy, education, and information access.

Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.

I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.

I am concerned about the future of access to literature and information in eBooks. I ask readers, authors, publishers, retailers, librarians, software developers, and device manufacturers to support these eBook users’ rights.

These rights are yours. Now it is your turn to take a stand. To help spread the word, copy this entire post, add your own comments, remix it, and distribute it to others. Blog it, Tweet it ( #ebookrights), Facebook it, email it, and post it on a telephone pole.

Rights to this: CC0 – Public Domain

ePubs: Alright, we’re mad… how are we going to fix it?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how sad it is that libraries seem to be left out of the migration from hard copy books to ePubs. The news that HarperCollins was forcing Overdrive to expire digital content (Joe Atzberger’s post, Librarian by Day’s post) after a certain number of circulations (26, to be exact) was the last straw for me. Something has to be done here, we cannot continue to support a publishing economy where ePubs are forced into the existing paradigm of hard copy books.

“My gosh,” you must be thinking, “what on earth model could we possibly use? We have no choice here! We are at the mercy of the publishers and content providers!” Wrong, I say. There is at least one model that I can think of that might work very well for all parties involved.

Let’s first take a look at how Amazon lends Kindle books. A happy Kindle user buys a book, reads it, and has licensed this book for their personal use. That Kindle user is allowed to lend that book to another Kindle user one time, for two weeks. After this one lend, the book cannot be lent again. This model won’t really work for libraries, but I think that with a subtle change it could be workable for all involved. Interestingly, an intrepid group of library geeks have put together the service Lendle to help Kindle users connect to other Kindle users interested in borrowing their books. Super cool, but limited in usefulness by the fact that each book can only be lent once. That won’t work for libraries. It doesn’t even really work for Kindle users.

So let’s say there is a magical content middleman who sells ePubs. This magical content middleman allows libraries to buy licenses to ePubs that they can lend to patrons. The catch is, the patron can only receive the book, a la Kindle, a single time. The content also expires after two weeks, providing the patron the option to purchase the item at the end of their circ period. There are no limits to the number of times this ePub can be circulated: the only catch is that a patron can only check it out for 2 weeks, a single time.

With this model, publishers and content middlemen have great opportunities to make money: they get the ePubs into the hands of readers, they make a little off of the library when the library buys the ePub, and the opportunity to sell another copy to the end-user (patron) when the 2 week lending period has expired. To me, this seems like everyone wins!

It occurs to me that Apple already does something similar with movies: they allow you to “rent” a movie for 24 hours. They make a few bucks, and hope that you like it enough to buy the full movie with special features. It’s not all that different, and no one can deny that Apple makes a boatload of money off of iTunes purchases.

My good friend Heather pointed me to this blog post by a library user/reader who was weighing in on the whole HarperCollins news, and it bears quoting here:

“A lend from a library is never as good as a purchase. People do it because they are readers, and they put up with it because it is really, really expensive to support a flat-out voracious reading habit on your own dime.

Publishers, if you make it impossible for young people–those in the “under 25″ category–to support a good reading habit on their own dime, these people are not going to start magically spending money on books when they start making a decent income. No; at that point, they’ll already have started spending their time haunting hulu instead, where they can actually get free entertainment. And when they start making money, they’ll be buying iTunes streams of those shows they watched for free.”

So, content providers, libraries, publishers, somebody: build this, and libraries (and our users/members/patrons) may come.

So, shoot me down: why won’t this work?