It is almost August and things are booming here at the Library in Huntington Beach -
We have over 4,000 children signed up for Summer Reading, and our Teen and Adult Reading programs are doing well. Staff have launched their own reading program, to join in the fun. So things are busy, with lots of good reading going on.
We are also once again in the middle of the budget process, gearing up for presentation to the City Council. There have been so many changes through the budget over the past 2 years, that it is hard to deal with more. But more changes are coming. Things just keep getting tighter and tougher.
So how do you deal with all this change? I've taken to asking key questions - what is a library? What do we do? What is most important for us to do here in HB?
Some other questions have come up recently due to changes in the outside world - what does the rise of the Ebook mean for libraries? New services, like Freegal, are a different model for libraries. (Freegal is a really exciting new service from Library Ideas, where the Library subscribes and then library patrons can download songs from the Sony Music catalog. The downloads are free of DRM). Libraries are founded on the idea of "fair use" and "first sale" - in layman's terms, if you buy the item, you own it and you can lend it out. This allows us to lend books, DVDs, CDs, etc. We own the item, but we can lend it out to anyone in the community.
The new Digital environment doesn't handle this idea of First Sale very well - the DMCA has built in DRM and protection elements that make it VERY hard and in many cases nearly IMPOSSIBLE to use the item/piece of intelletual property in the way you want to. Amazon clearly doesn't see a role or place for the library model with E books. The Kindle and content for the Kindle are tied to the device, and the device belongs to someone. You can't loan the device or the items on it. Barnes and Noble's Nook lets you loan an E book a few times to someone else that has a Nook, but again, it is more tied to the device.
Anyone out there looking at Device Agnostic content that allows for loaning? Maybe the Library paradigm has to shift. Maybe we have to become aggregators for the community, and then individuals can access or download items, and they get to keep them, like with Freegal. Community resources again being pooled for the greater good - not too far removed from our original idea. This time we are dealing with digital content rather than physical items.
What I'm saying here isn't new - others in the field have posed these questions and are taking a hard look at what we do and how we do it. Maybe it is just the sense of urgency that seems to be associated with all the changes right now, or maybe it is because as all of these changes are coming together, libraries are in the news, showing up on YouTube (as part of the Old Spice Man campaign) and on Facebook.
NPR thinks we are about to have our Pop culture moment, like cupcakes. Maybe they are right. Shoot, Libraries are better than cupcakes - we don't have as many calories. :)
I'd love to hear what you think -
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