Doom and Gloom about Libraries

Okay. That's it. I've been hearing more and more doomy, gloomy predictions about libraries and books over the past year or so, and I feel like it's gotten to the point that I just have to say my own piece. You might disagree with me. That's okay. I might end up being wrong on this one (I have, actually, been wrong quite a few times in my life), but for better or worse, I need to get this out of me.

Libraries aren't going anywhere. Books aren't going anywhere. End of story.

Note: this isn't to say that libraries and books aren't changing. They are--quite drastically in some respects. But change does not equal disappearance. But I hear people saying things like all books are going to be free, which would make me lose both of my professions. Self-publishing will eradicate the need to pay for books, so why need libraries? Why need paid authors? Free free free!

Hogwash.

First point: libraries are more than books. Libraries are information. The casing of that information may change (scrolls, papyrus, books, ereaders, computers), but the information itself is still there. If librarians are information brokers, and the amount of information is increasing, then why in the world should we be worried about our jobs going anywhere?

Well, one reason is because non-librarians inevitably have this Books=Librarians mindset. And so they see a blow to physical copies of books as a blow to librarians as a profession. It could well be that this mindset will strike a significant blow to librarians for a few years. But I have every confidence that such a blow would be short lived. As soon as everybody's trying to find all the information that they've lost track of, they'll come running back to librarians, hat in hand.

But wait--what about Google? It finds you everything you might possibly need.

Garbage.

Google does a great job of finding broad information about something. It's a great phone book and encyclopedia and almanac. But start tracking what you actually use Google for, and how successful or unsuccessful you are with those searches. One of the biggest flaws of Google is that you need to know an information resource exists, or you might well completely miss an important source of information. Let's say you're interested in children's publishing. Allow me to show how such a search might go.

You don't know a lot about the topic, so you start with "Writing books for kids." First off, let me remind you that most searchers don't go beyond the third result in a Google results page. The top three results get 60% of the clicks. The top result gets more than a third, all by its lonesome. So we'll assume you're a typical researcher--not a dedicated pro (like, say . . . a librarian). The top three results Google returns are all ads paid for by their sponsors. Let's hope you're at least with it enough to know to ignore the ads and go down to actual results. Two are for Amazon books, and one is of questionable merit. (Family-based, clunky website).

You ignore the fantastic underdown.org--because it's the ninth result. Only 1.8% of searches get down that far in the results page. So, since you came up empty, you change your search (assuming you're really dedicated here). "Writing books for children." Underdown.org is now the fourth result (not counting the three additional ads that popped up first). 7.9% of researchers will click that one. And this is assuming you know what you're doing and can adequately distinguish the difference between a good website and a bogus one. (Speaking as an information professional, it ain't always that easy.)

What I mean to say is that you need to do research to find quality sources--even using Google. But most people don't realize this. They'll spend hours and hours searching for something that a subject specialist would know off the top of their head. Hours and hours they could have been doing something else. That's a distinct need, folks. And where there's a need, there's a job.

Librarian's aren't going anywhere.

What about books? Books are going to become free, right? Anyone can publish one. People will refuse to pay for one. Publishers will go under. Agents will fall. Dogs and cats will start playing in the streets together.

If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you while you're busy writing your free book.

Again--this isn't to say that books aren't going to change. I'm sure they will. But look at the music industry. It was panicked that the entire world would start pirating music. No one would make any money. Mass hysteria! Has that panned out? Not really. In fact, studies show that music pirates actually spend more money on music than non-pirates. Go figure.

People love music. They'll continue paying to support the thing they love.

Books? People love books. They'll do the same.

Yes, right now I could just hit a publish button and have every piece of writing I've ever done online at once. And many people are doing just that. But the more people who publish all the stuff they've written, the harder it is to find the quality stuff you actually want to read. A lot of work and effort goes in to writing and publishing a book. Rounds of edits. Design experience. Bookkeeping. Marketing. Publishers don't just slap a "for sale" sticker on a book and send it out the door. (At least, not reputable publishers.)

It's certainly possible that for a few years, everything will Seem Grim. The sky might look like it's going to fall. But in the end, people will adapt. Change. Authors, publishers, agents--they might not all do the exact same things they do now in the exact same ways, but that's life.

Anyone who tells you differently--who claims that libraries or books are dying--is probably selling you something. Either they're making money working the conference circuits and trying to make a name for themselves, or they're starting their own publishing venture, or they're trying to drum up business for their own pet project.

Don't listen to the doom and gloom. Worrying about Everything Changing is just plain silly, because in the end . . . everything changes anyway. Worrying doesn't do a blessed thing to fix it. Instead, take all that energy you're devoting to worrying and focus it someplace productive. Figure out what you can do to adapt. If you're an author, keep writing books. If you're a librarian, keep up to date on changes in technology. Know the change is coming, and roll with it.

And that's all the soapbox I've got in me today.

Thoughts?

Mantor Monday

Friday book post: Feed

I've been holding off raving about this book, because our copy has been in processing. But it's the weekend before Hallowe'en, and the book has zombies.

(The book is entirely tangential to Hallowe'en: these are science zombies, not magic zombies. But still. Zombies.)

In 2014, two scientific breakthroughs combined to create an infection that - once triggered - causes people to rise from the dead. The Rising, as it's called, changed the face of the world forever.

This book, by Mira Grant (also known as Seanan McGuire, author of the excellent Toby Daye urban fantasy series, musician, and author of other upcoming awesome stuff), is about what happens 20 years after the Rising.

It's about growing up in a world where any contact with possibly infected mammals - people, wildlife, anything larger than a smallish golden retriever - means blood tests, and a wide variety of security precautions. About a world where news - going out into the world - is complicated, and a vast network of bloggers combine to create connections and keep the largely housebound population entertained and informed. You have Irwins who poke zombies with sticks to give everyone a thrill, Newsies who write factual objective journalism, and Fictionals who deal with the scary spaces of the world through stories and poetry. And it's about three young adults getting the gig to travel with a major political campaign.

This book, the first in the trilogy, is about the politics of that political campaign, about family, about principle. And about surviving. (The second book, Deadline is out, and the final book in the trilogy will come out next year. Deadline ends with a serious cliff-hanger, so if you don't like that sort of thing, read Feed now, and wait for the last one to hit print.)

Grant sums it up this way: "The Newsflesh Trilogy is a story about blogging, politics, medical science, espionage, betrayal, the ties that bind, the ties that don't, how George Romero accidentally saved the world, and, of course, zombies. It's thoughtful horror, and horrific science fiction, and I'm very fond of it."

I am not usually a huge zombie fan - but the story and the characters drew me in immediately. (It helps that while there's violence of the 'fighting for survival' kind, it's mostly not immensely gory, and only when it actually advances the story.)

As soon as it's processed, you'll be able to find it on our Discoveries shelf, in the Browsing Room.

When is a bookcase like Willy Wonka's elevator?

When it's designed by Chrome for Google Books, that's when - a bookcase that moves up, down, and sideways with just a click and a flick.

The designers at Chrome were presented with a challenge: what would a bookcase designed to hold a vast collection of ebooks look like? How could they make it both functional and fun?

The answer is a virtual spinning tower of bookshelves, a seemingly infinite helix containing 3D models of over 10,000 (and growing) titles. Set up more for browsing than searching, books are divided into 28 subjects. Click on the box at the top of the shelf to browse subjects, and when you choose, the shelves swoop to that section. Click on the shelves to spin them, or move up and down the tower of shelves. When you click on a title to select it, the book jumps off the shelf. click again, and the book opens to reveal a synopsis and a "Get this book" button, which takes you to the Google Books interface . (There is a category for free books, if that's what you're looking for, but all others are for sale.)

The developers say this WebGL bookcase works best with the Chrome browser (which I use) and a fast computer, so I had no trouble playing with it. Give it a try here. Here's a little intro video that shows how it works:

Happy browsing!

Thoughts about ebooks

Ebooks really are the topic of the year: more and more thought about both the immediate practical issues and the larger issues are coming up in the blogosphere.

One of the major conferences for libraries and technology (Internet Librarian) just finished, and one of the attendees, Bobbi Newman, just posted a great round-up of links that came up in discussion. You can check them all out at her blog.

I'm really glad to see an increasing depth in the conversation, not just "More ebooks, yay!". I'm particularly glad that more and more people are digging into issues of ...

• licensing
• privacy
• digital rights management (how you can share books, both with others, and simply within your own household)
• and the implications for people who, for whatever reason, cannot or do not wish to buy.

A special shout-out here to author Seanan McGuire's post "Across the digital divide: let's talk about poverty" from last month, which is a powerful call to the benefit of physical, tradeable, shareable books (something that is currently true only in very limited ways with ebooks, if you want to read anything written at all recently.) It's got some fascinating bits in comments, too.

It's not that ebooks are bad - they're not.  I (like most people who read) am in general favor of more ways to read more awesome stuff.  (And I do read a number of titles in ebook version these days, rather than print.)

But they're not perfect, either.

And the things that are problematic about them (privacy, licensing, and access issues in particular) are going to continue to be complicated until readers, authors, and publishers can push through and sort some of those issues out, in a way that makes them truly accessible and effective for everyone. Until then, being informed about the issues is a great place to start - and those links on Bobbi's page are some of the best explanations out there on what you should know, and why you might care.

A Review of Facebook Timeline

I just enabled Timeline on my Facebook profile. (How did I get the invite? My web-fu paid off once again, and because I care about my readers, I'll share my trick with you: click here. NOTE: It took longer for the invite to come on my profile than described in the linked article. Days longer. Just be patient. Also note that this just gets you in on the developer release. The general public won't be able to view your timeline until it's available to everyone. For now, just other developers can see it. But if you become a developer by following that link, then you can view other people's timelines. Get it?)

So what is Timeline? It's Facebook's new approach to personal profiles, aiming to present the whole of a person, from birth on. It presents all your activity in an easily accessed chronological format, ranging from events to status updates to pictures to . . . everything else. It lets you retroactively put in events--I tried entering where I moved when, and it all worked flawlessly. You can associate pictures with events, too.

Some people have said this is all too creepy and invasive, and I suppose I can see that--although it doesn't bother me. Only you have access to all the information on your timeline, and you can hide anything you want hidden. Actually, it's a good reminder that what you put on Facebook stops really being yours the moment you put it there. Facebook keeps a copy, and it's got a long memory. The moral of the story (in my opinion) isn't to start getting torches and pitchforks and coming after Facebook--it's to be careful about what you post there in the first place.

So what do I think of Timeline?

I love it. I could easily see myself spending a lot of time putting up pictures and labeling them with the approximate date and place. It takes the concept of a family photo album and brings it to the modern day. When I think about how kids born post-Facebook will basically have all this information already available to them--how they can create it as they live their lives . . . that's sort of mind blowing.

Also mind blowing? The fact that I just joined Facebook on July 30, 2007. In just a little over 4 years, Facebook has ingrained itself into popular culture and consciousness to the point that it feels like it's always been here.

I really like the ability to see all my status updates and postings and friend adds that I've ever done. It's easy as all get out to see what I was doing three years ago today. Very interesting (and this feature is private--it's only available to each user on an individual basis--people can't go to my Facebook page and use it. Only I can. Supposedly.)

In the end, it's a great way to organize what was up to now just a running list of events in a person's life. I think it's exciting, and I hope it gets more widely adopted. I'd love to be able to browse through my friends' lives more easily--or at least through the events they don't mind me browsing.

What say you?

All Hallow's Read

Neil Gaiman, prolific blogger, Tweeter, and author of a whole bunch of really good books, had a great idea. Hey, he said - just tossing this great idea out there to his readers -how about if we all gave people scary books this year for Halloween? We could call it All Hallow's Read. And then, like a shambling zombie on a search for braaaaaaaiiiiiiiins, Neil's idea sort of took on a life of it's own as people re-Tweeted it and blog-posted it, and generally agreed that this was a fine idea indeed.

Now, simmer down, Neil is not advocating the total replacement of candy with books. Would All Hallow's Read have become instantly popular enough to have it's very own website, if it meant abstaining from candy corn? I think not. And it's a nice little website, too, with free downloads of bookmarks and book tags, and suggested scary books for all ages. It even has a printable version of Poe's The Raven that folds into a mini-book, perfect for spooky gifting.

And if you're in the mood for more spooky fun, visit our good friends over at Devaney, Doak and Garret Booksellers (193 Broadway, Farmington, Maine) on Friday, October 28th. They are hosting the 19th annual Late Afternoon of Terror.

Bring your favorite spine-shivery tale to read aloud or perform - or just come to watch and listen...if you dare. The fun starts at 6:00pm.