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Changing Policies On Digital Books Wreak Havoc on Libraries

May 7, 2012 | 10:47 AM | By

Hutton

By Jenny Shank

Public libraries are a major hub for Americans to gain access to e-books and other digital resources. But the nation’s recent economic troubles and the transition to digital books are creating major difficulties for these public institutions.

Last month, the American Library Association released its annual State of America’s Libraries Report, and many of its findings were grim. “Public libraries continue to be battered by a national economy whose recovery from the Great Recession is proving to be sluggish at best,” the report concluded. Twenty-three of the 49 chief officers of state libraries surveyed indicated that their library systems faced budget cuts over the past two years. “For three years in a row, more than 40 percent of participating states have reported decreased public library funding,” the report states.

While library budget cuts continue, demand for library services has soared. Lower income and unemployed patrons often turn to local libraries as their only source of Internet access.

“It will take a few years for the dust to settle.”

At the same time, libraries have sought to accommodate Americans’ ever-increasing demand for access to digital materials, a mission that has put them at odds with the publishing industry, which is struggling to retain its viability as many American readers shift toward reading books electronically and purchasing those titles from online retailers rather than traditional bookstores.

“In the end, it will be a matter of leadership and vision that will guide libraries through the current conditions,” said Jorge Martinez, director of Information Systems for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which supports libraries through grants.

SPARRING OVER E-BOOKS

One of the biggest challenges libraries face in this new digital age is the friction in their relationship with publishers, caused largely by the advent of e-books.

Publishers argue that borrowing a printed book from a library requires a patron to physically visit the building and then return a few weeks later to bring it back, which is more difficult than Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, digital textbooks, digital-divide, e-readers, library

The Public Library as an Incubator for the Arts

January 17, 2012 | 9:58 AM | By

Irene Romsa

Poudre River Public Library District's Community Mural

Arguably, those who believe a public library is simply a repository of print books haven’t been to a public library lately. Here at MindShift, we’ve been covering the ways in which the library is evolving to change the demands of digital technologies and of its patrons: libraries are becoming learning labs, innovation centers, and makerspaces.

Of course, the public library has always been a community center as much as a place to go to check out books to read, so the new extensions of the library’s service may not be so far afield from the institution’s mission to provide access to information. Even so, much of the emphasis has been on literacy — reading and writing, digital and analog — and not on other forms of creativity.

But three graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library and Information Studies have launched a project that points to another important way in which libraries play a key role in their communities. The Library as Incubator Project highlights some of the ways in which libraries and local artists can work together.

I spoke with Erinn Batykefer, Laura Damon-Moore, and Christina Endres about the project.

Q. What was the inspiration for the Library as Incubator Project?

Laura Damon-Moore: The inspiration for the project came from several places. One was an article in the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries’ magazine, written by Madison artist and curator Martha Glowacki. Martha uses library research and spaces frequently in the development of her

“We’re shortchanging an entire generation of Americans who may never spend an hour painting or writing or acting, or doing any creative endeavor as part of a formal education.”

creative work. We wanted to learn more about how other artists use libraries in their work, and how the “library experience” might be enhanced for artists. Another important piece of the inspiration for the project came up at the end of our first semester of library school. Professor (now Emerita) Louise Robbins spoke about the need for advocacy to infuse everything that we do as library students and future librarians. Lastly, the three of us have an interest in the arts anhelp engage the communities we all will be serving some day. These pieces came together over the course of about a semester to form the basis for the project as it exists today.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Teaching Strategies, library

Creating the Library of Tomorrow from the Ground Up

January 12, 2012 | 1:00 PM | By

Flickr:Paul Lowry

By Laurie Putnam

The public library hums. Readers peruse e-books and job seekers attend workshops. Teens organize poetry slams, and students work together on school assignments. Librarians plan programs, help researchers online, and digitize collections of all shapes and sizes. All around the world, today’s libraries are serving their communities in new and different ways.

But is that enough for tomorrow’s library?

We do need to promote modern, relevant services in our current libraries, says Rob Bruijnzeels, founder and rector of the Dutch LibrarySchool. For the long term, however, Bruijnzeels believes that libraries need more than modernizing: They need rethinking, and they need librarians who think differently.

“We can’t just refresh the library of the twentieth century anymore. There is so much more going on now,” says Bruijnzeels. “We think we need a new kind of public library, a new process for public libraries. We need something completely different. What it is, we don’t know for sure, but let’s have a try.”

To give us a collective try, Bruijnzeels started the LibrarySchool, a new university program designed to educate a new wave of librarians. It’s both an academic program and an incubator of ideas.

“We need something completely different. What it is, we don’t know for sure, but let’s have a try.”

While no one knows quite what the library of the 21st century will be, the faculty and students at the LibrarySchool aren’t afraid to experiment. In times of radical change, they believe, old paradigms no longer apply. Rapid cultural, technological, and societal shifts are changing how people consume information and use libraries.

In the Netherlands, dramatic budget cuts have threatened the closure of one-third of the nation’s public libraries. And with a large percentage of librarians nearing retirement, a significant shift in Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Teaching Strategies, e-books, library

Books and Band Saws: the Future of Libraries

December 20, 2011 | 1:00 PM | By

Flickr:Toolstop

By Jon Kalish, NPR

As information becomes more digital, public libraries are striving to redefine their roles. A small number are working to create “hackerspaces,” where do-it-yourselfers share sophisticated tools and their expertise.

The Allen County Public Library, which serves the city of Fort Wayne, Ind., has a modest hackerspace inside a trailer in its parking lot. Library director Jeff Krull says hosting it is consistent with the library’s mission.

“We see the library as not being in the book business, but being in the learning business and the exploration business and the expand-your-mind business,” he says. “We feel this is really in that spirit, that we provide a resource to the community that individuals would not be able to have access to on their own.”

The 50-foot trailer is known as the Maker Station and belongs to TekVenture, an educational nonprofit that had struggled to find a building it could afford before it was approached by the library. TekVenture signed an agreement with the library to operate in its parking lot for a year. TekVenture President Greg Jacobs says this partnership made sense.

“We see the library as not being in the book business, but being in the learning business and the exploration business and the expand-your-mind business.”

“The library is a well-established, respectable institution in the area. The library is used by everybody,” he says. “Regardless of your stripe in society, you’re going to use library facilities.”

The Allen County facility includes a CNC router, a computer-controlled power tool that cuts wood, plastic and some metals. The Maker Station also has a lathe, scroll and band saws, an electronics Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Teaching Strategies, library

Don’t Shush Me! In Some Libraries, It’s OK to be Loud

November 30, 2011 | 1:30 PM | By

Flickr: Nathan Lewis

By Nick Pandolfo

Buffy Hamilton, who calls herself “The Unquiet Librarian,” holds the phone receiver away from her ear at Creekview High School library in Canton, Ga., revealing a cacophony of noise in the background.

“It sounds like that a lot of the time,” says Hamilton, who welcomes what she calls “the hum of learning”—students talking about projects, watching videos and even singing “Happy Birthday.”

In 2009, Hamilton began re-imagining her role as a librarian at this new high public high school of 1,800 in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In her new role, Hamilton focuses on enhancing lessons and class projects with tools of the digital world to access, organize and evaluate information.

Her job “is really about helping teachers and students explore new mediums for learning,” Hamilton says. “So that’s been a big shift.”

Creekview High School’s media center looks and sounds nothing like the silent libraries of the past. The new emphasis on collaborative learning and the use of digital tools to produce dynamic research projects lead to a louder, more hands-on environment that can prove beneficial to students later on in college. Hamilton says graduates have returned to thank her because their digital skills are more advanced than those of their classmates.

A private boarding school for high-school students gave away its collection of over 20,000 books and transformed its library into a digital center with e-books.

Hamilton’s transformation of the library’s role in this middle-class suburb evolved from her exposure to research and thinking by R. David Lankes, director of the master’s program in library and information science at Syracuse University, and Henry Jenkins, head of the comparative media studies program at MIT, among others, regarding the ways that digital natives learn through Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, library

The Public Library, Completely Reimagined

November 9, 2011 | 2:11 PM | By

Fayetteville Free Library, by Lauren Smedley

You’ll hear a lot of talk about the “death of the public library” these days. It isn’t simply the perpetual budget crises that many face either. It’s the move to digital literature, and the idea that once there are no more print books (or rather if there are no more print books), the library as an institution will cease to exist.

Librarians will remind you, of course, that a library is much more than a book repository. It’s an information center (free and open information, I should add). It’s an educational center. It’s a digital access center. It’s a community center. It’s fairly clear when you describe the library like this that none of these roles are going away (nor should they), no matter what format our reading habits may move to.

But these new formats will indeed change libraries — how they operate as well as how they look. As our books become digitized, there may be less need for row upon of Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching Strategies, library