

It's time to rethink libraries. - blhack
http://newslily.com/blogs/104

======
theBobMcCormick
His library might be dead, but that's not the case everywhere. My nearest
library (Aurora Colorado) is generally packed full of people anytime I go
there. And while there are certainly plenty of people on the library
computers, a _lot_ of them are browsing the book stacks and checking out plain
old books.

The idea that the Internet contains everything you can find in a library is
(at present at least) absolute bunk! The internet is great for enthusiasts to
read more about their favorite subjects, but for a beginner learning about a
_new_ subject, books (physical or ebook) still rule.

And it would be a _huge_ mistake to believe that everyone can afford a
computer or an ebook reader. There are still a _lot_ of people even in the US
or other first world countries where $100 for an ebook reader is completely
unrealistic.

Libraries are a great asset to communities and to democracy exactly because
the price of admission for library users is so low. You don't need credit, you
don't need any hardware, just a desire to learn.

~~~
blhack
(I wrote this).

I'm not saying that libraries should be abolished, just that they should be
expanded. My point is that the world has changed, and it would be great if the
libraries caught up.

Absolutely don't get rid of books, that's not what I'm saying at all.

To me, libraries represent an academic resource for the community. I would
just love to see them be an _even greater_ resource than they are now. I think
the idea is fantastic, and I think that history agrees, I just want to see
that fantastic idea expanded a little more.

~~~
qjz
_So what would I like to see happen? Get rid of the dead trees, but don't stop
there._

It sounds like you want to get rid of books ("dead trees"), but maybe you got
a little overexcited. I just went to the library today, to return and check
out some books. It's a nice break from the time I spend behind a computer, and
e-books don't interest me that much.

But while I was there, a group of toddlers were engaged in a singalong, and
several people were browsing the web on library computers. Now, some libraries
are better than others (for some strange reason, our local library only has
one terminal dedicated to searching the catalog, so you have to wait if
someone else is using it and you can't simply use one of the web PCs without
signing up for a session, plus there's no wifi), but the trend is definitely
toward improving the library as a community resource. The bigger problem is
the lack of funding and other resources. If you want to help your library
develop along these lines, volunteer, donate, vote and/or simply ask
accordingly.

~~~
blhack
You make a good point. It was mistaken to say "get rid of the dead trees",
what I meant was "get rid of the idea that the main focus of your
establishment should be dead trees."

~~~
Herring
_> mistaken_

Eh. Maybe books are not quite dead yet, but they do have a terminal disease.
We all can see it, I don't know why we tiptoe around it.

~~~
easp
Books still have many things going for them. Once they are produced, the only
infrastructure they require is literacy and something to keep them dry.

Once you have a book, you can do almost anything you want with it, including
give it or sell it to someone else, who will have the same rights you had.
Copyright does apply to books, of course, but with books, the concept of fair
use is well ensconced, and not encumbered by EULAs and "click-wrap" terms of
use.

So yes, books may well be terminal, but if they die, we risk loosing something
more than just a stack of dead tree we can hold in our hands.

~~~
Herring
I can't see that you disagreed with me, & I don't disagree with you either.
Something's always lost in these 'revolutions', but we always gain more than
we lose. That's why we're switching mediums in the first place.

------
STHayden
My wife is a librarian and I do think there are some points that have been
glossed over.

Book are still super important. In fact not everyone can afford to buy books.
Esp in large metropolitan area where there is any sort of impoverish
population. They can't afford book let alone a kindle.

That neuroscience journal might not have been on the racks but I'll bet there
is a good chance it was in one of the online databases that libraries pay good
money to have access to. Feel free to check out the prices online and I'll bet
most will pass on paying for it your self.

Also illustrated Children's Books are something even parents in Suburbia take
advantage of as children go through them quickly and they are very expensive
to buy.

That said many libraries hold on to books long past their relevance. And more
space and time should be devoted to public events, like video games, and
education, like the class my wife teaches "how to sigh up for email" and
"learning to use the mouse".

~~~
barrkel
Indeed. I feel offended when I have to spend (usually) over 5 GBP for a Kindle
edition of a 20-year old book, and get a poorly formatted, poorly indexed
piece of text that someone at a publisher has spent perhaps 20 minutes looking
over, judging from the quality of the product, when I can go to a library and
borrow it for free, or go to a second-hand bookstore and buy it for 50p.

The prices of books on Kindle are simply scandalous for the quality of the
product and the lack of a secondary market. You're lucky if you get both a
table of contents with hyperlinks and chapter markers that work; if you're
unlucky, you end up with something the length of a Dostoyevsky that you have
to binary search through with page number gotos.

------
zdw
My wife is a librarian. I love libraries, browsing around, finding stuff on
chance. I also love ebooks (I've developed a pretty horrible O'Reilly habit
since I got my iPad).

Most of what you say is true here, but it sounds like where you went kind of
stunk. - libraries need to cease being book warehouses and start becoming
community centers and resources. A good library will have computer classes,
solid wifi, and an engaged staff working to help out the community around it.

That community is most likely not a bunch of HN readers who want to use a free
beowulf cluster and all the other really cool stuff they can't justify buying
for themselves, but I could see a tool lending library being quite popular in
most communities.

As much as I like ebooks, the dream of "no dead wood" is probably not going to
happen anytime soon - there are a whole ton of books out there that aren't
available in digital format, or are out of print but still sitting on shelves
somewhere. Frankly, the DRM scheme of having content restricted to ink on
paper is a relatively reasonable form of copy protection, IMO.

~~~
blhack
>libraries need to cease being book warehouses and start becoming community
centers and resources.

Yes, exactly! I actually disagree with you that library goers aren't the HN
types that want computing hardware... perhaps they are and just don't know it.
TO me, giving community members access to hardware is the _exact_ same thing
as giving them access to books has been for the last 150 years or so. Books
were traditionally something that most people couldn't afford, but would be
good for the community to have, so people go money together and bought them. I
think that computers are the same way now. Yeah, I personally might have some
decent compute hardware in my house, but most people probably don't even know
this type of thing _exists_. I would love to see more people exposed to what I
personally think is the future of...well, everything so that they can learn
about it.

~~~
Reclix
I definitely echo the community center sentiment.

More specifically, I envision the future library as a place that teaches
people how to learn: \- How to use online searches intelligently \- How to use
online crowd-sourced resources \- How best to use online communities to gain
knowledge \- How to find relevant online classes

Though I agree with some of the above comments that people will continue to
benefit from the physical books, I do believe that libraries will transition
to a Netflix model, where they have access to a limited number of e-books that
can be loaned to e-readers for a limited time.

------
DannoHung
I agree for the most part, but the expectation of a Library having a CNC mill
or a miniature cluster seems a little strange and specific to your personal
interests.

Holding reading classes for younger children and poorly literate adults,
community events centered on lots of different subjects, art appreciation,
reading groups... I think those are all slightly more feasible and in line
with what a general public would enjoy in a library.

Now, if we're talking about the concept of a Hacker-centre... I think there
are a few of those in the larger cities and some college campuses.

~~~
hugh3
Indeed, and a public miniature cluster is just a tragedy of the commons
waiting to happen. Either it gets monopolised by one person, or nobody gets
more than a tiny fraction of a CPU-day per day making it less useful than your
own laptop.

~~~
blhack
Well wait a second, couldn't the same thing be said about books? Or public
basketball courts? Or study rooms or anything that is made publicly available
and isn't unlimited?

Yes _I_ could build a cluster in my house if I wanted one, but 15 year old me
couldn't, and 15 year old me would have spent his entire childhood in the
library if the one described here existed.

~~~
hugh3
Not really. A library can easily buy more books than everybody in the
surrounding communities could possibly want at any given time, which is why if
you go to the library you'll see books on the shelves. Books are cheap and I
can't use any more than a few at a time.

But any legitimate cluster user can easily use an entire mini-cluster, all the
time, on their own. (I know I can!) So the demand for the resources can easily
outstrip the supply, for any reasonable value of supply.

A decent M-node cluster with a good backbone costs N thousand dollars per
node, where N is some surprisingly high number. If you have more than M users
it's pretty much useless for everybody since I can't do anything I can't do on
my home computer, and if you have fewer than M users it's a damn poor use of
library money to buy an expensive cluster that hardly anyone's going to use.

PS. This thread reminds me that my library books are a week overdue, I should
return them right now. Thanks!

~~~
blhack
But it doesn't specifically have to be a cluster. The point is to make
libraries more than just a warehouse for print, but a place for continued
learning.

------
alphabetum
I worked in an major academic library from 2000 until 2007. Libraries know
about the changing landscape and it's the basis of pretty much everything
librarians discuss these day. A number of the big academic libraries have
added cafes and digital centers. At the university where I worked, most of the
network of computer labs throughout campus were put into the library.

There are also services that people aren't really aware of. For example, the
article's author mentions that he wanted an article from a 1978 issue of a
neuroscience journal that his local library doesn't have. But doesn't actually
matter if the local library doesn't have it because practically every library
in the US offers an interlibrary loan service and will get you a copy of the
article from a library that does have it.

Still, there are a couple things holding libraries back. One is that
librarians traditionally have entered the field because they were attracted
the old, book-centric library model. Even at the beginning of this decade at
my library there were many people who were very much opposed to even the idea
of google. There is very low turnover in many big libraries (academic
libraries are filled with staff members who have spent decades in the same
jobs) and the pay is so low that it's difficult to attract skilled technology
workers.

Furthermore, libraries are usually strange, bureaucratic organizations. They
operate sort of like businesses, but they have no revenue and, therefore, most
metrics and benchmarks always felt somewhat contrived, and therefore office
politics had a more prominent role in decision-making processes. It's also
very, very difficult for most academic libraries to fire people, so they
attract people who are looking for jobs with good benefits that they can coast
in. I'm guessing public libraries are similar.

The result of all of this is that libraries often make bizarre decisions about
technology. Librarians hop on mainstream technology fads in ridiculous ways.
For instance, when I left in 2007, the most prominent issue discussed on
library blogs was how important it was to have a presence on Second Life.

------
jbarham
Until we had our son I would have largely agreed with this article, but our
local public library has been an incredible resource for board books and kids
music CDs for him (now 2 years old). My wife checks out at least a dozen new
books and a couple of CDs every week for our son, which we read to him several
times a day, and consequently he loves "reading" his picture books and
listening to music.

Call me old fashioned but I don't think that that babies and toddlers can get
the same experience from an iPad or Kindle-esque device that they do from
physical books.

------
Gnolfo
Eerie. Having been in/around Tempe for the last 16 years, as soon as he said
"There's a coffee shop here in Tempe..." the first one that came to mind (of
the many, many non-starbucks coffee shops in this area) was the exact one he
meant. I've certainly logged my share of hours there studying, reading
something interesting, chatting with friends, etc.

And going by that, the nearest library (likely the one he is referencing--and
i went there a lot in middle/high school back in the 90s) is about a mile from
the coffee shop and all in all is in a pretty suburbanite, middle class part
of town. It's pretty fair to say that for an area with a good median income,
high but not extreme property values, etc, something like a public library is
going to be hit hardest by the advent of the internet, since the "public" is
going to be pretty thoroughly plugged-in.

Not that it's a bad idea to consider bringing libraries along into the newer
age...

~~~
blhack
Haha :). Has the internet always been as bad as it is now?

To be honest, the library I was at (Yep, right up the street from xbean),
seemed to be very well funded, clean, in outstanding order. I'm not saying
that there is anything wrong with the _execution_ of libraries, just that I
would love to see what I believe is the idea behind them expanded to include
more than just books (and movies, and magazines, and music).

------
carrot
The obvious move would be to replace the bookshelves and books (among other
texts and publications) with a bunch of computers and free/paid Internet
access. But the biggest problem, I think, would be making sure that people are
actually using those new resources for what they are meant to be used for and
not for something else like updating their Facebook status or watching Charlie
Bit My Finger on YouTube.

------
easp
I agree that libraries need rethinking. I've found that even those Librarians
who are inclined to do such rethinking can be surprisingly conservative.

Even so, the authors needs a different point of reference needs a reset. I've
never been in one of Seattle's libraries that hasn't been a bustling hub of
activity. There are lots of public computers, for people who don't have their
own. People are studying and working on their laptops, and some people are
even reading or checking out books.

Personally, most of my use of our libraries via the web, particularly to
access the O'Reilly Safari Library. One of the awesome things about libraries
is librarians, because they believe in things like the democratization of
acess to information. One result is that often times, the licenses on online
databases acessed through libraries are often less restrictive than you'd get
on your own.

------
derefr
Awh, thought this was going to be about binary compatibility and DLL hell.
This is good too, though :)

------
michaelbuckbee
While it has taken a great deal of flak for breaking somewhat with traditional
library organization and architecture, I think Seattle's library is nearly
what he is calling for: a geographic place focused to a large extent on
services and not simple booklending.

TED Talk on the Seattle Central Library design process:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_prince_ramus_on_seattle_s_li...](http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_prince_ramus_on_seattle_s_library.html)

Architectural diagrams (and some wild hyperbolic language) at:
[http://www.archdaily.com/11651/seattle-central-library-
oma-l...](http://www.archdaily.com/11651/seattle-central-library-oma-lmn/)

------
uptown
I'm not sure we'll ever find everything he has in mind in one place, but there
was an article on CNN recently that talks about a business that's attempting
to fill the need of some of what he suggested. It's a place called TechShop,
and it aims to provide membership-based access to tools, and other resources
necessary to get into product creation.

The article about it is located here:
[http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/14/technology/techshop/index.ht...](http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/14/technology/techshop/index.htm)

------
Isamu
My use of the library has vastly, vastly increased since the web has enabled
our library catalog to get online, to pool many of the libraries in our county
into one giant catalog, so that finding and ordering a book (or other media)
is simple and fast.

SO MUCH of what I want to find is simply not online yet - Google books has a
long way to go.

WorldCat is great too. I usually start there since it has the best interface,
and if the book is only outside of the local system I can consider if it is
worth the bother of an ILL.

------
zokier
I don't see why libraries need to transform into community centers. Why not
let them concentrate what they do best: collecting and storing information,
especially books. While I think such community centers as described in the
writing could even stand on their own feet, but imho they would also fit
better to schools rather than libraries.

edit: While I think at it, opening schools for general public sound more and
more better idea.

~~~
blhack
>edit: While I think at it, opening schools for general public sound more and
more better idea.

Not sure if this was supposed to be a joke about the public school system or
not... If it _was_ , the public school system, unfortunately, comes to an
abrupt end when you graduate from high school. You can continue learning if
you want, but you have to pay _huge_ amounts of money to do so.

What I'm advocating here is effectively an expansion of libraries into sortof-
schools for both kids and adults that want to do stuff beyond what is being
offered in their classes.

~~~
zokier
Not a joke about school system. What I meant that schools facilities would be
more fitting for community centers, so it would be imho more sensible to open
school facilities for adults to use (of course equipping some rooms
appropriately) rather than expanding libraries.

~~~
blhack
A problem that I have with this is that the school system is too _rigid_.

Maybe it was different for some people, but when I was in school, it was very
much "you are allowed to do _this specific thing_ with this resource, and
nothing else." One school that I went to, my junior high school, actually had
an _outstanding_ tech shop. We had a CNC mill, CAD stations, a pneumatics lab,
some robotics stuff, a wind tunnel...lots of absolutely _amazing_ things. That
said, I never got the impression that I could use the CNC mill for anything
other than writing my name on a piece of plexiglass (a souvenir that I still
have.)

(I actually moved away from this school mid-term and never got to do the wind
tunnel, or the pneumatics lab)

What I'm talking about is taking the shop that I had in middle school and
putting it in a library so that everybody can use it.

~~~
zokier
Why would it need to be moved to library? Wouldn't it be easier just let
schools open doors and let everybody use the equipment etc where it is?

~~~
blhack
Well, first, this stuff mostly doesn't exist in schools. Around the valley,
maybe, but in Iowa where I grew up (the place I left to after the school I was
talking about)? No.

Second, why _not_ put this stuff in the Library? It is absolutely a resource
that the public could use.

------
ancornwell
I worked at the Clarkson University library for three years and learned the
software used to manage library databases is a huge contributor to the
problem. I'd love to do something about it if the chance presented itself.

------
metageek
I love the image conjured up by the term "baby cluster". Just don't think
about what's sticking the babies together.

