How Can Public Libraries Compete Leicestershire June 2008

Ken ChadDirectorKen Chad Consulting Ltdken@kenchadconsulting.comTe: +44 (0)7788 727 845www.kenchadconsulting.com

how can public libraries compete? Digital Futures

Leicestershire Libraries Staff Conference June 2008

compete with what?

let’s try to see the wood before we look at the trees

Something big is going on..and

(as in so many times in the past) technology is a major driving

force for change…..

‘For more than 150 years, modern complex democracies have depended in

large measure on an industrial information economy…….In the past

decade and a half we have begun to see a radical change in the organisation of information production. Enabled by

technological change, we are beginning to see a series of economic,

social and cultural adaptations that make possible a radical

transformation of how we make the information environment….’

Yochai Benkler a Professor of Law at Yale Law School ken

‘..organize the world's information and make it

universally accessible and useful..’

Google’s mission statement

the library function is big business

‘Google generation’ ….. ‘a shorthand way of referring to a generation whose first port of call for knowledge is the internet and a search engine, Google being the most popular one. This is in distinction to previous generations …… whose source of knowledge was through books and conventional libraries.

Wikipedia

removing barriers

‘.. technology is unleashing a capacity for speaking that before was suppressed by

economic constraint. Now people can speak in lots of ways they never before could have,

because the economic opportunity was denied to them’

Mother Jones Magazine (website)

Interview with Lawrence Lessig: Stanford Law School Professor, Creative Commons Chair

June 29, 2007

http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/07/lawrence_lessig.html

disruption

‘We-Think changes how we access and organise information and so is bound to disrupt libraries and librarians’

‘ The library of the future will be a platform for participation and collaboration with users increasingly sharing information amongst themselves as well as drawing on the library’s resources’

Charles Leadbeater. ‘We Think. The future is us’ Profile Books Ltd. 2008 ken

as well as new services there are new business models

‘Open access is a practical, efficient and sustainable model to unlock the

potential of the web for disseminating the results of publicly

funded research’

‘Convinced that changes in the industry and the spread of digital piracy have made it ever more

difficult to make money from selling records, the Crimea plan to turn the economics on

their head by giving away downloads of their self-financed second album,

Secret of the Witching Hour’.

Davey MacManus of the Crimea. Photograph: Gareth Davies/Getty

Owen Gibson, media correspondentMonday April 30, 2007

you decide what to pay….

technology has enabled web based global providers to deliver free or low cost ‘library’ services direct to users without the need for library

buildings or (in the main) librarians

so what’s the competition?

here are some competitors..

Google: c£5,000,000,000 revenues, over 1m digitised books

Amazon: ‘we seek to be the earth’s most customer centric company where customers can find and discover anything they want to buy online’

AbeBooks: >100 million titles, over 18,000 ‘branches’.

LibraryThing:over 300,000 members.Over 20m books catalogued. Over 150K works reviewed

This too..

So commercial = chargeable and public sector = free?

Really?

Free?• charges for non book loans• charges for some services• fines if items returned late?

so what does it cost to borrow a book?

(the RAC puts the all-inclusive cost of driving a typical three-year-old 1.8 litre family saloon at 53.6p per mile)

a free public library service?

libraries are inefficient and expensive in providing resources

cost to put a book on a shelf (prior to London Libraries Consortium) £5.46

Source: Anne Rennie. Havering Libraries 2007 NAG Conference

libraries are inefficient and expensive in providing resources

In 2005 Library staff at the University of Wales in Bangor were threatened with job cuts, the university consultation paper making the case for the cuts stated:

‘Librarians do not deliver “value for money” when compared to the internet.’

libraries aren’t being singled out……

‘in the past month I’ve bought 15-20 books.

They’ve cost what would you say? £150? £180?

Actually, it’s somewhere in in the region of £12’

‘Until recent years most charity shops were "low-key" shops, let often at a peppercorn rent in order to keep the premises occupied : this is no longer

true. Many charity shops are now professionally refitted and wish to be sited on the main street in town centres : charity shops are seen as a "risk-free" tenant by landlords, much the same as estate agents or

building societies, and are now often paying premium rents’.

"Oxfam specialist bookshops will be a shock to people expecting the clichéd image of dark, dusty second-hand bookshops selling scruffy

paperbacks," said [Murray] Winters. "The shops are bright, light and well-designed, and offer a vast array of books, including many specialist,

rare, antique and unusual titles. Many books on offer are no longer available from mainstream book retailers. Customers appreciate

that diversity of choice."

http://www.inprint.co.uk/thebookguide/shops/oxfam.shtml

competition on the high street

high street bookshops could soon be killed off ?

‘I, along with almost everybody I know, stopped buying in bookshops

years ago. Why bother? Online, Amazon and AbeBooks have

everything I need; in fact, they have everything anybody could ever

need, and AbeBooks, especially, is absurdly cheap’.

let’s compare…….public libraries vs.

commercial ‘library’ services

search: the library (OPAC) experience

information provided and options for action

a title search goes straight to:-

• bibliographical inc summary information

• holdings (locations)• availability• context search (by author and subject)• request

this is fine……..as far as it goes..

search: the Google Book Search experience

Does your OPAC do this?

The ‘default’ Google link to library holding is via OCLC WorldCat

ngwhy isn’t your library on this list?

The OCLC WorldCat ‘platform’ links through to the local OPAC

Other ways of linking (e.g. through Talis) are available but OCLC remains the Google default

let’s try another search……

The book is not in the library catalogue and no alternatives are offered. There is a ‘place request’ option but this presents a another set of ‘barrier’

Why is it made so hard?

What does this mean? Where do I go from here?

Here’s an example from another library catalogue

compared to this…

The same search on Amazon

One click to fulfilment….

Also…genuinely helpful suggestions

Other helpful information too…..

a random selection of requests in May

• Prescott, John ‘Prezza – pulling no punches’• Blair, Cherie ‘Speaking for Myself’• McFadyen, Cody ‘The Darker Side’ • Gardner, Lisa ‘Say Goodbye’ • Clevely, A.M. ‘The Allotment Seasonal Planner and

Cookbook’ • Abnett, Dan ‘Everyone Says Hello’ • Cabot, Meg ‘To the Nines’• Coben, Harlan ‘Hold Tight’• Jardine, Quentin ‘Wearing Purple’• Kamen, Henry ‘Spain’s Road to Empire’

all are available on Amazon

these were found on the Leicestershire catalogue

• Abnett, Dan ‘Everyone Says Hello’ • Coben, Harlan ‘Hold Tight’• Kamen, Henry ‘Spain’s Road to Empire’

25 items found on Amazon, lowest price 3.94 + 2.75 p&p

Kamen, Henry ‘Spain’s Road to Empire’

1 item found on Leicestershire Library Catalogue, 2 copies/1

available at OADBY SO So from Loughborough that’s a 30 mile round trip at £0.53.6

per mile….and what does that ‘SO’ mean anyway?

fulfilment alternatives

engaging people with books..a key public library

mission..

what does the competition look like?

how is the library domain responding?

a national aggregation: search across the whole of Wales – ‘Cat Cymru’

why not the whole of the UK?

A response from Huddersfield

(the university. Dave Pattern)(Embedding the library in other people’s services)

borrowing suggestionsHuddersfield Uni had details of over 2,000,000 checkouts

spanning 10 years stored in the library management system and gathering virtual dust

ratings and commentsHuddersfield: Dave Pattern again..

‘chat’ with an expert…California State University

AquaBrowser from Media Labs showing a ‘tag cloud’

Boston College (US) using (ExLibris) Primo

adding user content to WorldCat

but..barriers? you have to log in, register and adhere to these content

guidelines

are you interested???

thinking about business models…

(some) elements of the business model

• value proposition• market segment• value chain• value network• competitive strategy

‘Another aspect of the challenge for .. competing in the commercial network economy is that there is a strong set of mission-based reasons for why not-for-profit [resources] should be available to all potential users without charge.

This ethos has been reinforced by the rise of free-to-use sites operating in the commercial environment, many of which are generating revenue primarily, if not exclusively, through advertising’.

Sustainability and revenue models for online academic resourcesDraft March 31, 2008. By Kevin Guthrie, Rebecca Griffiths, Nancy Maron. Ithaka

commercial services can be

free too….

To maximize the likelihood of success…..

• Clearly define the mission• Hire a great leader, often from outside the organization• Establish an advisory or governance board with

outsiders• Allow the leader the flexibility to adjust• Develop a viable economic model, matching value

generated to sources of support• Communicate effectively and aggressively the value of

the enterprise to constituents and stakeholders

(adapted from)Sustainability and revenue models for online academic resources

Draft March 31, 2008. By Kevin Guthrie, Rebecca Griffiths, Nancy Maron. Ithaka

what’s distinctive about libraries?

‘A library’s competitive advantage lies in its user intelligence – this enables it to tailor services to meet genuine needs, to present them attractively, to innovate effectively and to achieve real impact.’

Brophy, P. (2007)The Library in the Twenty-First Century. 2nd ed. Facet.

Useruniverse User

population

InformationuniverseInformation

populationLibrary as intermediary

Userintelligence

Informationintelligence

User interface Source interface

(potential) library assets

• unique collections• welcoming spaces and

people• in the community• staff expertise• trust

• user clickstreams & context• vertical ‘business’ context• collective critical mass?

A few concluding remarks

• technology, cost and complexity barriers are coming down– enabling more participants (not everyone likes this!)

• ‘Pro-Ams’ in the library sector

• an increasing contribution from non ‘traditional’ library businesses

• new biz models will emerge

libraries at the heart of the wider culture and technology debate?

‘It is the feasibility of producing information, knowledge and culture

through social, rather than market and proprietary relations - through

cooperative peer production- that creates the opportunities for greater autonomous action, a more critical

culture, a more discursively engaged and better informed republic, and perhaps a more equitable global

community’

Yochai Benkler a Professor of Law at Yale Law School ken

Thank You…

www.kenchadconsulting.com

Ken ChadDirectorKen Chad Consulting Ltdken@kenchadconsulting.comTe: +44 (0)7788 727 845www.kenchadconsulting.com

how can public libraries compete? Digital Futures

Leicestershire Libraries Staff Conference June 2008

How Can Public Libraries Compete Leicestershire June 2008

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