Are eBooks too hard for libraries?

Should Libraries Get Out of the eBook Business? Or get out at least until there is a better system? The truth is our patrons want a lot of things we can't give them. When it comes to ebooks, we cannot give them what they want. What we can do, what maybe we should do, is spend their tax money wisely, and I am no longer convinced that spending it on the current ebook system is a wise move. General consensus agrees that after the holiday season this year it is only about 19 percent of the population that owns an ereader, if you factor in tablets that number rises to 29%. One only has to look at Library Journal's A Guide to Publishers in the Library Ebook Market to realize it's pretty slim pickings. So we're providing a mediocre access at best.

The process is a nightmare. In order to borrow library ebooks a patrons must have a compatible device, a home computer capable of running Adobe Digital Editions, a high-speed internet connection, and enough tech savvy to set everything up and get it to work correctly. We are in the midst of the ebook wars, just look at the number of proprietary systems and file formats. I can't help but wonder if Guy LeCharles Gonzales is right when he writes:

Stop buying ebooks across the board, at any price, under any terms. Let publishers fight it out with Amazon, and when the dust finally settles (it will) and a viable business model appears (maybe), begin negotiating anew, on solid ground, with whomever's left standing.

In the meantime, libraries can redirect those precious resources and finances being flagged for ebooks towards more tangible initiatives in their respective communities. After all we (as a society not libraries) did not get the first sale doctrine out of the goodness of someone's heart, it came from a court case. Maybe we need to stop asking. It wouldn't be the first time.

Vince Writes: The eBook market will undergo a series of upheavals until a stable market is established. There is a question about the viability of DRM formats in the long term.

Does branding work?

Stop Branding Your Library!! [PC Sweeney] I got my MLIS at San Jose State when all they could talk about is branding. But then, I had my interview at the library system I currently work at and I spent exactly 5 minutes in a room with Martin Gomez and realized everything I thought about branding libraries was absolute crap.

1. What is the goal with branding? -- branding allows marketing the available services, programs, and materials, at your libraries to be easier and centralized and that's really about it. If that's a library's goal then that's fine.
2. How many people go to multiple libraries in the system? -- if a library system finds that a very low number of patrons go to multiple branches throughout the system, then maybe this isn't that big of a concern after all?
3. Part of a consortium? -- do people really care that they are in this library system or the next or do they care that they can use their library card?
4. Critical mass of libraries with the same brand or at least using the same card? Brands like Starbucks work because they are so wide spread that wherever you go in the country. Are enough libraries offering enough of the same services that what is available is easily recognizable? Probably not.
5. Same services available? -- offering the same services from system to system (or even branch to branch) would not be a great idea since so many communities need such different services and programs. Sometimes, it's better and more profitable to be different and give out what people want instead of what we want to provide.
6. Looking the same -- Well, Kentucky Fried Chicken has a critical mass of outlets offering the same or similar goods and services.

But here is where I think Branding is right. If a library system serves a small enough or similar enough community of users that they typically want or need the same services and programs etc… that there is a large enough crossover of patrons between the library system's branches who are not also using a number of other libraries in the area or that the use of those libraries would not dilute the brand they are trying to create. And of course, that the cost of trying to rebrand every library is far lower than the benefits. I've only seen two public library systems where I would argue that this occurs.

One the other hand, sometimes I wonder if many libraries are already branded? I've been to many libraries around the country that are branded as community libraries. They are branded separate and distinct to the community they serve even though they are part of the same library system. Maybe building community libraries and branding them as the library that serves their community is the way to go. In which case, it is simply the library's role to serve their community and provide what their community wants and needs. Or, maybe to REALLY stand out from the crowd you shouldn't brand your library like every other company?

Vince Writes: If the purpose of marketing is to get noticed and to cut through the predictability of most adverts and posters, then adhering to a formulaic brand may be a waste of resources.

Facebook as a marketing medium for libraries

After Facebook fails. [Doc Searls] Michael Wolff writes: "The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency." This is in full agreement with The Advertising Bubble chapter in The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge. "The results of personalized advertising, so far, have been lousy for actual persons … Tracking, filtering and personalizing advertising all compromise our anonymity." Here’s what Michael says about the utopian exhaust Facebook and its “ecosystem” are smoking: "So far, the sweeping, basic, transformative, and simple way to connect buyer to seller and then get out of the way eludes Facebook."

The buyer is a person. That person does not require either a social network or absolutely-informed guesswork to know who he or she is or what they want to buy. In a subchapter of The Filter Bubble titled “A Bad Theory of You,” Eli Pariser calls both Facebook’s and Google’s data-based assumptions about us “pretty poor representations of who we are, in part because there is no one set of data that describes who we are.” Three problems here:

1. By its nature advertising is not personal.
2. Making advertising personal changes it into something else that is often less welcome.
3. There are better ways to get to achieve Michael’s objective — ways that start on the buyer’s side, rather than the seller’s.

Facebook makes 82% of its money by selling targeted display advertising. Because Facebook knows so much about each person on its service, it can target in ways Google and others can only dream about. But as many have pointed out, Facebook’s approach to advertising has a problem: People don’t (yet) come to Facebook with the intention of consuming quality content (as they do with media sites), or finding an answer to a question (as they do at Google search). Do those Facebook ads work as well or better than other approaches?

Vince Writes: Is Facebook a useful medium to market the library? Do users want or expect public institutions to be 'intruding' into their social stream? Is this the best way to develop a relationshp with our customers?

Big Ideas - Doc Searls' Intention Economy

Doc Searls Would Like You To Join Him In The Intention Economy. [Scott Merrill] Advertisers are collecting heaps of information about you in the hopes of presenting you with more targeted advertisements. Yet despite all of this information, advertising still pretty much sucks. Doc Searls puts forward a better idea in his new book, The Intention Economy. Rather than continue to allow vendors to blindly guess as to what we want, we should all be moving toward a new market equilibrium in which we consciously and directly signal our intentions to the market. Companies that respond to our intentions will reap larger profit, waste less money on dubious advertising initiatives, and enjoy real customer loyalty.

Searls also advocates strongly for Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) solutions to give to consumers the same kind of tracking and information collection about vendors that the vendors use against us. It seeks to actively reward those companies that pay attention to individual intentions. Fourth parties would be trusted repositories that act as brokers on our behalf for our personal data. There are examples of fourth parties today — banks, buyer’s agent realtors, travel agents. We would tell our fourth party which of our data is available for public consumption, and what terms and conditions might apply to non-public data.

Vince Writes: The library analaogy is that we should investigate the best way for our customers to ‘directly’ express their signals for books, information and community services both in-library and online. We don’t need to market and advertise if we make it easy for our customers to have a more personal relationship with us.

Libraries as ebook publishers?

The Greatest Threat to Amazon May Just Be Libraries. Instead of turning the members of its community away for an eBook that is already borrowed, the library is ideally situated to sell them the eBook they wished to read, right when they wished to read it. There is nothing stopping a library from becoming an eBookseller. Now, take this one (small) step further. Let’s enable the “owner” of the eBook to donate it back to the library when they have finished. The library knows they sold it, right? The library can “re-acquire” the right to the title pretty easily given the fact that the library is the issuer of the DRM for the eBook. This simple program would:

1. Increase the number of eBook copies available for the library to lend;
2. Keep publisher’s happy as the eBook licenses have been paid for;
3. Provide the “donor” of the eBook with a tax write-off;
4. Contribute in a very meaningful way to the local community via eBook sales.
5. If you want to get super aggressive, let’s add periodical subscriptions to the mix and execute the same model.

Publishers openly lament the power Amazon holds in the market. Libraries (with help from the publishers) may just be the next (and most credible) threat to Amazon. Whether libraries and publishers realize it or not, well, that’s an entirely different question.

Vince Writes: Libraries as content publishers and part of the marketplace? While we have certain local advantages, I don't think we are any 'threat' to the juggernaut that is Amazon.

A user's critique

Does the Free Library even know what century it’s in? [Jason Kaye]

1. In 2012, citizens want answers to their basic technology questions, not to be walked over to a book shelf to thumb through a 400-page book that is not even relevant because it was published in 2002.
2. The Free Library offers Wi-Fi services but still does not offer Internet cafe environments at the branch level, and good luck hunting down a spare outlet for your laptop when your computer batteries need to be recharged.
3. In the community, if an unemployed 50-year-old doesn’t know how to attach a resume in a word document to an email, he or she just wants an answer to that basic question, to send out that resume to a prospective employer.
4. If a senior citizen seeks help creating a Facebook account, to keep in touch with grandchildren away at college, it should not be such an ordeal to receive hands-on assistance from a librarian.
5. How many more years are library patrons going to have to wait to be provided with the option to pay library fines or make purchases on the library website using a credit card or PayPal account?
6. Libraries should be thought of as technology centers that promote literacy and embrace the city’s rich history, not inefficient, time capsules, stuck in the past.

Vince Writes: These are reasonable questions to be asked of our libraries. How well do we stack up?

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This blog is about new developments in public libraries.