Will Libraries Survive Digital Books, and If So, How?

Public libraries serve a number of purposes; a warm place to spend the day, a source of free internet access and community event locations among others, but their primary function is a free source of books for the public. The United States has long supported this service as valuable for educational purposes, allowing anyone, regardless of socio-economic status, to lift themselves by their educational boot-straps. Digital distribution of information, at least in its current form, presents a threat to these institutions. The internet has replaced enough of the functionality of lending libraries to threaten to render them obsolete, but not enough to make the change one that is net beneficial. The question considered here is: what library-side changes can help avoid the loss of this valuable resource?

What libraries have now, and what the internet replaces.

Currently libraries provide both fiction and non-fiction media as well as physical assets. Non-fiction media tends to be research material, such as reference books, archived periodicals and research journals, but also includes current periodicals and non-fiction books of general interest. Fiction assets are mostly comprised of novels and other books for entertainment, but also include music and video at most libraries, nearly all of which is available for short term lending. The physical assets are primarily the public space, used both as a venue for various community events and a comfortable, quiet indoor space that is freely accessible, but also usually include use of the internet. All of these resources are free, at least to those in the relevant community, with small exceptions such as minor fees for card replacement or special assistance.

The internet currently does an excellent job of replacing much of the research oriented non-fiction resources, offering far more content in more accessible ways. It is less satisfactory when asked to supply more current non-fiction, but is improving quickly, and the same can be said for most fiction. The physical assets are not replaced, but more troubling is that the free-ness of all the materials is usually not replaced. Access to the internet itself (outside of libraries) has a greater cost than the minimal fees charged by a library, and very little of the material available for free at libraries is available (legally) without cost on the internet.

If the internet effectively drives libraries out of business, the American ideal of freely available education for all would be endangered by an across the board increase of entry cost.

Why the whole library system will be replaced/eliminated by the internet.

There is no loss if the internet simply co-exists with libraries, but it is likely that increasing use of the internet will greatly harm free libraries. This is because the internet will divert users from the libraries because of added convenience, and without a minimum number of users, funding for libraries will evaporate. While currently libraries compete with book stores by offering free material, even if they lack the large supply of recent best-sellers. E-books offer all the benefits of a book store (selection, instant availability, permanent ownership, etc.) and adds extreme convenience, both in delivery and (eventually) portability. Projects like Google Books even promise many of the books currently in libraries at lower fees than would currently be available in book stores.

To counter this, libraries would undoubtedly need to offer digital content to compete. Currently this is done with rather heavy digital rights management that prevent almost all in copyright books from being accessed on anything other than the computer they are down-loaded onto, and that cause the material to expire and disappear after a set time (usually the standard lending time for the book). The issue that exists already with music and video, and will likely extend to books, is that the publishing (and music and film) industry will realize that the inconvenience of libraries is what protects them now, and want more restrictions. The need to go to a library, have a card, and most importantly remember to return a book (or CD or DVD), as well as the lack of selection available right away leads many people to choose store bought content. When digital copies of books merely require going to a website and typing a number (your library card instead of your credit card number or iTunes password), and the book returns itself, libraries become a much larger threat to bookstores and their digital counterparts. So industry will move for tighter restrictions on digital copyright to be applied to libraries as well until they are as inconvenient as they were pre-digital age. This, in combination with the new ease of paid content.

Possible Solutions.

One obvious solution to this issue would be for Congress to resist the lobbying of the various media groups and allow libraries to keep an equivalent ability to provide free education in the digital age as previously existed. This might be possible is libraries can tap their current users to counter-lobby, since millions of Americans support libraries currently and it would likely require a generational replacement before the above threatened loss of interest in libraries could occur. Alternatively, the advocates of free information (such as the free software movement) could take the library cause into their own, since libraries are among the oldest forms of free information transfer.

Hopefully none of what is predicted above will come true. Perhaps paper books will remain viable in a way that plastic CDs and DVDs seem unlikely to. Or maybe strong DRM will find a way to satisfy library members without inciting the ire of publishers. Or perhaps a lobbyist will make a mistake and admit to a powerful Congressman that their goal is to eliminate the hallowed American institution that is the library, and fair use will get libraries through. But it is more likely that those who favor free education for anyone able to ask for it need to be aware of the risk to libraries that the new digital age represents, in order that we not lose the free public library.

I'm a little surprised that the library seems to you to be primarily about lending "content." I think of the library as about teaching people how to find and use information. I don't see any reduction in that role's importance. I see only the usual continuing reluctance to fund the public availability of that advice for adults who aren't wealthy and educated, and whose use of services for finding and employing information to their advantage might be socially disruptive.

So I expect libraries to continue to be useful and to continue to starve precisely because they are useful. Except in wealthy suburban towns where the children are cared for after school and the adult inhabitants are securely in the ruling class already. That's why library funding is everywhere local: so those who have can ensure that they primarily continue to get.

-- EbenMoglen - 30 Nov 2008