Culture Belongs to Us | Peer to Peer Review
The digital book world is not about what publishers will do next; it's about what readers and writers do next Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN Jan 28, 2011| Photo by Debora Miller |
I've been too busy the past few days to keep on top of the tweets and liveblogging and pigeon posts coming out of Digital Book World, but one item in my RSS feed briefly caught my eye. And then I saw another one. And they got mixed up with a video I had just shown in class. And like those kitchen products that you shouldn't use together because—who knew?—it turns out they actually explode, they created an interesting little poof of combustion in my mind. Bear with me; I'm still sorting through the debris.
In the first of these household ingredients, Steven Lyle Jordan at Teleread responds to an article about open versus proprietary software and concludes that this distinction is a red herring. When it comes to ebooks, he writes, "proprietary vs open isn't nearly as important as consumer experience . . . which is why the proprietary Kindle store is still on top with most ebook users in the U.S., with its easy-to-use store and multiple-platform reading apps. "
In other words, open doesn't beat easy. Which made me think that free is a tough sell when the things people actually want are behind a paywall. What libraries try so hard to do is make an abundance of things behind a paywall appear free and easy. And the quickest means of doing this—letting our users frolic in the digital marketplace and choose whatever they want—is enriching the corporations and societies that act like corporations, while killing off those smaller scholarly publishers that don't turn to commercial publishers to manage their affairs. And, oh yeah, libraries, too. You and I both know we can't keep doing this, right?
I may as well cut to the chase. If we keep doing things this way, we're screwed.
Meanwhile, at the public library . . .
Libraries came up at Digital Book World at a placid panel of CEOs who were congratulating each other on how hip they are and how they dig those ebooks, 'cause they're really hot and their companies are so totally on top of innovation. It was a love-fest until a very smart woman who cares about reading and sustaining book culture lobbed a simple question onto the stage, one that apparently had a lit fuse attached. She describes the Molotov question at her blog:
Macmillan books are not available for digital lending in libraries. After making pronouncements about a publishers job being to unite the creators with their audience, and the importance of building a community, how can either of those things happen without library lending? I want to borrow Macmillan digital books in libraries, and I can't - why not?
The CEOs backed away from the scary question and the Macmillan exec said "oh sure, totally. We love libraries, but we haven't figured out how to sell to libraries because we want total control and a wide-open faucet through which money flows whenever somebody reads a book, and so we have, like, a few details to work out. But we're working on it."
No, he didn't actually say that. But that's what he was thinking. (I read minds. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a Macmillan author. Or . . . well, I used to be.)
The question flamed up again at a panel LJ's Josh Hadro chaired. (Full disclosure: I'm a Josh Hadro fan. Still am.) I do take issue with one statement in the L.A. Times coverage, though, which stated "Libraries have adopted a model referred to in this session as one-book, one-lend." Actually, it's more accurate to say libraries had this model thrust upon them. It's a compromise that may be better than nothing but it doesn't satisfy many publishers or ebook vendors—or library patrons either, who think libraries are backward because they don't understand that there's no technical reason to make them get in a hold queue anymore. Duh.
The King of UX
Known in trendy circles as UX (which sounds to me like a kingdom ruled by Ubu Roi), user experience wins over the good because as users, we all want to do whatever is easiest, even if it's not in our own best interest, and this is a problem public libraries are facing in spades right now. It's probably not in our best interest to impulsively purchase a book from the ether that we could get for free at the public library, especially if we're buying it from a company has ensured that they will do their best to prevent libraries loaning those books in a way that provides a similar user experience. It's not in our best interest as readers to give up our privacy, first sale rights, and protections against censorship. But if we want a book and we want it now - well, we don't really miss those intangibles. Not yet, anyway. Besides-shut up, I'm reading.
I'm always amazed at the numbers of people who, when I bring these issues up, confess it never crossed their minds. These often are PhDs who support the ACLU and make a point of shopping at the local food coop and understand that industrializing beef production (and the consumption of corn) is deeply entangled in economics, environmental issues, and public health. But when they surrendered first sale they didn't even know they'd given it up because they didn't know it could be taken away, and chances are, they think their library is sadly a little backward for not providing downloadable books for their Kindle. But then, who goes to the library anymore?
Are libraries screwed?
All this led me to go back and watch Eli Neiburger's presentation at the LJ Ebook Summit (parts one and two). It rubbed me the wrong way on the day of the summit. It went by really fast, and I was tired, and what I heard was:
- Libraries are too attached to an outmoded technology (books), therefore libraries are screwed. (The new OCLC study confirms that library patrons are still tied to outmoded technology and assume libraries are, too.)
- The industry wants to disable the sharing of books that libraries do. (True, that.)
- If libraries continue to cling to an outmoded technology (books), they will soon be as laughable as eccentrics who collect typewriters or eight-track tapes. Not cool!
- Libraries should therefore turn their backs on the uncool book industry and its fans and make libraries places communal spaces where people create their own content and set it free. Which is better than being slaves to crappy commercial books, anyway.
What I thought was:
- [bad words omitted here]
- Public library users, and I am one, need libraries to stand up for our desire to read books. Lots of books. I already write my own books, dammit, and I know what books I want to read, and they are not written by James Patterson, so stop patronizing me, already.
- Have you talked to your library's users about this? Because I don't think this smug "I know what's good for you, and you have to be weaned from that commercial pap" approach is going to go over very well. It's their taxes, remember; they have a stake in this. And just about everyone is already writing their own books; why would they think the library should step in at this late date to show us how?
Hold it. Before you send me hate mail, let me just say: I WAS WRONG, okay? (Pardon the all caps, but I have already taken enough grief about my entirely Neanderthal take on Eli's talk.)
But that was how I interpreted what I heard that day, and I think it's a fair snapshot of what a lot of people who are dependent on libraries would think if they got the impression innovative librarians were saying "books are so over, but don't worry. We're going to support an alternative to the commercial production model because publishers have turned their backs on libraries and readers like you who want to share. But hey, who needs those jerks? We'll help you make your own books and put them on the web! Besides, only hoarders actually care about having lots of physical books around, and hoarders are losers. That library you think you want? Hate to break it to you, but you're just indulging in nostalgia. Trust us. We know what we're doing."
How many publishers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
In fact, what Eli was saying is what lots of us have been saying about academic publications. Public libraries are poised to make the mistake we made of ceasing to select materials for our communities and instead negotiate temporary access at extremely high costs over which we have no control. He was saying we have the tools of production in our hands, and it's time we picked them up and used them.
But how the message is framed matters, and don't we know it. Academic librarians are facing a very similar situation with our patrons: what the heck do librarians know about what we need? The old way is familiar, it's convenient, the user experience is relatively simple. (It's all going to be in JSTOR or Science Direct, right?) It could be improved significantly if libraries would just get out of the way and let us harvest from the Internet whatever we want and handle the bills. I just bought an iPad. Is there an app for that?
When we mumble angrily "this is broken," we're so busy patching it together with a glue gun that it's no wonder hardly anybody hears us. We could just lay our glue gun down and say "nope, we're not doing this anymore." But thus far most of our users only know how knowledge is shared in an industrial-information model. They think we're naïve kids saying, "hey, guys, let's put together a scholarly information infrastructure in the barn!" We should know our place. Our job is to buy stuff for them. Where do we get off telling them we won't?
But here's a huge difference between Eli's screwed library and mine. The producers of the content we purchase do it for free and for love. (Unfortunately, they also do it for tenure, and that makes them risk-averse, and somehow industrial publishers snatched up all the authority and won't share.) Creative artists do it for love and money; prestige is nice, but it doesn't pay the rent. Those who love books, the kind that people read when they don't have to, haven't figured out exactly how to reward those who delight us with their work, even though everyone knows that's broken, too. As it is, a miniscule percentage of writers actually pay the rent with their earnings. But they all wish they could.
The post-industrial-information age
This is why listening to Yochai Benkler makes me so happy. He doesn't make me feel bad for loving books, doesn't make me feel stupid or inadequate for not rejecting the past. He makes it clear that it's not me that has to change, it's the system. And—even better—it can be changed, and will. The world view of The Wealth of Nations is being defended by those whose livelihoods depend upon it. But, as Benkler points out, we have so much more going for us now. We have the wealth of networks.
The digital book world is not about what publishers will do next. It's about what readers and writers do next. It's about how the love of culture and the desire to share it will drive us to make use of the tools, the infrastructure, and the talent we have. The owners of the industrial mode will do what they can to keep culture and knowledge to themselves. We can create a sustainable future that is open and worthwhile, but I hope we remember it's not just about us in the ivory tower; academic librarians should also care about the culture that belongs to all of us. (And let go of that glue gun, already.)
Creators, editors, curators, readers, scholars—culture belongs to us. All that we have to lose is the people who have desks in really expensive buildings, whose fortunes are built on an industrial model that depends on metering and controlling our access to culture. We can do this ourselves, those of us who do it for love, not just for money. And it will be better for all of us.
Hey, booklovers—let's put on a future!
Barbara Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, a contributor to ACRLog, and an author of crime fiction. Her latest mystery, Through the Cracks (see review), was published last year by Minotaur Books.
