Why the Public Library Beats Amazon

Nate the greatest writes: The launch of Kindle Unlimited last month has many questioning the value of public libraries, with one pundit on Forbes even going so far as to proclaim that the U.K. could save money by shuttering all its libraries and replacing them with Kindle Unlimited subscriptions. Luckily for libraries, they're safe for now because they still beat Kindle Unlimited and its competitors in at least one category: content you want to read. As several reviewers have noted, Kindle Unlimited is stocked almost entirely with indie titles, with a handful of major titles thrown in. Even Scribd and Oyster only have ebooks from two of the five major U.S. publishers, while U.S. public libraries can offer titles from all five. They might be expensive and you might have to get on a waiting list, but as the Wall Street Journal points out, public libraries are safe because they can still offer a better selection. That is true, but I think the WSJ missed a key point: public libraries beat Amazon because they offer services Amazon cannot, including in-person tech support, internet access, and other basic assistance. The fact of the matter is, you can't use KU, Scribd, or Oyster if you don't know how to use your device, and your local public library is the best place to learn.

Comments

Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[Anonymous Coward]

An actual place.

Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[mendax]

The fact that the public library is an actual place is important. Libraries are not just places to get information. They are sometimes positioned to be social centers of communities, places for those without Internet access to get that access, a quiet place to avoid the hustle and bustle of life, a place to meet friends, a place to hold a meeting, a place to do homework and study, and so on and so on. Libraries have long since been simply a place to get the latest novel or some old classic.

Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[Anonymous Coward]

That is for the general public and they have damn near everything or can get it. Music, movies, books, magazines, internet access and more. Anyone saying public libraries should go away is against society in general, IMO. Not everyone can afford the niceties from Amazon, let alone even having internet access at home (if they have one) to access Amazon and order their junk.

Amazon will never replace libraries and if libraries every do go away, our society will be much worse off because of it. Libraries are a necessary part of our educated society, but if we're headed for Idiocracy, then it won't really matter. There is no other place that someone can get access for free to all of the resources that libraries offer. The only way this will happen is if Amazon becomes a publicly funded "company" via "global tax dollars" and opens physical locations themselves and offer "memberships" for free, to ALL.

Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[ljw1004]

We take my 10-month old daughter to "Baby Story Time" at nearby libraries. Last week one of the libraries brought in some zoo animals for the kids to pet.

My iPad and SurfacePro aren't as good at telling stories to baby. There's less social interaction and she gets too fixated on the screen. Also tries to eat it.

Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[camperdave]

Whereas Amazon has ample table space, quiet study areas, and you can browse through every part of every book in stock.

Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[timeOday]

But libraries already have floating e-book licenses you can check out for downloadable content (including off hours) in addition to everything else they offer.

My daughter volunteered at the local library this summer teaching younger kids to read. In theory some semblance of this "could" be done over the Internet, but I just don't see it actually happening, and it wouldn't be the same.

Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[timeOday]

Libraries are also a haven from commercialism. Any privatized variation on the library, run by e.g. Amazon, will unavoidably slide into becoming a flea market and / or Cable TV, just as surely as the Internet did. There are deep inherent conflicts between the goals of spreading knowledge vs turning a buck.

Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[Applehu Akbar]

I've tried my library's e-book download service and I've tried Kindle Unlimited.

And guess what? Neither of them carry the books I actually want to read. Back to one-at-a-time Kindle purchases for me.

Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing libraries offer is protection from censorship. Each book exists physically in a library and most will resist government goons until forced to remove/replace a book by the courts, usually attracting media attention in the process. Amazon is a single point of attack and has already shown they will quietly "update" everyone to a censored version of a book, and no one will ever know unless they re-read a book they read in their youth (like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer).

Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not

[AthanasiusKircher]

The fact that the public library is an actual place is important.

Another facet of having an actual place is that humans orient themselves around physical spaces in ways that just aren't the same electronically.

One of the most important ones to me is the bookshelf, particularly for non-fiction books (which is mostly what I read aside from classic lit). No matter how good Amazon's "products like this one" or "products other people have purchased" lists get, they still generally don't offer the same kind of discovery sensation of browsing on shelves for me. Amazon is very good at showing me books that other people like me already know about. It is TERRIBLE at showing me more obscure or older related items that people like me don't tend to know about already, but which might be just as good resources (or even better). Even a relatively small public library will often have some intriguing random discoveries for me when I'm browsing in an area devoted to a particular subject. And a large university is often a revelation.

Physical bookshelves make this sort of browsing possible quickly and efficiently. They also register an amazing sense of "location" that just doesn't happen on the web. I used to visit a small local public library every couple weeks when I was a kid and check out books (mostly from the science section). After a few years, I had exhausted many of the good books in that section, so I didn't go to that library much anymore. But I remember returning there maybe a decade later, and when I went back to those shelves, I saw many of my old favorite books, still in their same locations on the shelves, and I *remembered* where they were... it was actually a somewhat moving experience. Now, of course, I have plenty of my own bookshelves in my home, and I have a similar sense of location -- even though I have thousands of books, I know basically where everything is. Whereas if I forgot to rename a PDF file I downloaded and/or forgot to put it in the right folder on my computer, I could have a lot of difficulty finding it.

It's also like the physical sense one often has of reading a physical book, which makes it very different from reading an ebook where the text can reflow on demand or when a font is resized or whatever. With a physical book, I can often find something I read again by thumbing through and thinking, "Yeah, it was about 1/3 of the way through the book, and I remember it was in the upper right corner of a page somewhere" and I can usually find it within a minute or two. Obviously a full-text search on an Ebook can often be just as efficient, but sometimes I don't remember enough unique words from the passage or sometimes it was a diagram or something... and I can find that instantly in a physical book.

Spatial organization is really important to memory. There was a well-known memory technique used in medieval times to memorize long lists of things and even entire books, which often involved imagining a very large building with many floors, and on each floor were many rooms, and in each room were many pieces of furniture with many drawers (or other containers), and within each drawer was some imaginary physical item meant to be a mnemonic for the things to be recalled. By "constructing" this imaginary building in your mind and repeatedly "revisiting" it as you memorized something, it would cement the text in your mind.

Nowadays this art of memory has been almost forgotten, but in a mostly oral culture where books were rare and manuscripts often could only be consulted in one place but copying was too expensive to take a copy with you, it was necessary for scholars to memorize large amounts of texts when doing research. There was a whole "craft of memory," and it mostly revolved around spatial metaphors.

Our modern physical libraries and books are similarly navigable when they exist in real space in ways that electronic materials often aren't. That doesn't mean that we can't make the electronic materials better and often superior in some ways, but we lose something when the physical orientation around books goes away.

The #1 reason public libraries are better

[weeboo0104]

Not everybody can afford a Kindle.

My library card didn't cost me a thing to request and I can check out as many books as I can read for free as long as they are returned on time. Heck, I can even check out CD's, DVDs and puzzles for my kid.

Public libraries are great sources for local history, in-person social networking, and meetings on how to become more involved in the local community and volunteering.

Re:The #1 reason public libraries are better

[weeboo0104]

Not everybody can afford a Kindle. My library card didn't cost me a thing to request

Ah, brilliant logic. It didn't cost YOU anything, therefore it is free. Hate to break this to you, but libraries are expensive. Now, I support libraries, but they are not these free resources that just sprout out of the ground. They cost a lot and the money comes from somewhere.

Yeah, the funny thing is my property tax statement itemizes how the taxes I pay each year are divided up.
This past year, my tax statement says that $174.20 of my taxes went toward the library. I saw a 6" Kindle on Amazon for $69. Wi-fi only. So even if I purchased or say my property taxes paid for that Kindle, I'd still have to buy Wi-Fi to use it. That's just so I can use it personally. There's no ability to share that Kindle with anybody. And there is nowhere to physically meet the other people in the community.

Now if you think paying $174.20 is expensive for a library, I paid $2,143 to the local school district. I don't have any kids in school, but I still have to pay for the schools. If you wanted to save money so badly, maybe we should stop paying for public schools and use the money to pay for Kindles instead so kids can learn from those.

My local library

[OzPeter]

My local library doesn't just have books.

It has:

Books (well yeah)
Magazines
Newspapers
Audio Books
DVDs
Meeting Rooms
Events
Internet Access
Printers
Photocopiers

In general it is trying to position itself as a local community resource

Somehow I can't see all of that being replaced by a Kindle, and thats without even going into what limited selection of titles the Kindle will have.

Re:My local library

[Trepidity]

You can get academic journal articles in many libraries, which can help independent researchers, autodidacts, or even just particularly interested people. Obviously a local branch serving primarily non-researchers won't have a huge selection of journals on the shelves, but many do have access to academic library material via partnerships, if you want those materials. For individual articles, sometimes they'll even just get you a PDF scan (if local policy/law permits).

Depends on the library systems of course, but I've used two systems that are like that. The Danish public libraries have access to the entire national university system's holdings via loans and scans, and it works very nicely. Now you might think that's something that only happens in Socialist Scandinavia, but another place that does that is, oddly enough, Texas: through the TexShare program, anyone holding a public library card can visit most academic libraries in-person, or access electronic databases remotely.

Instead of replacing the library...

[Dcnjoe60]

Libraries were created for the common good. That is why they are free to the public (and paid for through taxes). Instead of replacing the library with a corporation like Amazon.com, maybe what is needed, for the common good, is a public library version of something like Amazon. Already many local libraries allow one to check out e-books.

E-readers and public libraries aren't mutually exclusive. Maybe sometime in the 21st century, there won't be as many physical libraries, but the public library will still exist through through the checking out of free e-books. There is no reason why libraries and book stores could coexist and not e-libraries and Amazon.

I want physical books and magazines

[fivepan]

I realize my tech nerd status may be jeopardized with this statement, but I have zero interest in e-books and magazines. I've tried them...I really, really have. The reader I bought specifically for this purpose now sits somewhere in my kid's room after I gave it to him. Other than for a quick look at recent news or sports scores, I don't read on my phone or tablet. I want the paper versions I can hold in my hand or pluck from the shelf and skim through. As others have mentioned here, public libraries are so much more than just a repository for books but even the books alone is enough for me to never want to give up my library card.

Amazon

[Tailhook]

I've been purchasing used books on history, politics and science from Amazon for almost the cost of shipping, which is close to or less than the cost of the fuel it would have taken for the two round trips to the library, and it takes a lot less of my time. Funny thing is, about half of these have library card sleeves. These books sat unread in libraries (you know, the places that supposedly have "content you want to read") for decades almost untouched (based on the condition I find them and the empty cards I find in said sleeves) until the libraries sell them off to make room for more new books almost no one will read. Here are a few from 2013;

(shipping included with these prices.)
Nuclear disaster in the Urals, Zhores A Medvedev, $6.98
The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia, hardcover, Tim Tzouliadis, $6.78
Red Atom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today, Paul Josephson, $4.94
The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress, Virginia Postrel, $4.00
Behind the Facade of Stalin's Command Economy: Evidence from the Soviet State and Party Archives, Paul R. Gregory, $5.36
The Legacy of Chernobyl, Zhores A Medvedev, $4.49. (got 2x for some reason; gave one to a co-worker.)

I could go on all day as I've been reading this sort of stuff from Amazon for going on ten years now. Most of these are hard covers in excellent condition.

The truth is libraries are dead to me as a source of reading material. I can't afford the time or fuel it takes to frequent them, and they simply can't host the selection I demand, which is why they purge themselves of their stock using Amazon. Right or wrong that's how it is.

Re:Death rattle

[plopez]

"They should become specialists in archival services."

They are. And good luck reading your book in 10 or so years when your favorite electronic publishing house shutdown, gets bought out, or just stops offering the format your electronic book is written in.

Sniping Commentary

[Frightened_Turtle]

"Luckily for libraries, they're safe for now because they still beat Kindle Unlimited and its competitors in at least one category: content you want to read.

There is so much wrong with that backhanded insult that there is no "content you want to read" among self-published books.

Currently, the top bestsellers lists contain more self-published authors than authors represented by publishing houses. Self-publishing authors are outselling traditionally published authors and are .

The OP's comment comes from the misnomer that self-publishing is the last bastion of a writer whose writing was so bad, he couldn't get it accepted. The reality is the cartel of the Big-5 publishing companies have been artificially keeping the number of authors on the market artificially small so they could better control the markets in terms of product availability and price controls.

The advent of digital publishing has given authors a way to get around the market controls of big-industry publishing. Even traditionally published authors such as Barry Eisler and H.M. Ward have walked away from the publishing houses and turned to self-publishing. The work coming out of self-published authors is incredible. Hugh Howey's dystopian science fiction Wool would probably have never seen the light of day if not for self-publishing and his books have sold millions of copies. There are other yet-to-be discovered authors such as William D. Richards Aggadeh Chronicles Book 1: Nobody or Michael Patrick Hicks Convergence who are turning out real page turners with gripping stories and excellent writing.

Yeah, there is some crap out there (published as a joke; read the description; the author, Phronk, is a satirist and pretty damned funny). If you are unsure about a book by a self-published author, just download the free sample of their work and see how it reads before you buy. Many authors with a series of books offer the first book free—if you don't like it, you aren't out any money. If you do, then you've got a whole series to buy.

Many independent writers take their craft very seriously. They employ a team of editors, proof readers, and a cover artist or two to ensure that the reader is going to get the best reading experience possible. If they weren't putting so much work into assuring the quality of their work was there, the self-publishing movement would have collapsed years ago. Instead, because of the commitment to quality by the authors, the self-publishing movement has been growing in strength, variety, and quality. Self-published authors gain no support from advance payments, no corporate backing, and no financial assistance. They are not subsidized by monies from other authors (as is a practice in traditional publishing). Instead, they make 100% of their incomes from direct sales to readers. If they weren't doing the proper Q.A. on their books, their livelihoods would be unsustainable.

So, don't go listening to big-publishing shills trying to shoot down the first real competition they've ever faced. There is plenty of excellent reading to be found among self-publising writers, contrary to what the O.P. alludes. And as far as public libraries are concerned, independent writers are huge supporters of libraries, unlike big-industry publishers who try to milk money from municipalities by over-charging libraries for books and ebooks.