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

[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]

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

[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.

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.