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NYPL's Chief Digital Officer Says Public is Better off When Libraries Are 'Risk Averse' About Tech (geekwire.com)
New York Public Library's Tony Ageh was recently in Seattle to talk about libraries' digital transformation. Ageh made the point that tech now permeates pretty much all of a library's operations, from ebooks and article databases, to systems for checking out materials and tracking fines. Still, don't look for your library to be on the bleeding edge of digital.
From a report: "What I previously imagined was a weakness I think is a strength, which is that libraries have been very reluctant to move too quickly and have allowed the marketplace and allowed other organizations to kind of prove things work before libraries have taken the plunge," said Ageh, who before joining NYPL oversaw internet and archive efforts at the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation).
"I think that has actually inoculated us against waste or harmful behavior." That kind of fad-or-trend, wait-and-see behavior appears to generally suit libraries well. "Librarians are incredibly risk averse," he said. "I think they do care very much about patrons and about the impact that their work does, and so we're very unlikely to take a chance when we're dealing with public money and when we're dealing with patrons; we have a personal relationship with them."
"I think that has actually inoculated us against waste or harmful behavior." That kind of fad-or-trend, wait-and-see behavior appears to generally suit libraries well. "Librarians are incredibly risk averse," he said. "I think they do care very much about patrons and about the impact that their work does, and so we're very unlikely to take a chance when we're dealing with public money and when we're dealing with patrons; we have a personal relationship with them."
Good! I don't use my libraries for high tech gadgets and services and the latest mind numbing toys. I use them to acquire knowledge. Real knowledge is generally compiled and cataloged in a thoughtful, deliberate way. There's very little that passes for knowledge on the Net today, outside of a few (old) scientific journals.
I don't respond to AC's.
Allows the public to see what is in there
Only popular books (autobiographies, fiction, hobbies, etc) and cookbooks. Our library patrons must not be interested in no learnin' books (except to check them out and never return, if you catch my drift).
Fortunately, more educational material is available online through the library system.
The library programmers are upset because the dewey decimal system starts with 001....
What seems like would be cool to me, is if libraries were at the forefront of driving research into digital storage and longevity. Like helping understand how people could preserve digital memories, what would last... maybe even a program to help residents around a library store and maintain all digital files they owned.
That would be a nice evolution of what Libraries have been doing, managing large volumes of information, and give local branches more of a reason to exist in a world where even books are more and more purely digital.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Both libraries and DVD-era Netflix had clear legal protections to carry out their business models, without some IP owner able to unilaterally remove content from their platforms.
Stream-era Netflix is in a much worse position, and libraries should be hesitant to dive in when it might put them on the publishers' leash.
Although I agree with you about curated information on the web, I also like a place where I can go where information is non-digital.
Imagine the not so distant future, where power consumption has doubled and where during peak-charging hours (from all those electrical cars) all non-vital services shut down.
There's a disagreement in philosophy here, and it seems Mr. Ageh has touched on both sides.
On the one hand, there's the idea that libraries should be open doors to all knowledge and experiences. Cutting-edge technology is crucial to this effort, because a significant portion of the modern human experience exists outside of what can be cataloged in books. Most libraries now hold audio or video collections, but only a few host video games (and the systems to play them). Sure, they offer public access to the Web, but the librarians aren't likely going to give you a guided tour of reddit's contributions to popular humor.
On the other hand, libraries are inextricably coupled with archives. By their nature, libraries have a duty to ensure that their collections are accessible in the future, and that means librarians have to consider the costs of adding a new technology to their collection. A book is simple - just place it on a shelf, and it will stay there... ...unless there are insect, environmental, indexing, or space problems that render the text inaccessible. A DVD full of ebooks avoids a few of those risks, but introduces a few new ones like formatting and equipment dependencies. For each new technology, there's a new set of requirements, and that means a new set of challenges for the already-overburdened library staff.
Librarians work toward the idealism of open access to everything for everyone, but unfortunately the reality of budget cuts and physical reality get in the way. Risk-averse decisions are really the only way to maximize the impact of the resources a library has.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I'm really leery about that Gutenberg's press thing. I think we need to stay with the scribes until we are sure it is safe.
Cheap to produce, resistant to damage (i.e. still usable even when damaged unlike an e-book reader), durable, and best of all, once it's printed, no one can 'edit' it, and no one can remove it from 'The Cloud' like has been done with e-books.
...especially when you consider that most public library budgets are extremely tight. If they are going to go digital, they need to do it right the first time. Wait for the bleeding edge stuff to work itself out. Wait for standards to be adopted. Then get involved.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
All I know is that my decades-old library (after getting a bunch of unnecessary tax money, in my/others' opinion) replaced their simple pay-copier with a computer flatbed scanner version, with a separate laser printer. Making a copy used to take seconds, now it's a 5-minute process, involving standing in two separate places. Digital progress? Dewey's ass.
This guy does NOT speak for libraries, which have been automated for a couple of generations now. They are more bleeding edge than risk averse. Indeed, it's still the case that for many people without means, the library is the only place they can gain access to the Internet at public access PCs. In the days before the Internet was as pervasive as it is today, our library served as an ISP for 35,000 citizens when there were few alternatives and everything was dial-up. Libraries began their automation efforts in the 1960's building the infrastructure necessary to have everything online. This was a time when few of you knew what computers were, or were even born yet. If you've got some time, next time you are close to your own library, ask for a tour of the IT facilities. For a library of any size, you'll be impressed.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
No books on flash-in-the-pans like Linux!
I had no clue whatsoever that libraries were anything other than tax-dollar funded babysitters & daycare centers. Yes, I live in Yakima, WA, a godforsaken welfare shithole, in need of a REAL library.
Yes -- libraries are rightfully risk-adverse about certain tech-facing facets of their core activities -- specifically, those which pertain to copyright. The nightmare scenario for all libraries and archives is that they make something from their holdings freely available on the Internet when it's in fact not copyright-clear, and then years later someone shows up claiming millions of dollars in damages. Out of necessity, they *must* be conservative when it comes to anything dealing with copyright status.
As Ageh mentions, keeping libraries' donors happy is key, and NYPL and most similar institutions are incredibly under-funded by the gov't and literally live and die by their wealthy patrons. So the technology footprint needs to be aligned with the wants of the donor to a certain extent. Because these people are often older, sometimes they don't have a firm grasp of why the library would want to spend their money on "tech," so the money goes elsewhere. The big donors pretty much get what they want, and sometimes that's more than having a branch named after themselves.
Now, can libraries do cool stuff when it comes to tech? Absolutely, and they do, including NYPL (check out NYPL Labs) and of course, the Library of Congress and their long-term digital strategy. But all of these activities are subject to the two rules above.
I would love to have an RFID system that tells me where exactly an available book is in realtime. "Not on the shelf where it's supposed to be" doesn't cut it. I would also love to have a unified open API that lets me search and remember books across libraries without having to log in to n proprietary horrible web interfaces. Where's the risk in that?
"to systems for checking out materials and tracking fines. "
I guess the library cops were all sacked then?
Just a warm place for bums to sleep.
I send kids to the local library daily as their friends hang out there. The checking of computers out to play video games is inevitable. Book learning is different than web-surf learning. Both seem valid but I don't want to lose the longer form dead tree experience. ereaders are still screens.
The publishers are waging jihad against the libraries. They want to make us pay over and over for their advertising and propaganda. This includes suborning librarian quislings to aid them in their campaign against the readers. The day of the librarian-terrorist is upon us.
I have seen and programmed some of these library systems. Z39.50 was created in the 70's and is still the main protocol they use. Packed binary bytes using 7 bits with a control bit. The pre-xml that is sent over the line, is a real joy to work with, I tell you. There are "newer" protocols that use xml for the actual payload, but no one really uses them that much. There are way better documented standards, that could ease this kind of systems used heavily in libraries. The http "Fad" has lasted how long now? I know JSON is a dead object definition, but I am sure they could use something more "modern". (NOTE: if you couldn't tell, that last bit was sarcasm, for those that are sarcasm illiterate.)
Scott Carr
While I don't expect libraries to do much more than books, reference items, and periodicals, I have fond memories of going to the library and using a text client to browse gopher sites way back when. I would love to see libraries keep some sense about forward motion as these are some of the few places that the poor can go to learn outside of school. I say this having the public library be my babysitter for much of my childhood...
Former Labs person here and sharing my opinion:
Librarians are not risk averse, but rather, they need reliable and competent service delivery organizations that can actually create value for them and their patrons, which is something Tony Ageh has shown himself to be uniquely unqualified to do.
NYPL Labs developed cutting edge solutions for librarians and patrons for years prior to Ageh's arrival and Labs had no problem raising funding from a multitude of donors for tech projects.
What Ageh did was to fire the leadership of Labs and disband it, hide in his office and do nothing for over a year and then proceed to destroy the rest of the digital dept.
Local governments should also move slowly. The amount of money thrown away on hype is incredible. Just the number of blockchain things being developed right now is insane.
When too many people in management are incapable of analyzing true potential of new technologies, the rule should be to just wait three years or until the first hype cycle has passed.
My mother in law worked in a small local library until she retired.
At some point, everyone was all excited about e-books, and the library got talked into getting on board by someone who was selling a solution.
At the end of the day, they spent something like $70K on this 'solution' which had a limited number of e-books and not many copies of those. Turns out, that was more than the entire budget for acquiring new books for the library for the entire year.
This more or less created a situation where they'd spent all of the money they had, had something like 20-50 e-books for loan, and no more money for actual physical books, of which they'd have been able to get hundreds of actual paper books. They literally had no ability to get new books, and what they spent was really only serving a small subset of library users.
It wasn't money well spent. In fact, it proved to be money they could have used far better elsewhere.
Libraries have limited budgets, and pissing it away on the latest technology can just diminish what they have left for the actual mission, or on technology which isn't really going anywhere, or isn't cost effective.
Far too much technology is just a passing fad, or is overly expensive for what it does. I can completely see why libraries should be on the trailing edge, because I've seen what happens when people try to be on the leading edge -- they waste money that diverts from the core mission and doesn't provide the same net benefit.
Let someone else pioneer this shit, a library with finite resources can't afford to be blazing trails with the latest technology. Wasting large amounts of money to serve a tiny fraction of your users doesn't make sense.
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