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."

Comments

Good!

[DogDude]

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.

Re: Good!

[hey!]

Yep, there's definitely a couple of needles somewhere in that ocean of haystacks. Along with a couple of million shiny, skinny pointy objects that look like needles but blow up in your face when you try to thread them.

Re:Good!

[jellomizer]

I general see the Library moving form a warehouse of used books, which it lends, to a service where it helps guide people to information it is looking for, as well with a community (state, local government, ...) funded service that will allow its members to get past a good set of paywalls (such as access to academic journals), this is where the true value is in.
Not the row after row of smelly old books, while I am sure some people are nostalgic to the idea of the physical book library. It value to society is much greater as a service then a warehouse.

Libraries Are 'Risk Averse' About Tech

[DredJohn]

The library programmers are upset because the dewey decimal system starts with 001....

Re:Libraries Are 'Risk Averse' About Tech

[mschuyler]

Showing your ignorance. The first Dewey category is 000: Computer Science

Re:Libraries Are 'Risk Averse' About Tech

[yusing]

If the programmers have any complaint, its about the Dewey 'system' itself. It's an ad hoc, illogical, non-memorable dire swamp of a 'system'.

Unfortunately for the coming generations, Mr. Dewey inveigled his way in early - heavily promoted his library equipment business - and foisted it on an unsuspecting public.

Were it not for all the equipment Mr. Dewey sold to go with it, and all of the people whose careers were ensnared by it, it would have been tossed out on its worthless ear long ago. (NOT to mention the fact that it remains heavily-guarded PRIVATE IP to this day.) One day soon, I hope, computers will allow it to be whisked away like the toxic disease it is.

Netflix Analogy

[Kunedog]

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.

Philosophy

[Sarten-X]

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.

Re:Philosophy

[supremebob]

Besides, you wouldn't want your local Library jumping on the latest technical bandwagon before the underlying technology has been standardized.

Otherwise, you might end up with with a movie library filled with HD DVD's instead of BluRay's just because they happened to get a donation check from Microsoft that year.

Re:Philosophy

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's not as glamorous a reason; but the copyright situation is also a pretty strong argument in favor of a conservative approach; unless you are notable enough to have a shot at exceptions(in the US case that pretty much means Library of Congress and maybe a few fairly prestigious university libraries with law faculty interested in providing them some cover at below market rates).

Media that either has no DRM or uses a DRM system that is fully offline(books, CDs, DVDs) and which is/was sold in some lendable form is relatively easy to deal with because the right of libraries(and people generally, where First Sale or equivalent is law) to lend out copies of copyrighted media is well established.

Stuff with a DRM system that phones home in one way or another is more difficult because, while the library can lend copies, they can't make those copies actually useful without either the vendor's cooperation or legally and technically tricky DRM breaking. That makes it a troublesome part of a library collection. Software platform requirements make archive grade longevity tricky enough; the fact that much software is essentially designed to defeat resale or lending really, really, doesn't help.

Things that were never sold as lendable copies are also tricky; since, while the right of libraries to lend copies they purchase is well established, the right of libraries to make copies to lend is much weaker and more uncertain. This is a bit problem for archiving most of the internet. Some of it is explicitly and liberally licensed, which makes archiving a technical problem(and, compared to software, not too bad); but most of it either has no explicit license(in which case it's still copyrighted anywhere in Berne Convention territory; though the rightsholder is less likely to come after you, though also harder to find if you do want to do rights clearance) or is quite explicitly marked as copyrighted with an owner that is more or less energetic about enforcement. This is why the Internet Archive, despite its mission being all about preservation of parts of the web that would otherwise link-rot, has to cave so readily to takedown requests: most of what they do has relatively little support in law, so they have no choice but to cave if anyone objects and confine their efforts to the stuff whose owners are either apathetic or supportive.

Re:Libraries could drive digital storage research

[Midnight Thunder]

I imagine there are a few items p here
  - libraries don’t have a large budget, so need to be smart about the spending.
  - if libraries did do this, then people would likely complain this is not their role.
  - librarians aren’t technologists, so would need an expert external entity who would likely inflate prices for their services.
  - waiting for industry to do the big spend and then buy in when the tech it mature is more in line with a low budget and risk averse institution.

Research of this kind is probably more for the library of Congress to do, in the US, than smaller state or municipal libraries.

I’ll admit I haven’t verified any of these details, but this based on my own interpretation on what Ihave learnt about them. Feel free to correct any points.

Sigh

[kackle]

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.

Could've been worded better

[PeeAitchPee]

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.