Librarians and patrons know that public libraries have been quietly developing excellent collections of e-books. But free library e-books got a big publicity splash recently when The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) personal technology writer, Geoffrey Fowler, did a comparison of Amazon's $10 per month Kindle Unlimited service and his local library's free e-book lending.
Fowler's WSJ piece is called Why the Public Library Beats Amazon — for Now. Guess what his conclusion is?
Technology and the "Death of the Library"
Outside the library world, it is becoming a cliché that libraries are obsolete in the digital age. M.G. Siegler stated it very succinctly in TechCrunch:
"The Internet has replaced the importance of libraries as a repository for knowledge. And digital distribution has replaced the role of a library as a central hub for obtaining the containers of such knowledge: books."
Mark Herring's new book, Are Libraries Obsolete?, is another, more nuanced, exploration on the topic.
As annoying as statements like this may be to library lovers, the perception that libraries are low-tech, outdated, and irrelevant matters. Because if libraries aren't seen as a vital, relevant public service, when local government budgets get thin, library hours and staffing are one of the first things to get chopped.
That's why articles like Fowler's are so important. According to the Pew Research Center, close to one-third of Americans say they know "little or nothing about the services their library provides." And people who don't know what their library offers not only don't benefit from library services, they also can't effectively advocate for library funding and support.
The New Commercial E-book Subscription Services
The occasion for Geoffrey Fowler's WSJ comparison of Amazon and libraries was the July launch of Amazon's new Kindle Unlimited service.
It's a $10-per-month all-you-can-read subscription service that offers loans of 600,000 e-books and 2,000 Audible audiobooks. Wired Magazine calls it Netflix for books.
The Kindle Unlimited service competes with two other commercial subscription services, Oyster and Scribd. Both offer around 500,000 books. Oyster costs $10 per month and Sribd charges $9 per month. Both also aspire to be Netflix for books.
Fowler noted that the paid subscription services' biggest competition is free public library e-book lending services. Scribd, for instance, very visibly advertises "no due dates or late fees" on its website.
Comparing Library E-Book Lending with Subscription Services
Fowler's method was to contrast the three commercial e-book subscription services with the public libraries in San Francisco and Richland County, South Carolina. He wanted to see how a big city library and a small rural library stacked up against the commercial e-book subscription services. He looked at which services had Amazon's top 20 bestsellers on Kindle from 2013, as well as Stephen King's 10 favorites, and a few other "best of" lists. Pretty simple.
What Fowler Found Out
Fowler discovered that e-book subscription services don't always have the big-name e-books that are available at public libraries.
As he says, "Libraries have one killer feature that the others don't: e-books you actually want to read."
Fowler explains the reason for library strength in the e-book field:
"The big book publishers sell their e-book collections to libraries for loaning, usually on the same day they're available for consumers to purchase. Publishers have come to see libraries not only as a source of income, but also as a marketing vehicle. Since the Internet has killed off so many bookstores, libraries have become de facto showrooms for discovering books."
Fowler's recommendation on which commercial subscription service is best? He says: "Don't bother. Go sign up for a public library card instead. More than 90 percent of American public libraries now have e-book collections. You can get them online with no risk of an overdue fine. And they're totally free."
These commercial e-book subscription services have truly added fuel to the library obsolescence debate. Tim Worstall in Forbes wrote a sort of manifesto advocating, "Let's just close down the lending libraries and buy every citizen an Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription." Worstall essentially says Kindle Unlimited would be much cheaper than operating public libraries.
Notably, Worstall doesn't mention that libraries offer much more than books, and Fowler does so only briefly at the end of his piece.
Librarians, library staff, and library patrons know that libraries offer Internet access, literacy programs for children and adults, a community gathering place, technology training, and much more to the public good. So, while Fowler's WSJ post is great PR for libraries, there's still a lot more work to do to get the word out about all the amazing things libraries do.
That's why we want to know: how are YOU getting the word out about the great work your library does? Let us know in the comments!
Images:
Image 1: Sashkin / Shutterstock
Image 2: Andrey Voskressenskiy / Shutterstock
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