Notes on LJ & SLJ 2012 Library Ebook Usage Reports

I am glad to read LJ & SLJ 2012 Library Ebook Usage Reports. I wrote down some facts that especially impressed me when I read the "Academic Library" and "Public Library" parts. (see below)

An impression I had about the general US library eBook market is that eBook is a much more urgent reality for public libraries than for academic libraries. I am really surprised to see the collection and circulation numbers in public libraries this year, which are increasing in a much faster speed than I expected. (Circulation number from 11,000 last year to 44,000 this year, WOW!) Another difference here is public awareness, low level of awareness is a bigger problem for academic libraries.

But on the other hand, it's interesting to see that eBooks represent a higher percentage of acquisition budgets in academic libraries than public libraries. I am not sure how much of the difference can be explained by the limited budgets of public libraries. But clearly, budget is a huge issue in a broader term.

For library eBooks, I cannot agree more with a comment by Professor Dave Lankes, that publishers will not sell eBooks to us just because we complain. We should actually do something more constructive.

Like my previous post mentioned, OA is definitely something all libraries must participate in unity as soon as possible. Some libraries are adopting the eBook model developed by Douglas County Public Library, but more libraries should join, because it ensures that libraries own the eBooks rather than just subscribing them. Moreover, libraries should participate the campaigns on Unglue.It to unglue eBooks to public domain. It doesn't take each participants a lot of money; but if more people/libraries can join, we will definitely have more free resources in the future.

My note:

Academic Library:

• There are no dramatic changes in this field after 2010. And the relationship between vendors and libraries are not more contentious. 
• EBooks represent 9.6% of academic libraries acquisition budgets; and participants predict that the number will increase to 19.5% by 2017.
• 83% of the institutions say they purchase eBooks of "perpetual access" (which may or may not mean that the library own the eBook); 71% choose "subscription".
• The percentage of institutions which are using PDA increase from 16% two years ago to 31% in this survey.
• 52% of the participants identify low perception as the barrier to user eBook access, which has been lower since 2010. But 50% of the participants say that users prefer print, which has been increasing after 2010.

Public Library:

• The mean number of eBooks offered by libraries increase from 4,350 last year to 10,000 this year, while circulation increase from 11,000 last year to 44,000 this year. 
• EBook reader (90%) is the dominating device used by library members to read eBooks borrowed from public libraries; tablet (66%) is the second most used device. 24% of the public libraries lend eBook reader for home use.
• Physical barriers are the most important barriers to eBook access, like the long time to wait and limited number of eBooks available.

On Oakland's people's library

I may have read this piece of news earlier this week, but when I read about the story that the people's library in Oakland was shut down by the police yesterday, I was both excited by the efforts of the volunteers who established the library and was kind of sad about the result.

According to the news, some activists in Oakland took over the building of an abandoned library in the morning of this Monday, which was one of the Carnegie's donations originally established in 1918 and has been closed since 1970s until this Monday.

After occupying the library, the volunteers coming from everywhere filled the library with donated books and erected banners to make it working again. But that's not all. They tried to get the community to engage! According to one of the occupiers' narration:

the organizers also put out a press release, went door-knocking in the neighborhood to inform and invite the community, and built a gardening program that invited youth to come and develop the blighted space.

And they even planned to host a poetry reading program according to the news! In short, they did it, and they did it like awesome librarians.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been reading Professor Lankes' Atlas of New Librarian recently. This event made me excited not only because it is a perfect example of how libraries can help to improve the society in a broader sense, but also because it illustrates what librarians are.

Definitely, librarians are not only those people who work in a library. On the one hand, if one is working in a library in a "wrong" manner, I don't think he is qualified to be a librarian (I am certainly not unbiased toward this issue). On the other hand, as Professor Lankes puts, people with an MLIS degree, no matter where he/she works, he/she can still do the job like a librarian. But here, this story may extend Professor Lankes' statement further. Because there is little information about these activists' professional backgrounds, it's safe to assume that little of them have a MLIS degree. So we can say, even if you do not work in a library nor have an MLIS degree, you can still be a librarian by doing things like this, to sharing information to promote knowledge creation in your community.

Sadly, according to the news, this library was closed by the police last night. But on the other hand, even this library being open for less than a week, we can still expect the little changes it posed to the local community and the society as a whole will turn out to be something great. Just like we can see the influences of Occupy Wall Street Library in this library by its name "people's library", we can expect this library inspire other people to make our society better in the future.

For more information, you can follow Twitter hashtag: #peopleslibrary

"Book Exchanging Fair" in the Public Library of China

As some of you may have known, I used to work in the Public Library of China for almost 5 years before I came to the US this June. For your information, PLC is the leading public library in Beijing, China.

It's both very interesting and boring to work as a librarian in China, Chinese public libraries and this specific library. And I certainly hope to share with you many professional experiences I gained from China in this blog or through other channels in the future. In short, working in China as a librarian is just like living in China, for most of the time, you feel many negative feelings, and sometimes, there are good ones.

Most of the Chinese public libraries (basically, Chinese academic libraries are more internationalized and active) are really traditional and without passion and innovation, but sometimes there are some interesting services.

Last week, just after I arrived at Syracuse, I attended the "Academic Librarians 2012 Conference" held in Syracuse University. I listened to the keynotes given by Prof. Dave Lankes and Mr. Roy Tennent,  both of which are very inspiring and passionate, even though actually I have listened to some of Prof. Lankes' lectures before.

As I mentioned earlier, Prof. Lankes is one of the reasons I chose Syracuse University (btw, during ALA Annual, many guys I met expressed the same feeling, Prof. Lankes' great, as a result, Syracuse is an awesome choice for library students). In the "New Librarianship" paradigm he proposed, one of the major points is that library should switch from the "lending model" to the "sharing model". This point actually reminds me of a service the Public Library of China developed last year, which is called the "Book Exchanging Fair".

Book Exchanging Fair was first held in the library in Apr. 23rd, 2011 to celebrate the World Book Day  (btw, it's weird that there is the entry of "World Book Day" in Wikipedia, however, it was not linked to "April 23rd" page.), which is officially called International Book and Copyright Day, but sometimes is referred as World Book Day. The reason why people chose this date is because it is William Shakespeare's birthday and death date as well as Miguel Cervantes' death date. BTW, the reason I am so familiar with all the story is that it is also my birthday.

The point of Book Exchanging Fair is that people donate books they don't want to possess any more to the library; and in April. 23rd, those people who gave books come to the library to pick up books they are interested which were given by other patrons. And they can only choose as many books as the number of books they donated. There were also some local publishers coming in, donating some of their new titles. And for the books left after the fair, the library in turn donated them to the local libraries run by NGOs.

(Pic from:  http://data.chinaxwcb.com/epaper2012/epaper/d5279/d1b/201204/20956.html )

Based on the "sharing model", it's certainly one of the most interesting event in Chinese public libraries. And it's also well-attended. Actually, earlier this years, it was so well-attended that many patrons had to wait for hours before they could enter the hall. But there are certainly many many problems in this event. The biggest problem for me is that, how to integrate this ad hoc service to more general libraries services to add more value to the library patrons. It's good that library can facilitate sharing between patrons, but it's still not cool if sharing only happens once a year in the library. Another problem is that, it's still book-based.  Books are not cool any more, just as indicated by the latest news that Library-a-go-go program lost to eBooks. But eBooks in China is another serious problem to talk about.