Community-centric reading and library eBooks
Jinfo Blog

By Michelle Manafy

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Fast making the rounds in the library community is marketing guru Seth Godin's "The future of the library" blog post. He makes an assertion that is at once heartening and troubling: kids today "need a librarian  more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). They need a library not at all". He goes on to point out that eReaders make obsolete the library's role as "warehouse for dead books"  and that "librarians that are arguing and lobbying for clever eBook lending solutions are completely missing the point".

The New York Public Library may have hit the point right on target with its launch of Biblion: The Boundless Library which is an upcoming free iPad app and website that allows readers to "chart their own journeys through NYPL's collections". In it participants will map new ways of reading in an "immersive magazine experience" that will tie images, text, film, audio and more with online communities "to create new storytelling possibilities".

This sort of interactive, community-centric digital reading approach is also one some publishers are advocating. Hachette, Penguin, Simon & Schuster have partnered with AOL for the launch of Bookish, which paidContent.org calls "an editorially independent platform for discovery and sales". Announced on 6 May, Bookish purports to offer a personalised experience that connects readers with authors and recommended reading through editorial features, unique tools and more.

While Godin might be right when he suggests that eventually the cost of eBooks and eReaders will drop precipitously, one does wonder how − as he suggests − the cost of both "razors and blades" can fall so low that there won't be a demand for free book distribution any longer. (How is it authors will be paid and publishers will have the revenue to produce books?)

For now, at least, there are certainly markets in which reader demand for library eBooks is great, as the recent announcement that Library Journal will accept romance e-originals for review suggests. There is also much demand in academic and scholarly circles for more flexible eReading business models, as demonstrated by the AIP making its content available on the AcademicPub Platform and, of course, great consumer demand for more eBook content, as Penny Crossland discussed in her LiveWire post "eBooks and eContent − where are we now?"

However what Godin is certainly correct about is that there will remain an need for the librarian as "a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher ... the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user". Undoubtedly, the role of information professionals is evolving. However, as eReading becomes increasingly socially mediated and reader-centric, the fundamental role of library and librarian as the centre of information communities is one where all signs point to growth.  

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