After the ebook Summit

I attended the Library Journal ebook summit the other day -- Libraries at the Tipping Point.  I find the title of the summit an interesting one.  The title implies that ebooks could be the thing that tips the balance for libraries.  The image it conjures for me is one of the library balanced on a fulcrum of patron expectation.

In late 2010, public libraries are negotiating a delicate landscape of serving two groups with very divergent expectations: patrons who expect a traditional library experience and view digital materials and services with indifference, if not skepticism, and patrons who are technologically engaged and expect more and more digital services and materials.  Will ebooks shift the balance of patron expectation?  Nope. The shift has already taken place.  

Today, even the most technologically backward patron expects us to provide instant answers via the internet, whether we find the answer quickly online or merely deliver it to them that way.  They want us to teach them how to use digital technology, no matter that they don’t own a personal computer or digital device.  Everyone (pretty much) uses email.  Technology has become part of the traditional library experience.  The tipping point is not the digital product – it’s the delivery.

Which brings me back to the ebook summit…  Delivery, or the lack of it, was a common theme.    We’ve gotten pretty good at delivering services and adapting to changes in how services can be delivered.  Materials – ebooks, audiobooks, video, music – are another matter.  How do we deliver the digital goods? Part of the problem is out of our hands; platforms and formats are in a state of flux that will have to be waited out.   But compounding the problem -- patrons use a thousand different devices to access our stuff.   Remember when the iPod wouldn't play an Overdrive audio?  Or when Netlibrary only worked with 2 obscure players?  Patrons don't get it when their XYZ mp3 player can't play WMA files or their Kindle can't read every ebook out there.  We look like chumps where delivery is concerned.

But we'd look like bigger chumps if we didn't offer what so many patrons want.

I didn't get any answers at the ebook summit.  But I did find out that I'm not alone in my frustration with digital delivery and in my concern that the  content and formats I've been buying could easily go the way of the betamax.  So I take what comfort I can in the realization that books on CD replaced books on tape and the world didn't end.  And that downloadable books will slowly eclipse physical ones.  Life is change; and change in Library Land is kind of slow, but it's inevitable nonetheless.   We'll deal.