I'm a librarian and while I sympathize with some of the arguments here, they are not arguments I can explain to the public. No one cares, and they shouldn't have to. They should be able to read everything from James Patterson to Thomas Piketty and not have to think about it and Libby is pretty good at enabling that. Alternative platform exist, but none of them are as good. Libby works on a lot of devices and Overdrive works with Amazon for people who own a Kindle. More people check out e-books and fewer check out physical books every year; the pubic wants what it wants and right or not Overdrive is the best way to get them that.
So yeah, this could come crashing down. But more likely it will be like the transition of any format. Audiobooks have moved from tapes to CDs to digital in the span of about 15 years (in 2007 we still had lots of tape audiobooks) so we tossed the tapes and bought CDs because people got rid of their tape players and then did the same with CDs. We didn't dig in our heels and tell people tape players were good enough because it's not a luxury we have.
Does a library have no duty of preservation or archival? Surely "what the public wants" cannot be the only driving factor, right?
If the public wanted a building filled with nothing but adult magazines, or nothing but gardening books, would the library not have any choice but to fulfill those narrow desires at the expense of preserving great works of literary art?
> Does a library have no duty of preservation or archival? Surely "what the public wants" cannot be the only driving factor, right?
Yes, it is the only driving factor for a public library.
It turns out people do want to preserve stuff, so we keep an archive of local interest items that the public wants (microfilm, city directories, notable local authors and artists), but we don't view ourselves as an archive. That's not our mission nor are we equipped to do that work beyond the limited capacity we already have.
The same goes for materials in the collection. If they do not check out, we remove them and replace them with things that hopefully will. Years of experience has taught me that people do not want an old collection, no matter what its value. They want current items that are clean and relevant to them and that's what we're here for. We're a government institution and are ultimately answerable to what the public wants.
But here's the thing, like with our local archive, the desires of the public and preservation do often align. That's why libraries look the way they do. People do check out great works of literary art and we often replace those as they wear out. People do want some archival materials and ask for them when doing research. The situation you describe doesn't happen because it turns out most people don't want all gardening books or adult magazines. But we don't keep anything that doesn't get used just for the sake of it, all of it serves the mission.
>Years of experience has taught me that people do not want an old collection, no matter what its value. They want current items that are clean and relevant to them and that's what we're here for.
With all due respect: if this is true, how come it feels like I can never find any recent-ish literature in any given library? be it a rural area or university, I feel like trying to find anything more recent than 20 years old or so just doesn't happen. And technical books evolve quickly.
I think this is a problem specific to your library. A very quick check shows the average age of our collection to be about 6 years (at my small to midsized urban library). That's extremely rough because new editions of classics will show a much more recent copyright date than an average person would consider them, so a collection can still be seen to skew much older than the data suggests. However, it's still dominated by recent titles, especially of popular literature. Technical books are harder for me to comment on because at a public library, that's generally out of our domain. We try to keep up on the popular series for tech stuff like "Learn Visually" or "Dummies", but the circulation or those dwindles as either fewer people need them or are more likely to use the internet for solving their problems. Depending on your needs, you might see if your library has a subscription to O'Reilly books or similar platform for your area of interest.
Public libraries have no such duty, no. Outside of the largest systems, most aren't fit to do this in a way that would materially achieve the goal of preserving anything, either in terms of space, equipment, or expertise.
So generally speaking, providing "what the public wants" is the entire purpose of public libraries. Obviously librarians exercise a lot of discretion about what specifically to buy and make available in the library, but most have long since moved on from paternalistic notions of needing to provide access only to The Great Books.
The library of congress has a duty of archival, but public libraries are there as a service to the public. So, what the public wants from them is actually the only driving factor.
One might posit a phenomenon parallel to enshitification, perhaps deeply tied up in it, which might be called "inshutification": the shrinking of spheres of awareness, responsibility, and influence
So is having a rich family. The article provides a long list of examples of great artists who's success is largely enabled by already being wealthy, not necessarily being the best. Even just being lucky enough to already be established puts you far ahead of people trying to break in. I can walk out the door and likely find a job in my industry because I have lots of experience to point to and references who will vouch for me. I think I'm good at my job, but I was also in the right place at the right time to get it and now I'm a safe bet for someone who needs my skills, even if I'm not the best bet. Someone who's trying to break in that's ten times more talented than me might never catch that break. I know for a fact that I've hired lesser candidates because I needed someone who was a known quantity more than I needed someone who was possibly great.
Meritocracy is pretty far down the list as a factor of success in my experience.
> I needed someone who was a known quantity more than I needed someone who was possibly great.
There's also an economic side to this: Higher skill most often has higher costs, so it would not be rational to overshoot in a business setting.
In an Art setting higher skill very rarely commands a higher price. At least for the Visual Arts (painting, sculpture, etc) producer skill is hardly the most requested property. IOW it's mostly a matter of provenience and history of the artwork in question, not much the skill required to produce it. Also, for Music, Visual Arts, Performative Arts (excluding Sports!) personal preferences seem to dictate a substantially larger proportion of the price level than performer competence.
I like both. I think Lego sets are in many ways my first experience of technical documentation and I still use those skills. It also helped me learn about how sets went together so I could design my own. Finally, I wanted to play with what was on the box.
I'd argue that social networks are a little bit different because discussing is what they do. Reddit is obsessed with itself, when I'd say most of the wide world doesn't care about the API or 3rd party app business (though they eventually may if moderation gets bad). Even 15 years ago a good amount of posting on reddit was about itself: secret Santas, seeing reddit bumper stickers, self referential memes, killing digg, how it was going mainstream, etc. It's a pretty natural progression of any project. That isn't to say federation will be successful, just that its self obsession is pretty normal.
Federation is already successful, since email is federated (you can register on gmail.com and send an email to an account at yahoo.com, or even run your own email server, although the ecosystem has evolved/commercialized to make that more difficult than it strictly has to be).
But Lemmy, we'll see. Maybe a better-written competitor emerges, or maybe they get their act together, or maybe the world doesn't want a federated Reddit clone (although my personal bet is that it does and subreddits are sort of the centralized prototype of that). But there's no question that federation itself is useful in certain applications.
True, though I'd say that email is a cautionary tale due to how centralized it's gotten. I guess I was referring to "second wave" federation, for lack of a better term. Federated replacements for social networks: Mastodon, Lemmy, Friendica, etc. I can't say if those will be as successful as email, just that an obsession with itself is a pretty normal part of the growth process. Part of what made reddit successful, especially early on, was people identifying themselves as reddit users.
An instance can block another instance from federating with it. So if I'm on instance "b" and it defederates instance "a", I can no longer see any of instance "a"'s communities or comments.
Easier to find, but probably harder to talk to. I think it's not a coincidence that several of the subcultures you list above involve dressing in costumes. I'm sure part of that is immersing oneself in the culture, but there's also an element of anonymity that people value. At least some of this is a result of Thompson's influence on the culture.
These people will talk your ear off. One of the hallmarks of modern counterculture is inclusion, which is in stark contrast to the HST era where there was a much greater risk to being part of many countercultures, and so much more fear of outsiders.
As far an anonymity, I think people pick a particular blend that works for them and their career and family. But most people I know are pretty forward about their stranger/kinkier/less legal interests, at least on an interpersonal level.
So yeah, this could come crashing down. But more likely it will be like the transition of any format. Audiobooks have moved from tapes to CDs to digital in the span of about 15 years (in 2007 we still had lots of tape audiobooks) so we tossed the tapes and bought CDs because people got rid of their tape players and then did the same with CDs. We didn't dig in our heels and tell people tape players were good enough because it's not a luxury we have.