Put the Book In Their Hands (however we can)

I still find myself amazed sometimes about how much our lives have been affected by the Internet and the various ways to interact with the Internet that people have developed. This morning, I read the introduction to a novel I'm going to read and came across the mention of an old horror story I'd never heard of, "The Wendigo", by Algernon Blackwood.

(As an aside, I suppose that I, as a fan of horror, ought to have known about this story since my research shows that it is considered a masterpiece of the genre. I guess I have some catching up to do!)

My amazement was engendered by the fact that within minutes of first encountering the title of this story, I'd downloaded to my iPhone a complete version of the story completely for free using the Kindle for iPhone app. I'm still in my pajamas on a Saturday morning; that I can so quickly and easily acquire a story I want to read really is amazing considering what my options would have been even 15 years ago.

And there are some, I'm sure, who would question the pleasure of reading a story on an iPhone; I might have until last week when I read a good chunk of The Call of the Wild for Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library's Big Read. My first foray into reading on the iPhone changed that impression! The readability is great, even in bed with the lights off. The manipulation of the "text" is intuitive and simple. I think that this is very valid approach to reading.

So, is this just evidence from a librarian of the impending doom of libraries, then? I'd argue against that conclusion. If libraries focus on service provision rather than content delivery as a means for adapting to a very rapidly shifting environment, we can take advantage of the ease and comfort of reading a book on a smartphone to provide better service to our customers.

I'm certainly not suggesting or predicting that the delivery of physical books and other materials won't be a primary focus for libraries for many years to come. I believe that we'll be in this business for a long time yet. However, I know how disappointing it is for me to work with a customer who is looking for something to read only to find that we don't have what they're looking for. It's disappointing for the customer, too. And it still isn't very uncommon for less-than-frequent library users to turn down an offer of having an item sent from another branch even with the promise of obtaining the item in two or three days. It won't take many of these "no gratification" experiences before a potential lifelong library visitor discounts us as useless.

My thought is that, if staff can be trained to be comfortable and adept at the ins and outs of finding and downloading free reading material on smartphones, we have just increased the likelihood that we can have a successful experience with our customers. This, in turn, enhances the value of the library as resource for the community. Think about it, so many people already have smartphones and all research points to a near future when handheld, web-enabled mobile devices will be ubiquitous. I'm talking very near future! And there is a lot of great, free (and much for .99 cents or so) reading material available on the Internet. If we are able to include these resources among those we offer on the spot to our customers (the one's with smartphones, anyway), the chances are much greater that they'll keep coming back to us. Because the process of downloading an e-reader app and then something to read takes all of a minute or two, this seems a very viable concept. It's just incumbent on librarians to get this knowledge into the hands of the folks providing the front-line service.

And it's clear, too, that libraries need to plan seriously for providing the devices for e-reading, as well. This is certainly already happening but we're very early in our steps in this direction. It really makes sense though. Think of "the classics" that students everywhere have to read each and every year. Imagine how many copies of each of these a library will purchase over the years! I recently heard Jason Griffey suggest the idea of downloading a few hundred of these titles (almost every one is public domain and freely available!) on inexpensive e-readers. Circulate these devices instead of hoping a title is available on the shelf and save a lot of money over the long term.

I'm really only catching up myself in this arena. I certainly need to think a lot more about this, though, because both the reality of how people will want to access information and the long-term financial stability of public libraries are changing.