I received this email recently from a person whom I don’t know. He mentions that he noticed that I haven’t been writing a lot lately, but perhaps I’d be interested in publishing something by someone else? Here’s an excerpt:

Dear Mr. Lawson,

… The attached article isn’t by me, but it is something that I have found and thought you might be interested in. After [other library bloggers names] refused to publish it, you were the first one I thought of.

The article, or position paper can be thought of as a “provocative statement,” not unlike those from the Taiga Forurm which you have written about so eloquently in the past. But unlike those statements, this piece goes on to explain its reasoning and make a case for its provocation. As a librarian with over ten years in the field, I found myself intrigued, then somewhat ashamed and angry to be taking this position seriously. Now it occurs to me that it might be parody. I simply don’t know what to think, but it seemed as if it might be worth sharing with you and your dozens of readers.

This explanatory note was signed “Nelson V. Waste.” The attached WordPerfect file had no author’s name on it, and it seems entirely likely to me that the whole thing is a put-on, most likely the product of Mr. Waste’s fevered mind. Less likely, but still possible, is that the provocative statement is, in fact, what it appears to be, and Waste is a cover story for the anonymous assistant director (after all, “Nelson Waste” certainly sounds like a pseudonym, doesn’t it?).

Regardless, I believe I share Waste’s estimation of the inherent interest of the statement, and am happy to publish it here for further discussion. -Steve

Libraries are Dying (And That’s A Good Thing) by Anonymous

Within the next 25 years, libraries will become wholly unnecessary. This is a good thing, not a tragedy. Librarians should embrace this fact wholeheartedly, and shift our professional mission to actively bringing this result about and preparing people for a world without libraries.

Just as economists and geologists speak of “peak oil,” the point where humans have extracted half of the Earth’s petroleum deposits, I would posit that somewhere around the year 1992, we reached “Peak Libraries” where half the demand for library services is in the past. But where that demand took place over hundreds or even thousands of years, we are now seeing an acceleration in the need for library services which will culminate in a rapid drop-off in demand, ending, inevitably, at zero.

In my long career as an Associate University Librarian, I have seen the trend increasingly from a world where libraries are one of a very few means of accessing trusted information, to a world where libraries are frequently the last place that people think to look when satisfying an information need. Nearly all the ways that we have distinguished ourselves over the past few millennia–and here I am thinking of collections, cataloging and metadata, and public services such as reference and instruction–are increasingly irrelevant.

Collections are paradoxically becoming privatized and opened up at the same time. Librarians were unable and unwilling to assemble the necessary capital (by which I mean cash, credibility, and chutzpah) to undertake a project to scan our collections en masse. Only a commercial entity like Google is capable of taking on the work and the risk. And yet the result of this private project is not a disastrous locking up of the world’s literature and information, but rather a great opening of the vaults, where previously invisible, unknown, and unloved works are accessible with a brief search. It is only a matter of time before libraries realized that many expensive subscriptions to full-text historical archives are unnecessary in the age of Google.

In terms of academic journals, we have a polarized position, where there is much activity on the front of Open Access to the journal literature. More and more of these publications are available for free. At the same time, more and more of the not-free literature is being collected under the umbrella of very large, very expensive packages from commercial publishers. Librarians tend to praise this first trend and decry the second, but in reality, both trends are in the researcher’s favor and both trends point to the disappearance of libraries and librarians. In 25 years, universities like my own will simply assign someone in the business office to ensure that a few extremely large bills are paid each year, ensuring access to the entirety of the for-pay journal literature.

Popular literature is destined to go the way of the Kindle or the iPad or the next popular device. Librarians may despair of the lack of users’ rights or the tethering of texts to particular devices, and we may yet have a role to play in the next quarter-century through lobbying for a “Reader’s Bill of Rights” that would pass on some of the liberties bestowed in the print world by Fair Use and the First Sale Doctrine. But regardless of our efforts, readers and consumers will vote with their dollars. There is no turning back the clock on this one, and there is likely to be no workable solution for “loaning” digital copies of books by libraries.

Librarians could once point to their cataloging and classification as a defining feature of our relevance. Yes, we would say, information is abundant, but how are you likely to find anything without us organizing it for you? This time is, of course, long over, with keyword searching long since winning the crown as the people’s choice. We may argue that keywords are no substitute for a controlled vocabulary, and in some instances we’d be right. But it is apparent that very few user groups care. Besides, when we make this argument, we conveniently ignore all the ways that controlled vocabularies have let user groups down in the past, as anyone who has studied the history of LCSH terms for homosexuality (or, to use a sillier example, “cookery”) can attest.

When the idea of the death or disappearance of the library comes up, librarians often point to library users and note that people still have difficulty using the library or finding the information they need, and require expert native guides to navigate the hazards of the information space. Librarians would have you believe this is strictly a maternal impulse, as a lioness may have for her cubs. Instead, we need to see it as a predatory instinct, as a lioness may have for a gazelle. We are fast approaching the point where the librarian needs the user more than the user needs the librarian. Librarians are scared of this, and have thus far worked hard to keep users docile and ignorant, happy to be complicit in information vendors’ plans for balkanization, obscurity, and compartmentalization. Various factors (not the least of which being the need to compete with the likes of Google, the continuing monopolization of content by a few commercial producers, and competition with the remaining vendors for scarce municipal and education dollars) will lead vendors to make interfaces smoother, thus streamlining searching, finding, organizing, creating, and publishing. It is time to end the epidemic of Munchausen by Proxy in our public service librarians, and instead acknowledge that if the patrons we patronize can’t walk without assistance, it is only because we continually kick them in the kneecaps.

Many librarians take a liberal or libertarian position with regard to information. Strong supporters of limited copyright, Open Access, free public services, and so on, librarians believe that information should be free, that “free” means “libre” as well as “gratis,” and that individuals should be empowered to find and use information as they see fit. What librarians don’t see is that the librarian’s position in this field is contingent rather than necessary, an historical blip of a profession rather like the travel agent or the town crier.

Librarians are often reduced to creating new reasons for their existence, reasons that have virtually nothing to do with the library qua library. When librarians speak of “library as place,” know that they have reached the tipping point, and are almost ready to concede that the library has little use anymore besides a place for the homeless to sleep and college students to check their Facebook accounts (or, quite likely, vice-versa). Your town would be better off with the library dollars going to free municipal broadband and better services for the homeless, unemployed, children, and the socially inept who make up the majority of their clientele. The university library could be gutted in favor of a live/study space combining student residences, study space, computer labs, and food courts.

Rather than digging in our heels in an attempt to prove our usefulness beyond any reasonable argument, I propose that librarians do the following:

1. Establish a “drop dead” date for our profession. I propose midnight of December 31, 2034.
2. Promote this date with web sites, posters, TV ads, and other appropriate public relations media. Think of a librarian sitting in a cooler next to the milk and yogurt with 2034-12-31 stamped on her head. Or tearful librarians leaving readers with the slogan “it’s not you, it’s us.”
3. Meet with authors, professors, and others who create the content currently stored and managed by libraries. Explain to them how they can better manage their own information and guard their own interests in the future.
4. Lobby unceasingly for shorter copyright terms. Promote Open Access, Creative Commons, and other means for creative works to reach the public free of charge and free of undue restrictions.
5. For those areas where information is hardest to liberate, support government contracts with information oligarchs such as Google, Wiley, Elsevier, and so forth.
6. Work with creators and consumers of technology to make media technology invisible, easily understood, and ubiquitous, like the television, cell phone, or automobile.

Lastly, the American Library Association and its many divisions, sections, and so forth should be reorganized so its efforts begin with a great promotion of this planned extinction, and, as the time nears, switching to career retraining for younger ex-librarians and the provision of retirement/elder care facilities for older ex-librarians. The great retirement and librarian shortage that has been long predicted will be upon us soon, but those positions should not, will not be filled. The world will thank us for stepping aside with grace, rather than hanging on in desperation.