You’ve Got A Friend
Libraries are more like newspapers than ever — just when newspapers could sure use a friend
By David Cohea
Frequently in conversations when I mention that I work in the newspaper industry, I’m told (sometimes rather brusquely), “nobody reads newspapers any more.” The statement is always surprising to me because I know how important newspapers remain in their community.
I haven’t been in a public library for ten years. In the age of Google search and Amazon, why do people need libraries?
Then, a few weeks ago I began researching a post about the death of a local paper. The library was my go-to source.
Ironic? Maybe, but in the process I found out why both libraries and newspapers are so important to their communities.
* * *
When I was a kid, the library was a palace of bookish wonders. Every book I couldn’t afford to buy was there, and on every visit I loaded up a stack of them from a shelf deep in the stacks on the second floor and carried them over to a large carpeted reading nook that overlooked downtown Evanston (a suburb just north of Chicago) Many after-school afternoons and Saturdays I whiled away the hours on that plush carpet book embryo, reading Tom Swift adventures in hard cover, large page format, from thick and creamy pages that had rough cut edges I can still trace in memory.
There were other libraries down the years from there — the Harold Washington library in downtown Chicago I visited working on high school papers, college and university libraries I haunted over the long years it took me to finally finish my BA. I’ve always been a book-lover; a recurring dream is of discovering a wing of a library I had never found before, the stacks brimming with the titles I am forever seeking.
Long time ago. Once there was an Amazon and Wikipedia and Google and the iTunes store, just about everything I thought I needed from a library was at just a few keystrokes away.
But then, earlier this summer needing to do forensic work on a local newspaper that ceased publishing in 2006, I visited my local library and asked to see their archives.
And found something there you should know about — the silent partner of every community newspaper.
* * *
If William Gibson is right that the future is here, only unevenly distributed, then all we can do to keep from becoming more and more unevenly distributed is to provide a space where analog and digital worlds not only coexist but strengthen each other.
The newspaper, with its print and digital editions, is one such place. Every community is comprised of many interests, vantages and points of access. A multi-platform news product is inclusive of the widest possible reach to these groups. Some can’t start the day without their morning paper. Others read headlines on the fly from their mobile phone.
Another, even larger and perhaps more important place where analog and digital worlds co-exist, is the local library. In every branch of the system you’ll find the clearest statement of what it means to live in both worlds. In every library you’ll find rows of book-filled shelf stacks next to a media center with computers with broadband access for all.
Maybe the two institutions are becoming information twins. Surely they have an equal stake in the matter of maintaining democracy in a community. Journalists report and present the first draft of history, and the library is the memory institution which preserves it and makes it available to all.
* * *
John Palfrey’s Bibilo Tech: Why Libraries More Than Ever in the Age of Google (2015, Basic Books) is a real eye-opener on how libraries are emerging as one of the most important players in our cultural shift into the networked universe of information. It also provides a clue to where newspapers fit into the digital equation — what they should celebrate, what needs to be jettisoned.
Palfrey, who is now Head of School at Phillips Academy at Andover, helped reorganize Harvard University’s Law School when he was a law professor. He’s also the founding director of the Digital Public Library of America. He sees a real danger in libraries failing to maintain their presence in the center of a community. “When it comes to the knowledge and information on which our system of democracy depends,” he writes,
we should not rely on the market exclusively to meet the needs of our communities. The private sector has been wildly successful in digital innovation, and in some areas, such as the supply of corporate email systems, it has been just fine for the private sector to lead. When it comes to the cultural, historical, political and scientific record of a society, however, the public sector needs to play a leading role. In the near term, that role involves providing unbiased, even-handed, universal access to the knowledge needed to be a good citizen and to thrive in an increasingly information-based economy. In the long term, that role involves preserving the record against the inevitable ravages of time … (231)
Libraries are making a concerted effort to find footing in the digital age — one that maintains its analog legacy just like the library’s physical environment provides a steadying balance to the infinite reaches of the Internet they portal.
But, as Palfrey writes, libraries “are caught between two ideas that are not easily reconciled: on the one hand, the public sentiment that the digital era has made libraries less relevant, and on the other, the growing number of expectations that we have for libraries, stemming in no small part from the very digitization that the public assumes is making them obsolete.” (20
Sound familiar? Ever get asked why you still create a print edition — or why you don’t yet have a channel on Pinterest or Instagram or Snapchat?
And the clock is ticking. Apple, Amazon and Google all have very well-paid programmers and designers working relentlessly on developing replacement spaces for the library. Big data is on their side. There’s a lot of money to be made. Their market share is huge. As local news has been largely co-opted by big media and Facebook algorithms, so too the local library struggles to maintain visibility and viability in the 21st century.
As any editor worth his salt knows, corporate interests do not necessarily or even frequently coincide with democratic ones. Buying an e-book on Amazon is so easy. Download a sample. Want to buy? One click and it’s done. The same e-book is free from a library, but a little more effort is involved. (You need a card.) But at their closest semblance, the differences are huge. Amazon knows all about you — your buying history, your selection preferences. Everything in its platform is geared to make you buy and come back for more.
Compare this to how author Dennis Gafney described the library experience: “They expect little but give much. They don’t come with a curriculum and textbooks, but open stacks. There are no teachers to tell us what to read, just librarians who lie low unless asked for an opinion.”
Amazon’s access to the information world is enormous — an analog and digital library as great as Alexandria’s in its day. Only it isn’t free, and by dominating the market the local library fades from view.
* * *
Transformation in the digital age for any traditional entity is hard, but consider the task of a knowledge institution like the library.
Beyond maintaining a supply of books, magazines and audio and video in analog form, libraries now must maintain digital equivalents. (It should be noted though that physical book lending accounts for 64 percent of all library lending, compared to e-books’ 4 percent).)
Digital sources are more complex, requiring staff, infrastructure and access to data. Born-digital content like blogs, websites and audio and visual images are vastly larger data repositories than print.
The needs of patrons are fast-changing and will continue to as platforms evolve at breakneck speeds. Additionally, library patrons are no longer just consuming information; they are adding to the digital mix with their own social streams, digital media and curation.
The young are also more prone to getting lost in the swamps of digital life — sharing too much information, and failing to distinguish between credible and less credible information. While they are negotiating this new territory, libraries can offer friendly, informed and helpful guidance.
And the alternative? As budget cuts grow and libraries reduce services — cutting branches, hours and/or staff — access to the Internet — an essential for after-school learning these days — school kids are going to Starbucks and McDonalds where there is wi-fi.
For the entire population, Internet access is a vastly growing need. From healthcare to taxes to social security to education, so much of it is accessible — and sometimes exclusively so — online. But access is not equal. For example, 90 percent of college graduates have high-speed Internet access, it’s available to only 34 percent of those who hadn’t finished college. Many rural areas are too remote for broadband. For those who are retired, unemployed, or have a disability, libraries are their only hope of access.
* * *
Providing access is just the start for libraries. Palfrey writes, “Libraries and talented librarians need to be at the center of strategies to lessen the preparation and skills gaps. Beyond providing broadband access, libraries have a critical role to play in supporting the digital literacy of any society.” And what aspect of daily life is not now finding itself encroached upon by the digital?
Take my local library in Mt. Dora, 25 miles northeast of Orlando. I stopped in the other day and talked with reference librarian Greg Phillips, who’s been at the W.T. Bland Public Library since the mid-1990s. The Bland Library is part of the Lake County Library system, linked with libraries in nearby Eustis, Leesburg, Tavares and Umatilla.
We sat at a table next to the reference section in an area that used to be filled with computers until a recent expansion created a long bank of twice as many computers down the center aisle of the building, like a spine.
Asked how libraries were meeting the challenge, Phillips readily ticked them off: “Free services. Successful programs. Connecting with kids.”
He then ticked off all the free services offered by the library.: For adults, there are courses in literacy, citizenship, tax preparation (the AARP provides the instruction for free); computer literacy and safety instruction; and a course Greg teaches called Brain 101, showing how the human brain takes all of this in. For kids, the roster of programs is even more robust, with family story time and family movies, Lego and chess clubs, a sensory story time for autistic children, a Read To Win summer reading program, a calendar of activity hours (puppet craft, therapy dogs, water day with the Mount Dora Fire department).
Adding to the ambiance of the library is a butterfly garden just outside the kids’ reading area. The garden was planted back in 2012 as an Eagle Scout project and is maintained by Boy Scout Troop 19. It was named after Ruth and Richard Nunan, long-time supporters of the library. (Ruth was a volunteer for many years; Greg told me that volunteers are essential to providing library services.)
As I left that day, I shot a picture of the two volunteers for the used book store. They weren’t so sure about being in the picture, but seemed happy to be helping out. (Greg told me that volunteers help out in many aspects of library operations while the same time giving them something constructive to do with their time.)
* * *
All of these library capabilities involved in analog media, physical spaces and presence and guidance through programs and other library services — are of course balanced by the need to maintain a central position in a community’s expansion into the digital world. Palfrey writes,
… librarians can take advantage of exiting new possibilities for serving patrons. The new skills that will prove most important for librarians have to do with designing, creating and re-using new technologies, sorting credible from less credible information in a complex online environment, and partnering with people from all walks of life to co-produce information and new knowledge in digital forms. (139)
A great example of this in the city where I work is the Melrose Center for Technology, Innovation and Creativity at the Orlando Public Library. As the result of a $1 million endowment last year from the Kendrick B. Melrose Family Foundation, the Melrose Center takes up 26,000 square feet of the library’s second floor and offers informal learning and technology education. There are video, audio and photography studios with all the latest hardware; a fabrication lab including two 3D printers; a simulation lab with immersive 3D simulators for driving and flight; a 12’ x 8’ interactive media wall for business collaboration; and a conference room for web-conferencing, presentations and networking. Top software packages including QuickBooks, Microsoft Office 2010 an Adobe Master Collection CS6 are available, as well as open source packages such as Audacity and Gimp.
A whole other dimension that libraries extending services to their community is through networking with other libraries and institutions. The local library is a node in a vastly-expanding information network, and the degree to which these libraries are able to assist in this process are they guaranteed a vital place in the future to come. Indeed, libraries serve their communities vastly more by tearing down traditional, independent silos and accessing these greater streams of information.
The Digital Public Library of America, launched in 2013, represents the attempt to create a national library platform for the United States — “an open, distributed network of comprehensive online resources that would draw on the nation’s living heritage from libraries, universities, archives, and museums in order to educate, inform, and empower everyone in the current and future generations.” (Doron Weber, DPLA blog, April 18, 2013.)
Adhering to the bedrock library principle of “free to all,” the DPLA is a digital platform that combines digital collections for state and regional archives with special collections of university libraries and federal collections. There are currently fifteen “hubs” feeding into the DPLA — state and regional libraries engaged in digitizing their holdings and providing services to local libraries. And while you can directly access materials from the DPLA at their website (http://dp.la), most will access its materials through their local library or museum. It serves as an onramp for local libraries into the national platform, but individuals too can add to the digital collection.
There are online collections, a searchable bookshelf (2,300,793 books and periodicals when I checked) and downloadable apps for searching the DPLA in innovative ways (such as exploring by metadata, or term frequency, or even color.)
In order for these vast systems of data to work, new skill sets including scripting, design and metadata collection need to evolve. In order for such massive banks of information to be successfully searched, data about the data — metadata — is needed to help the search algorithms. As library materials continue to come online (and these include newspapers), high quality metadata is essential.
This means that the technical skills of librarians needs to be ever-evolving. It’s much like how we’re seeing the tech guys working side by side with journalists in newsrooms, and freshly-minted graduates out of j-school coming into the workforce with skills for data mining and coding.
As these databases evolve, librarians with the skills to help the public navigate them become all the more essential. The free, open-source information universe that is developing parallel to commercial models but mostly out of sight needs funding and support to ensure its continued growth. It’s essential to an informed public. Newspapers would do well to advocate for the health of their community partner.
* * *
Libraries have a crucial link with education. The vast majority of the nation’s 120,000 libraries — nearly 100,000 — are school libraries. Research indicates a direct link between schools with strong libraries and good academic performance. It may seem counterintuitive, but young people are more likely than older people to use the library (a 2011 Pew study found that 81 percent of young people aged 16–29 had read a book or other material for a school assignment). Librarians are an essential link with digital literacy and offer vital instruction in making good decisions about information quality.
Unfortunately, school libraries have seen their funding continually cut at the federal level. Making things worse, new requirements for Common Cores standards are challenging teachers right at the time that library support is dwindling. Thankfully, the Digital Public Library of America is coming to the rescue, providing access for teachers and school librarians to materials that meet the national standards. The Library of Congress also has many resources for education.
Local libraries also help students greatly by providing an informal zone outside of the classroom environment where they can pursue their creative passions. And for students who lost track and dropped out, the local library is there to help with literacy and GED preparation.
School libraries are not only tasked with helping students become good, lifelong learners, but also to become lifelong citizens as well. Palfrey:
Especially at a moment of dramatic changes in teaching and learning, librarians need to work alongside educators to support students in informal learning and push them to think about the world beyond the classroom, about addressing local issues and problems, instead of focusing strictly on grammar or fractions. In the words of newspaper publisher Jack Knight, for democracy to thrive in a an information era it is essential “to bestir the people into an awareness of their own condition, provide inspiration for their thoughts and rouse them to pursue their true interests. (179)
* * *
Libraries are typically the archival repository of local newspapers, but the record is far from complete. Archival of newspapers goes all over the place, from volumes of bound hard copy, microfilm of print pages, and digital print-PDF files. And so far, born-digital Web content — the vast majority of news for the past ten years or so — isn’t properly archived anywhere.
The big challenge for libraries and other memory institutions (museums, research universities, etc.) is to move all of these versions of newspaper archival into digital, fully searchable format.
Many state universities compile digital scans of newspapers; here in Florida, the University of Florida has an excellent collection of weekly newspapers, but for some reason they don’t archive the dailies. A reference librarian at the Orange County Library told me that they had microfilm of The Orlando Sentinel going back a hundred years, but it was in pretty bad shape. When she contacted the newspaper to see if they could make new copies, no one knew where the master file was.
Digitizing microfilm has in the past been a costly affair, but new technologies are coming on board that have greatly reduced costs. Digital print-PDFs can be searched in a rudimentary way, but in order transform them into fully-digital products, a great amount of metadata needs to be added.
Few newspapers follow any formal procedure for donating their news to their local library. When my local Mt. Dora Topic was sold in 1982, then-publisher Al Liveright had been keeping bound volumes in an extra room in his house. When he offered to donate them to the local library, they refused to take them. (They ended up in a library elsewhere in the county.)
Scarier still is when a newspaper ceases publication and their archives end up scattered — maybe trucked off to the landfill, or scattered on hard drives, or simply taken by departing employees wanting a keepsake.
When the Rocky Mountain News, the oldest newspaper in Colorado, folded in 2009, the entire contents of the newspaper’s archives — microfilm, bound issues, print PDFs, but also photos, text, multimedia projects and an entire cached copy of rockymountainnews.com — were donated to the Denver Public Library. It was the first time ever that such a donation had been made. Originally the two entities had been looking into a partnership to market historic images from the collection. But when E.W. Scripps Company, the owner of the Rocky Mountain News, decided in 2009 to shut down the paper, they began work on a donation agreement in which allowed for the transfer of physical and intellectual property. In a statement following the donation, Scripps president and chief executive Rich Boehne said Scripps “sought partners who would regard the … News archives as a community treasure that needs to be preserved for generation.”
Easy perhaps to say for a defunct newspaper, but it’s a important point that news belongs to its community and the newspapers have a responsibility for ensuring that the news it generates finds a secure and lasting place in a library.
A tip of the hat here to the preservation efforts of the National Digital Newspaper Program, established by National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress. Two thirds of the country have been digitizing historic newspapers and contributing them to the Chronicling America website since 2005. It’s freely searchable — even without a library card.
If you’re looking for ways kick-start archival operations at your own newspaper, see my post “The Newspaper Archivist’s Good News.”
* * *
When the Knight Commission wrote its 2009 Report of The Information Needs of a Communities in a Democracy, its three main recommendations fall squarely upon newspapers and libraries alike:
- Maximize the availability of relevant and credible information to all Americans and their communities;
- Strengthen the capacity of individuals to engage with information; and
- Promote individual engagement with information and the public life of the community.
Journalists create that “first draft of history,” seeking out the news wherever it is to be found in their communities, asking the hard questions, weighing official information; libraries keep that news alive and well in the archival sources they maintain. As Trevor Owens of the Institute of Museum and Library Services puts it, “Journalism is much more focused on the now, on breaking news, and libraries have and continue to play a powerful role in ensuring enduring access to the legacy of that news.”
Maybe it isn’t surprising that newspapers and libraries are both struggling to continue their mission into the digital future. So much has been co-opted by the tech giants. Local news has largely disappeared into vapid news space — everything that is news that isn’t about your home town.
Creating a space for the local is in part an act of devotion. In a 2013 survey by Pew Research Center, a vast majority of Americans ages 16 or older said that the public libraries play an important role in their communities:
- 95% of Americans ages 16 and older agree that the materials and resources available at public libraries play an important role in giving everyone a chance to succeed;
- 95% say that public libraries are important because they promote literacy and a love of reading;
- 94% say that having a public library improves the quality of life in a community;
- 84% say that public libraries provide many services people would have a hard time finding elsewhere.
All of our fond memories of hours in the children’s reading room of our local library gives us a sense of belonging. Reading a print newspaper may involve some of the same evocative memories.
But it will take more than nostalgia. Palfrey writes,
Without greater public support, librarians will not be in a position to make this switch to the networked, collaborative modes of operating that hold such promise. All of us, whether individual citizens or institutional leaders, need to devote more capital and time, especially during this transitional period, to supporting libraries as they make these changes. (230)
And if we don’t? “It is not too much of a stretch to say that the fate of well-informed, open, free republics could hinge on the future of libraries” (231).
* * *
Both newspapers and libraries have a strong analog heritage and equally must find a way to survive and thrive in the digital realm. Perhaps therein lies a golden opportunity — in a much-improved manner of moving that information from one to another and flowing that information back.
Imagine, if you will, a newspaper with a vibrant print and web presence, successfully finding audience and revenue across multiple platforms. (Yes, that’s still possible.)
Through a donation agreement with a local library, all of the news — print and born-digital — flows into library archival servers within, say, a month of publication. The library takes all of the preservation steps, while at the same time allowing access to the news database available to library patrons. (OK, let give reporters the same access for future newsgathering). Librarians can help add metadata and curate the content in new ways that benefit the newspaper and the community.
Now that first draft of history becomes a fuller, deeper version of itself. The newspaper is one of its important sources, and the library becomes the important pivot of this information to the community. Engagement can run back and forth — the community weighs in, new story ideas evolve.
It should be mentioned here that privacy is a big issue for libraries. “You won’t find data breaches to the extent of the private companies as most libraries will purge the data of inactive accounts about every two years,” says Shawn Schollmeyer, digital newspapers coordinator with Washington State Library. “We really aren’t interested in your social security number or credit card information just to provide you with reading materials, videos or research resources. We are big proponents of privacy and American Library Association advocates for this issue in Congress.” Trust is vital in any relationship, and libraries respect their patrons as much as newspapers their readers.
Maybe it sounds far-fetched — for now. But with the newspaper industry in a contraction that’s beginning to look permanent, if we get out of the traditional silos we may find lots of blue ocean between libraries and newspapers. A sea of fresh opportunity.
And the best chance for a healthy, informed, democratic community.
David Cohea is general manager of King Features Weekly Service, an editorial service for 700 weekly newspapers. Email David at dcohea@hearstsc.com.
