Question: As physical books go away, and computers and
smart devices take their place, at what point does a library stop being a
library, and start becoming something else?
People who think libraries are going away simply because books are
going digital are missing the true tectonic shifts taking place in the
world of information.
Libraries are not about books. In fact, they were never about books.
Libraries exist to give us access to information. Until recently,
books were one of the more efficient forms of transferring information
from one person to another. Today there are 17 basic forms of
information that are taking the place of books, and in the future there
will be many more…
Replacing Books
The transition to other forms of information has been happening for
decades. Once we are able to get past the emotion connection we have to
physical books, we begin to see how the information world is splintering
off into dozens of different categories.
Here is a list of 17 primary categories of information that people
turn to on a daily basis. While they are not direct replacements for
physical books, they all have a way of eroding our reliance on them.
There may be more that I’ve missed, but as you think through the
following media channels, you’ll begin to understand how libraries of
the future will need to function:
- Games – 135 million Americans play video games an
hour or more each month. In the U.S. 190 million households will use a
next-generation video game console in 2012, of which 148 million will be
connected to the Internet. The average gamer is 35 years old and they
have been playing games on average for 13 years.
- Digital Books – In January, USA Today reported a
post-holiday e-book “surge,” with 32 of the top 50 titles on its most
recent list selling more copies in digital format than in print.
Self-published e-books now represent 20-27% of digital book sales.
- Audio Books - Audiobooks are the fastest growing
sector of the publishing industry. There is currently a shortage of
audiobooks worldwide as publishers race to meet demand. Only 0.75% (not
even 1%!) of Amazon’s book catalog has so far been converted to audio.
Last year more than $1 billion worth of audiobooks were sold in the U.S.
alone. Over 5,000 public libraries now offer free downloadable audio
books.
- Newspapers – Online readership of newspapers
continues to grow, attracting more than 113 million readers in January
2012. Industry advertising revenues, however, continue to drop and are
now at the same level as they were in 1950, when adjusted for inflation.
- Magazines – The U.S. magazine industry is comprised
of 5,146 businesses publishing a total of 38,000 titles. Time spent
reading newspapers or magazines combined is roughly 3.9 hours per week.
Nearly half of all magazine consumption takes place with the TV on. The
magazine industry is declined 3.5% last year.
- Music – According to Billboard’s “2011 Music
Industry Report,” consumers bought 1.27 billion digital tracks last
year, which accounted for 50.3% of all music sales. Digital track sales
increased 8.5% in 2011. Meanwhile, physical sales declined 5%. According
to Apple, there are an estimated 38 million songs in the known music
universe.
- Photos – Over 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day
- Videos – Cisco estimates that over 90% of all
Internet content will be video by 2015. Over 100,000 ‘years’ of Youtube
video are viewed on Facebook every year. Over 350 million Youtube videos
are shared on Twitter every year. Netflix streams 2 billion videos per
quarter.
- Television – According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the
average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day, and owns 2.2
televisions. An estimated 41% of our information currently comes from
television.
- Movies – There are currently over 39,500 movie
screens in the U.S. with over 4,500 of them converted to 3D screens. The
average American goes to 6 movies per year. However, almost one-third
of U.S. broadband Households use the Internet to watch movies on their
TV sets, according to Park Associates. That number is growing, with 4%
of U.S. households buying a video media receiver, such as Apple TV and
Roku, over the 2011 holiday season
- Radio – Satellite radio subscribers, currently at
20 million, is projected to reach 35 million by 2020. At the same time,
Internet radio is projected to reach 196 million listeners by 2020.
These combined equal the same number as terrestrial radio listeners.
- Blogs – There are currently over 70 million WordPress blogs and 39 million Tumblr blogs worldwide.
- Podcasts – According to Edison Research, an
estimated 70 million Americans have listened to a podcast. The podcast
audience has migrated from being predominantly “early adopters” to more
closely resembling mainstream media consumers.
- Apps – There are now over 1.2 million smartphone
apps with over 35 billion downloads. Sometime this year the number of
apps will exceed the number of books in print – 3.2 million.
- Presentations – Leading the charge in this area,
SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations.
With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million pageviews, it is
amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world.
- Courseware – The OpenCourseware movement has been
catching fire with Apple leading the charge. iTunesU currently has over
1,000 Universities participating from 26 countries. Their selection of
classes, now exceeding the 500,000 mark, have had over 700 million
downloads. They recently announced they were expanding into the K-12
market.
- Personal Networks – Whether its LinkedIn, Facebook,
Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest, people are becoming increasingly reliant
on their personal network for information. There are now over 2.8
billion social media profiles, representing around half of all Internet
users worldwide. LinkedIn now has over 147 million members. Facebook has
over 1.1 billion members and accounts for 20% of all pageviews on the
Internet. Google+ currently has over 90 million users.
Each of these forms of information has a place in future libraries.
Whether or not physical books decline or even disappear has little
relevance in the overall scheme of future library operations.
Source: CILIP (linkedin)
