Connected libraries extend the Tail

Marylaine Block, a very wired librarian, writes with a great example of the Long Tail at work. I'd asked her for some perspective on the ways in which libraries differ from bookstores. After all, on the face of it both suffer from similar scarcity problems: limited shelf space and budgets and the geographic limitations of depending largely on local demand.  Are libraries equally hit-driven as a result?

The answer is no, because libraries (especially university libraries) have changed a lot. They are increasingly connected through shared databases and interlibrary loan networks. Thus they are able to effectively extend their shelves manyfold, connecting their individual collections into a vast supercollection that can go far further down the Tail than any single institution could afford. In other words, networks are turning individual libraries into what amounts to one huge virtual Long Tail aggregator.

Marylaine explains:

The solutions tend to involve off-site (but accessible) storage, microfilm, and consortial buying and storage. One interesting project is the CIC (the Big 10 universities plus the University of Chicago) shared storage arrangement.

Also, more and more universities are digitizing unique holdings and making them available online. See The Making of America project, for instance, at Cornell and the University of Michigan; to see and search a whole lot of them that use the Open Archives Initiative protocol, see OAIster. The mother lode, of course, is the American Memory project at the Library of Congress.

Because of OCLC (and a similar shared cataloging utility, Research Libraries Group), now libraries around the world know each other's holdings. Not only has that immensely increased the use of interlibrary loan, it also makes it possible for libraries to make decisions about what they must retain and what they can safely dispose of because unique knowledge will not be lost. At smaller consortial levels, like my own library system, we make decisions about our journal holdings in a similar way; we find out what each library is committed to keeping (in my library, the rule was, if it's Catholic, keep it forever), and knowing that, other libraries can safely keep shorter runs or none at all of those titles.

Comments

[dthree]

I found this site with bookmarklets that bridge the gap between Amazon and your library's database. Very handy when you are looking at Amazon's auto-generated recommendations or Amazon user lists.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html

[casey]

If you got them, what were her thoughts on the new Google project digitizing works from several libraries around the world?

To me its great that libraries are so connected (and have been for a long time now). I just wish some of these insitutions (or more) were open to the general public as well to get books for research.

[praktike]

Chris, this is OT but I thought you might find it interesting for your book or the blog:

http://www.techreview.com/articles/05/01/issue/epstein0105.asp

[David Brake]

Unfortunately, as I read somewhere, the better inter-library sharing of obscure (and not so obscure) journals makes it harder for those journals to survive.

[Chris Anderson]

Many thanks for the link to the tech review piece, which is indeed very relevent to the book.

[sniper]

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