Libraries are not all vanilla 

“The man who does not read has no advantage over 
the man who cannot read.” 
 Mark Twain

In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.
Raoul Vaneigem

Libraries are exciting spaces, believe it or not. I sell books to collection librarians and they are some of the most engaged, interesting and articulate individuals I work with in the publishing business. They are ardent book lovers, adamant about the knowledge, power and fun of reading and the value of free access. Librarians are excellent resource people in our culture, oft under appreciated, they have the uncanny ability to link community needs to big ideas, and can immediately put iany books or ideas that they encounter into the perspective of culture and global history. No mean feat.

There is a lot that goes in libraries besides reading dusty books. Libraries provide an alternative to corporatized culture, by providing a non-corporatized civic space. Free programming and skill building offer the chance for people to empower themselves, in a welcoming environment. A central space to  include new Canadians of all income brackets, they promote literacy, both as a value in society as well in families, by offering access to link people to books in all areas of their lives. For example, looking for a way to cook kale? Use a cookbook. Want to learn about a language? Get language CDs. Interested in building a resume or starting a club? Get a book to learn how.

Libraries also give us a space to interact with people who may not be from our own communities, or our own milieu. They have the power to democratize social relations, unlike Starbucks.

Calgary Public Library is one of the most heavily used libraries, per capita, in Canada. The new plans for Castell Central Library are going ahead, and they are seeking input from Calgarians
Go to their survey at http://calgarynewcentrallibrary.ca/

You will be asked what your priorities are for the library and what the new library can do for you.

As I filled out the survey, I imagined a beautiful and open access space, the library as civic landmark. It would centralize books, civic life, and the sharing of ideas in Calgarian consciousness via a free and open cultural space. My top priorities for this library then, in accordance with their categories on the surgery, are Arts and Culture, Lifelong Learning, Local Heritage, Civic Landmark and a Vibrant Space. I am hoping the new library will look like one of these fantastic library spaces, but this is getting my hopes up

Librarians are the keepers of our cultural knowledge. The internet is not a permanent nor neutral space. There is no accountability and it is driven by the market. Libraries are not driven by the market but are driven by larger social history both including and excluding the market.  For example, they store books that don't necessarily hit bestseller lists. And this is important because how can we know what it means to look at ourselves if we cannot see what we produced in times past? How can we know what it means to be a civic person, rather than a consumer, if we don't have any physical spaces that are about free and open access?

To me, the act of checking out books from libraries represents what Mark Kingwell calls participatory citizenship, defined as:

"...a new model of citizenship based on the act of participation itself, not on some quality or thought or right enjoyed by its possessor. This participatory citizenship doesn't simply demand action from existing citizens; it makes action at once the condition and task of citizenship." (The World We Want, p. 12)

By using libraries we are acting, and this action is a recognition of the value of the shared commons, a non commercial space for resources, ideas. It is also an act of recognizing the value of sharing our costs of housing such collections. We are recognizing the value of individual non-ownership as a conceptual space. We are recognizing the value of our shared past and the value of appointing librarians as keepers so as to make such an archive accessible and navigable in an intelligent systematic way.
Ultimately libraries are the embodiment of the value of equality and equal access, for everyone regardless of income, to the world of ideas.

If, in a kingdom of consumption, the citizen is supposedly king, then we, as kings, would all need an education to know how to rule ourselves; books are our path to such an education.
Such an education can never be had in such a kingdom where only that which gets published is that which supports the kingdom. Thus libraries and their non commercial space, as well as government grants, provide such a refuge.

An unwitting consumer without access to knowledge outside the system is not a ruler but is merely a tool- a tool of a system designed to exploit those very tools at the bottom.

Thus the library card, and its free passage to knowledge, is a shining jewel in such a kingdom and librarians become the gate keepers of our freedom.

Kindle could carry advertising

Here is an article about this

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/90449-kindle-could-carry-adverts.html

The interesting side to this is the argument that is "adds value" to the Kindle to include advertising on the "expensive little bugger". Does this imply that advertising could keep the price of this junk item-an example of blatant consumerism if I ever saw one-down via the ads that help to support Amazon's profit margin?

I would like to know how adding commercials adds value? Even if they are specifically designed for my demographic. This is another reason why books are far superior to e-books in my opinion

cheap books, $10 each, excellent for kindling

This morning's Quill blog wrote about the "uprising" of consumers against Amazon. The customers are complaining that Amazon is over-pricing their Ebooks. The cutoff for ripoff, it seems, is $9.99. 

On the one hand I can see why these Kindle users feel resentful: the pricetag for the Kindle alone could make a reader feel that she is entitled to a lifetime of cheap books supplied exclusively by Amazon, as payback for the upfront investment ($350 USD approx). 

But my concern is this: if Amazon responds to their customers and reduces prices of all Ebooks to under $10, how are they going to do it? They operate on slim margins already.  They took on all the R&D costs for the creation and programming of the Kindle, got it to market & paid for the promotion and advertising. They have invested a lot of money in this project and likely need to see a return on that investment. They are certainly not in the position to cut much from the lining of their pockets. So that means, inevitably, that Amazon will put it to the publishers to adjust their pricing.

Publishers can price Ebooks lower than regular books. Publishers save money with EBooks (vs. regular books) on production and distribution: the printing, shipping, handling, sales, distribution, storage, returns and cataloguing costs are non existent or minimal. Around this the advocating consumers are right: publishers should be able to reduce the price significantly on an Ebook over a printed book. But publishers still have a lot of costs built into producing the content of a book, whether electronic or printed: editorial, legal, royalty, book & cover design, office overheads etc. Ebooks are content only.  They compete with regular books, and the more copies that go out as Ebooks, the less copies potentially get sold of regular books. And yet in this sandwich generation of Ebooks and print books, the publisher's costs are the same because they still have to cover all their distribution costs for the regular books. Plus, smaller print runs means a significant increase in the unit cost per printed book. For now, the old distribution system still needs to be in place for the hard copy books.  I think it is probably impossible for publishers right now to set their pricing in such an unproven marketplace, they must be guessing. The other issue is the control of the content: once it is out, it is out. Look at any electronic data and you can see this problem. So E-users need to understand that it is not simply a matter of how much it costs to produce the individual book they are E-reading. It is part of a system of publishing on the brink of a change and these publishers need to make sure they plan good business models now to stay profitable.

Frankly I think these outraged consumers expect a lot. How many hours of pleasure, how much information, how much value in society and culture do books provide? Do we want the book industry to survive? Do we want publishers and editors and real writers to continue to exist?These are the questions we should be asking. It can't be a question of value. I pay $25 for a DVD that only takes 2 hours to watch, that I may it watch two or three times. So what is the problem with paying $25 for an Ebook that gives me far more hours of pleasure, more in-depth ideas and more to take away than a movie? We pay $5 for a latte for goodness sake. 

The biggest argument  I have heard in favour of Ereaders, besides the potential price reduction for consumers, is the environmental benefit.  It is true trees will no longer be cut down for books if books are no longer being printed. But the production of plastics is a horrendously polluting industry, will we be saving the environment from harm if we were manufacturing as many Ebooks as there are readers? Especially because they have a limited shelf life (unlike regular books).  ALL electronics inevitably end their short little lives in landfills, useless and dangerously seeping contaminants into the water supply, in places like China. Just look at the photos by Edward Burtynsky (see my last post for links) to see pictures of these landfills. I doubt the Kindle is going to "save" anything except Amazon and it certainly won't "save" books in my view. In fact it could do more harm than we know to publishers, independent booksellers and the perceived value of books.
An interesting discussion is here
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10214054-1.html