Of books in libraries and people who don’t use them

I was recently invited to give a talk as part of the centenary celebrations of the Colombo Public Library. I accepted with alacrity because libraries have educated me more than schools. But then I realized that I had not used the Colombo Public Library since the 1970s or any other library in Sri Lanka since my return in 2002. 

I was a heavy user of libraries in Colombo in the 1960s and 1970s. I continue to be a heavy user of information. What happened in the past five decades is the internet. It should inform our thinking about library funding and donations to libraries.

Scarcity of attention

In 1971, several years before he received the Nobel Prize, Herbert Simon wrote: 

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Back in the 1960s, information was so scarce that users willingly spent time in reference libraries. Now the world’s information is at our fingertips; what is scarce is attention, in other words, the time to consume information. We’re living today in an “attention economy.”

When I was growing up I didn’t have money to buy books, so I spent time in libraries. Now I have the money to buy books. The problem now is tsundoku - the name given by the Japanese to the syndrome of acquiring books but not reading them. 

Why look up books when the internet gives me an esoteric term to describe my malady? Why go to the reference room of a library when software “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” exists and is being continually improved? 

Rethinking libraries and books

Books are information embedded in a particular medium. For the most part, what matters is the information that is organized in an easily retrievable manner, not the medium. A library is not a storehouse for books. It is a specialised institution that should proactively address the information needs of people. 

Digitisation of catalogues, which is the heart of the library, has already been done, at least at the Colombo Public Library. But that is not enough. What is needed is digitalisation. Digitisation is about converting and recording data. Digitalisation is about developing processes and changing workflows to improve systems.

To use a catalogue (digitised or manual), one must physically come to the library during open hours. Using the author, title, or subject pathways, she has to locate the desired book. It may or may not be on the shelf. If it’s not, the journey is wasted. This is how frequent users are converted to infrequent users; and infrequent users to non-users. 

In a digitalised library, the catalogue can be searched from anywhere, ideally from a phone. At any time of the day. Not only will the user be informed of its status; she may reserve the book. The constraints of space and time have been overcome, at least with the search function. Once this first step is completed, the user can go to the library and pick up the book.

Why should it be a book that has to be picked up and returned? Why can the information not be supplied digitally? Why not information embedded in other media? These questions need to be kept in mind, even if the focus is on improving access to books at the start. 

Search behaviours are indicative of information needs. If the library deploys some form of artificial intelligence on search data, it is possible to make suggestions. Those who have bought books online or used YouTube have experienced this. 

The person who searched for a particular book in the library, gets not only the ability to reserve that particular book, but also suggestions on what other titles he may find useful. That is how infrequent users are converted to frequent users.

Why have this 

conversation now?

The centenary talk had made me think about libraries, books, and information. But the trigger was the announcement that the books in Mangala Samaraweera’s personal collection were being donated to several libraries, at least in one case to be used in its reference section (users would have to read them within the library). I was thinking of the conversation I would have had with Mangala about how we should be managing books and libraries in the 21st Century. I can imagine what he would have said about his books sitting forlorn in a reference room.