Editorial: Solutions-based future lies ahead

 

By Kai Ekholm, professor, Director of the National Library of Finland, Chair of CDNL

Istanbul hosted the recent IFLA President’s meeting in May. We enjoyed many fine presentations that tackled the change of media and libraries. In my own presentation I stressed the solution-based approach.

Why? Libraries are pretty resilient, I hear you say. The basic concept has worked for a thousand years or more. We have passed the test of time – why shouldn’t we pass the test of digital revolution?

The digital revolution is not gradual. It is total. “User demand” means: “I want it all, not some fragments of it. And I want it now when I need it.”

There is a lot to tackle and I start with the fears we all share:

  • Digital paper and tablets replace printed media
  • Young readers abandon the book (for the internet)
  • Respect for the copyright will collapse
  • Google replaces libraries
  • Google will roll over copyrights
  • Publishers will vanish
  • Book production collapses and never evolves back
  • Reading habits will change for ever
  • Book stores will be discounted to death by Amazon
  • Amazon has started to lend books

Most of this is already happening. Media is in the middle of a strong change. Internet has become more popular than TV. People use more time on the internet than watching TV. Tablets will be more popular than printed magazines and books. In Denmark only 30% read their newspapers in print. In 10 years, games have become bigger money makers than films. The Finnish game industry alone needs 600 new employees annually.

Allow me to jump to some conclusions.

By 2030 (or earlier) digitalisation has merged all media to one huge cloud service. This means that our users change as well. There will be a totally new kind of knowledge professionals researching our materials.

How will libraries ever be able to fit into this changing landscape? They need to change into media centres. Otherwise they willl disappear. We need to see past our fears and start acting more business-like, not just pretend that we do so. For a prolific and strategically-oriented library there are new markets to be discovered. The long tail of research resources needs to be digitised. But someone has to pay for it. So new partners need to be found so that we can work this out together.

New content is our strongest asset. There is a growing need for our digitized materials if we act in an ambitious, driven and strategic environment.

Just as our competitors GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) do.

Print (PDF)

Print entire issue (PDF)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *