NEWS FEATURE
Exaggerated ebook narrative could be public libraries’ long covid
Despite big rises in ebook lending during lockdown, data clearly shows digital didn’t come anywhere near filling the massive hole left in physical lending. The research by the University of Strathclyde comes with a warning that an exaggerated narrative about the success of the public library ‘digital pivot’ could lend weight to misguided policies in the future.
A YouGov survey and data gathered by FOI from library services across the UK both show a yawning gap between what Covid lockdowns took away and what digital replaced. The survey, commissioned by researchers from the University of Strathclyde, showed that more than half (57 per cent) of UK adults “disagree that digital services are an adequate replacement for traditional libraries”.
The opinion poll is supported by data from UK library services, gath- ered through FOI requests, which confirm that the fall in physical lend- ing was far from matched by rises in digital lending.
The information is part of an AHRC funded study by Dr David McMenemy, Professor Ian Ruthven, and Dr Elaine Robinson of Strath- clyde’s Department of Computer & Information Sciences. The full report is due to be published later this year. David McMenemy, now a Senior Lecturer in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow, said: “We can highlight the issues by looking at cities like Glasgow and Birmingham. In Glasgow in the last full year before Covid (2018/19) there were over 1.7 million physical loans. In lockdown that went down to 116,000. That is 1.6 million physical books that were not borrowed. In that same period ebook loans in Glasgow went up from 60,000 to 136,000. So, even with a more than 100 per cent increase in ebook loans, around 1.5million books were not issued in that city during the 2020/21 year.
“Similarly in Birmingham, physical January-February 2022
book loans dropped from 1.8 million in 2018/19 down to 125,000 in 2020/21. Again, ebook loans barely dented the 1.7 million hole, rising from 18,000 loans to 50,000 over the same period. The pattern is the same in rural areas too. So we’re looking at tens of millions of books that weren’t read in 2020/21 across the UK. That’s a significant issue for the library profession: that is people perhaps not developing in a multitude of ways.”
Dangerous focus
“The rise in e-book usage was a good lock- down story for libraries. The reality is it’s from a very low level, and this presents a challenge for advocacy, particularly when some councils might use it to justify not reopening or moving more services to digital only.
“Because we’ve been dealing with Covid for two years it’s easy to forget that it is an event we are unlikely to see again in our lifetimes. We just need to be careful about hitting the wrong advocacy button as a result. Celebrate the e-book growth, by all means, but don’t overlook that big picture.”
Profession
David says professionals need to be open and clear about what has happened. “The danger is that talking up the genuine positive growth in e-books could be misused. The mindset might be that low physical lending data may be used against you. We might be in a scenario where library managers may not be aware it wasn’t just their authority where physical borrowing plummeted, and don’t see that presenting ebooks as a saviour won’t help their service. Because these huge drops in physical loans during covid show the opposite of what they might have used to
– they actually demonstrate the value of the physical book and physical space.”
Marketing?
“More ebooks could likely have been lent. We don’t know what waiting lists there were for example, and a lot of publishers don’t make ebooks available to libraries.
“During the lockdown, compelled use of digital was something the pop- ulation got used to in their lives, but it looks like only one fifth of normal library users were using the library apps.
“People didn’t have a choice – it was use digital or mostly nothing, yet they still didn’t use library digital services in significant numbers. “Maybe libraries haven’t market- ed the services enough? Perhaps it provides support for the idea of a national library campaign – spend all the money in one place to market the digital. Perhaps libraries aren’t using their collective weight to work better with ebook vendors and products and promote that to the public. What is clear is that people didn’t choose the digital, even when they didn’t have any other choice. So, whatever the key reasons for that are, whether it’s fear of technology, or lack of knowl- edge of the services, or the desire for the physical library space, all this deserves much more research.”
For details of the survey and FOI data visit the project’s website at
https://newnormal.cis.strath.ac.uk/
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 15
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
