Would Libraries Exist?

September 15th, 2005

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure to be a part of a wonderful learning experience at the Annual Fall Seminar of the Council of Federal Libraries, which took place in Ottawa, Canada. In addition to having 45 minutes to rant on how to use weblogs and RSS in the federal government (and for elected officials to read about what is being said about them by the citizens who voted them into office), I moderated a panel titled: Current and Future Intellectual Property Issues - Their Impacts on Service Delivery and Community Building. The panel consisted of Virginia Jones from Access Copyright and Russell McOrmond of Digital Copyright Canada.

After each panel member’s presentation, it was my turn to ask a few questions. We discussed Google Print and their “opt-out” method of collection as opposed to “opt-in”, which seems to be the better of the two when dealing with the legalities of copyright and IP (I’m not a lawyer, but it just seems less icky!)

The second question I asked was one that I had recently read about. Considering all of the current legal issues surrounding copyright and IP, if libraries didn’t theoretically exist until 2005 (so, no libraries up until today), would they be able to get off the ground? Could they thrive?

Libraries lend books for “free”. Would the publishers of today be trying to “protect” themselves by fighting the creation of a borrowing system? So, would they fight this new library theory of allowing books that they would normally sell to customers to be given away for “free”. (Libraries are not free - they are paid for by the constituency). Would authors allow this to happen? They would surely stand to lose royalty monies?

This question sparked a debate among the panelists and among some of the audience. The conversation continued in the cab ride to the airport as I shared it with a few colleagues.

I’m not sure what the answer is to this question. I have a gut feeling that the book-lending business that we know of would probably be different than it is now. I don’t know how much different, but booksellers, publishers, and authors who would have been making a certain amount of money every year on book sales would probably not sit back and watch money being taken from their wallets by these “libraries” that want to lend books.

This conversation is a very delicate one and could spark a lengthy debate (or this post will be ignored and placed in the Library Stuff archives without a mention - which is fine too). I just wanted to throw it out there and see what people think on the subject…

…or am I just out of my mind by bringing it up.

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