by frog
Treehugger has a great article comparing some of the latest technology that we hope can contribute to the campaign to save the climate and compares it with some old and often forgotten ideas that could do much the same with out all the technological mucking about. Technology is a great thing and I’m the first to embrace it as a solution to environmental problems where it works but take this case study for example:
Headlined: E-Books
E-books and e-readers have been getting quite a bit of attention on TreeHugger as of late, what will cool advances in e-paper technology and the death spiral of printed newspapers. E-books are very cool and will likely hold a significant place in our culture soon, helping us to cut down on the carbon footprint of the printed word while still maintaining broad home libraries, carrying books while travelling, even college students can put all their textbooks on a lightweight e-reader. And yet, there’s another very green resource that doesn’t get nearly the press it deserves…
Sidelined: The Library
According to our survey, only about 12% of you still use the library. And yet, along with a plethora of various resources, libraries offer the solution to pretty much any book craving we may ever get. Even if your library doesn’t have the title you’re seeking, they are likely hooked up to a network so that a nearby library can send the title right over to you. It may not be a perfect version of the instant gratification our generation craves, but it gets pretty darn close. And it’s all perfectly free.
Read the whole article to find out about:
- home energy monitors vs simply unplugging stuff
- hybrid cars vs bikes
- Electric composting machines vs a pile in the corner of the garden
- Recycling vs avoiding waste
- and more
It strikes me that there are dozens of areas in farming and gardening where we could also apply this principle. With agriculture being such an important influence on our environmental well-being the solutions often lie simply in harnessing sunshine and rain rather than inventing new machines, chemicals and systems to try to repair an unsustainable food production system.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Wed, November 12th, 2008
Tags: e-books, libraries, technology
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Slightly off topic – you should appreciate the libraries in New Zealand. I moved from Wellington to Melbourne, and expected to find bigger and better libraries in Melbourne because Melbourne is so much bigger. The reality is that the libraries here are crap compared to the Wellington Public Library; they’re small and don’t have many books (I guess you can’t expect the descendants of convicts to appreciate books that much)
So use and support your library, otherwise you might lose it.
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RE
>>hybrid cars vs bikes
I would like to see a bike that takes me, my four under 4 grandchildren, two dogs and all the changes of clothes, diapers, food, etc., required for a day out at the beach.!
HEREIN LIES THE PROBLEM WITH the many gross generalisations that are made by so many when trying to persuade us to change – they think only of their own condition, and not that of the great majority.
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samiuela
AGREED
Thanks to some great foresight by Wellington’s Head Librarian (Jane Hill) back in 1996, Wellington now has a library system that is recognised as one of the very best in the world! Jane recognised that Efficiency of workers and effectiveness of processes resulted in more money to spend on fact and fiction in many forms, which would result in more users of the service, which would result in sustained subsidies.
Good eh!
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definitely, libraries in Australia are crap compared to NZ – divide the local population by 10 compared to NZ to work out what size of library to expect. The NSW State Library is almost as good as the Christchurch City one.
Strings, for jobs like that we have public transport. Also small electric cars, because realistically you’re not going to have enough pedal power available to push that much stuff around and by the time you add enough power assist to make it work you’re 90% of the way to an electric car. But a huge chunk of private travel (and much commercial travel) can be done using human power, either walking or cycling.
The three cripplings[1] do mean many people need motorised transport, but even for those people there are better options than owning their own car – public transport, car share and living in sensible locations (public housing on the edge of the CBD being one good approach). My grandparents at one stage moved to a smaller house near the beach for similar reasons to your buying a car. Their approach made them money over the 5 years or so they lived there… you choose.
The olden days solutions are definitely real, as I’m reminded when I visit my parents (early 60′s) who vote National but are surprisingly cheap, I mean “environmentally aware”, because they just don’t like wasting money.
[1] the three cripplings: people often need to drive because they are crippled, either physically though age or disability, mentally through brain damage or socially crippled through drug abuse or poor upbringing which blinds them to the impact of their behaviour on people around them (sociopathy).
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>>Strings, for jobs like that we have public transport. Also small electric cars>>
Sorry, but you can’t take dogs on public transport, nor can I carry a six month old and an 11 month old, marshal a three year old and a four year old, herd two dogs and carry all the gear too! That takes out public Transport.
As for a small electric car! Well. Small doesn’t do it four that lot does it, and the kind of power needed to move us all with electricity would probably incur as big a carbon burden as running on fossil fuel!
(Oh, btw, I am well into my 60s! Your parents w”ho vote National but are surprisingly cheap . . . because they just don’t like wasting money, sound quite normal to me as well. Do they, or you, own a car?)
>>people often need to drive because they are crippled, either physically though age or disability, mentally through brain damage or socially crippled through drug abuse or poor upbringing which blinds them to the impact of their behaviour on people around them (sociopathy(sic)).>>
I am not physically crippled, nor does my age disable me, nor an I mentally incompetent, nor have I abused drugs other than alcohol – though I would guess you don’t count that as a drug – nor did I have a poor upbringing. I am, as they say in the statistic handbooks, NORMAL.
The perspective you invoke is one of the 1950s, when, public transport was all there was for the masses, a trip to the shops usually meant around the corner, vacations were taken within 100 miles of home, food was all local and boiled into submission, the average male drank 140 ounces of beer every night as the pub was the only entertainment within walking distance, women and men had one set of clothes that weren’t used for ‘every day’ and two sets that were, and the average lifestyle and quality of life would be regarded as totally unacceptable by most current New ZEaland welfare recipients! (After all, where would PhillU be without the Internet!)
IS this the type of lifestyle you think we should revert to?
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Um-m-m-m, What happened to the library thread/
I live in a small rural town which, along with 3 other close by small towns, have a co-operative library service therefore we can enjoy a seclection far greater then when we were “alone”.
Being an oldie and a stay at home and a compulsive obsessive reader I adore books and make great use of the library. The library ladies in our town are very lovely extremely helpful women.
I am astounded when reading your article that indicates population density not neccessarilay translating into a great public library service.
By the by, my son lives in a small but highly ranked NZ city and their library plus museum are awesome facilities.
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Joy, I’ve been bemused when cycle touring to find that rural Australian towns often have surprisingly good libraries, at least by Australian standards. I’m not sure what the problem is in Australia, I suspect part of it is the mess they’ve made of funding local and state government, but they just don’t seem to use their libraries much.
One thing I do now I’m here that didn’t work well in NZ is donate paperbacks once I’ve read them (I get sucked into buying new release books sometimes). In NZ they’d only take current new releases and they’d get read to death quickly. Here, they’ll take almost anything. Although, as in NZ, greenie magazines are in evidence (I presume because lots of greenies donate their subscriptions in return for “first borrower” status).
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Strings, I still don’t get it. Owning a car so you can drive to the beach means you’d have to go there a heck of a lot before it’s cheaper than taxis. Owning a dog just means you’re keeping a noxious pest as a pet, and taking it to the beach is nothing to be proud of.
You might want to go back to that statistics textbook and remind yourself of the difference normal in the statistical sense and normal in common language. Suffice to say that being just like everyone else is not an achievement and is definitely not an excuse for not helping out around the place. “no-one else does it” does not wash, especially when it’s not true.
I’ve never owned a car, but then I’m only 40 so there’s still the possibility that I will be forced into a situation where I’ll need one. My parents do, but then being 60′s they’re part of the trasher generation so what do you expect?
I’m amused that you can’t spell sociopathy, BTW. Or is that just resistance to research – just because it’s not in the spill chequer doesn’t mean it isn’t a word (the converse is also, unfortunately, true).
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I must be bucking the trend – library fines are still an integral part of my budget, & will continue to be, so long as I keep doing research, interloaning stuff, and forgetting to take my dvd’s back to Welli Central Library on time …
May I recommend the excellent selection of graphic novels, and the zine collection at WCC Public Library, which can offer hours of well-drawn enjoyment, and even includes works by local Welli cartoonists?
Aucklanders – get onto your librarians & start requesting services such as we have in Welli…
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Moz said
>>
Owning a dog just means you’re keeping a noxious pest as a pet,
>>
I have no more to say to this person.
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As much as I like public libraries (social, smell of books, etc) they will fast become redundant. Their reason for being – accessibility – is disappearing, and most people do not read books.
>>Owning a dog just means you’re keeping a noxious pest as a pet,
Good grief. Hard to know what to say to that, really.
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BluePeter
I would have agreed with you back in 1995. Now I have serious doubts.
The difference is librarians and their ability to find the things I really want. Google is good, but often returns a few million results, and many of the things people who do real learning want to find are not on the Internet anyway. I generally agree regarding the simple stuff, like novels, music, newspapers, magazines, etc., but the reference and search facilities of a good library can’t be beaten in my mind.
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Sure, librarians will always be needed, because there will always be information that requires sifting and the value collated and extracted. But they will be working in specialist libraries and information centers.
The economics of public libraries don’t work. Here are the costs of borrowing a book in London (the loan is free to the user, but this is the cost to the ratepayer)
Camden £11.50
Greenwich £7.14
Hackney £10.07
Hammersmith £6.63
Islington £10.46
Kensington £8.54
Lambeth £10.29
Lewisham £5.77
Southwark £6.89
Tower Hamlets £9.90
Wandsworth £3.64
Westminster £5.91
That is sometimes twice the cost of buying the book!
Combine this with the fact that knowledge resides in networks, not books.
The utility of the public library is disappearing fast. And the sad fact is, people no longer read books much.
Don’t get me wrong – I love public libraries.
But they are doomed.
They might survive if they reorient into becoming social places. i.e. story telling for kids, meeting places, public information, etc. This is already happening.
But the library function, as we know it, will eventually disappear.
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Perhaps Moz is the noxious pest ?
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BP
The cost of borrowing the book is reduced every time the book is borrowed and the cost of individuals BUYING the book are multiplied by every person reading it.
The value to the community of having the books available to readers who cannot afford to buy books themselves is not measured.
The value to the community of having a repository of information that is not dependent on individual title choices is not measured either
(sigh) Money is NOT the measure of all things.
I am not so pessimistic that communities will close their libraries.
BJ
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No, that’s the cost of EACH time it is borrowed. It includes overhead, wages, rent, etc.
The cost of the information contained in books is fast heading to zero.
The value in libraries, going forward, lies in community, not lending.
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BP
Somehow I doubt that the math is done correctly given that result. What community uses rental accommodation for a library? The marginal cost of housing each book is near zero. Providing for the people who come to read and borrow is more expensive.
If you regard this as a matter of information access you are correct, the net dominates… if you regard it as a matter of COMMUNITY access the cost to the community of removing free access to information to everyone is (eventually) your democracy. To have an informed electorate, the information must be available to all.
In other words, the value was NEVER in the lending itself.
Both approaches though, limit the library function to information while it is also a cultural prop for the society, as you allude to.
Another question is whether the cultural information and background provided in the books in that library can be managed in any way OTHER than lending books? I have never seen a satisfactory substitute for a good book. Never seen any electronic equivalent that was as relaxing. Nor is it possible for me to entertain the idea of having so broad a selection available to read.
My plan for retirement* was to spend it going to the library… and here you are telling me it’s going to be taken away.
*Actual plan for retirement is that I won’t.
I don’t think the money based approach measures anything useful here and I have to doubt that it is used correctly in the event.
Which is what I would have to say. I freely admit to some bias in this regard. I imagine that how I feel in a library is much the same as a devout believer feels when in a cathedral
BJ
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bj, it’s from a study on the economics of libraries in London.
The cost of each book isn’t the issue.
The expensive bit is the labour, the power, the rent (it’s still a cost – the council must factor in the cost of other uses for that building, and the rent they could receive), etc. The total cost of loaning someone a book – just once – can be up to £10.46. It would be cheaper to give someone £5 and send them round to the bookstore to buy themselves a copy.
Information is fast heading to free now. Google provides the model. Information surrounded by advertising. It’s the same model as TV. TV killed the theatre in the same way.
Will books disappear? No. Well, no time soon. As you rightly point out, a screen is a poor substitute for a book. However, like the MP3 (lower quality) is killing the CD (higher quality), the utility of the free digital book will often trump the utility of the expensive, printed book.
>>I feel in a library is much the same as a devout believer feels when in a cathedral
Yes, and that’s what they’ll become. They’ll be around, but more as a cultural artifact. And just as churches have problem with funding, so too will libraries.
Unless they change into something else…
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BluePeter Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 11:33 am
> The expensive bit is the labour, the power, the rent (it’s still a cost – the council must factor in the cost of other uses for that building, and the rent they could receive), etc. The total cost of loaning someone a book – just once – can be up to £10.46. It would be cheaper to give someone £5 and send them round to the bookstore to buy themselves a copy.
The library also provides access to reference books, which by definition are lever issued, and many of them are very expensive books. The study you refer to clearly divides the cost of providing access to them between the books issued. And some of the reference books are rare books you couldn’t get from a bookshop, kept for serious research. Wellington Public Library has a reasonable collection of rare books, and Dunedin Public Library has a huge one. And non-fiction books in general are more expensive than fiction books, and get used in the library as often as they get issued. So, the cost of lending fiction books, which are the cheapest and the most often borrowed, is a fraction of the figure you mentioned.
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Yo BP
Good analysis, and on the button. For comparison Wellington Public Libraries (Council Department – seven branches) have a ‘cost per issue’ of just $0.38 (including rent.
Your comment that “They might survive if they reorient into becoming social places. i.e. story telling for kids, meeting places, public information, etc.” is also right on the button for wellington, with a few additions. There is an EXTENSIVE audio visual collection, that is added to every day, there are also areas set aside for RIGHT NOW, when year 11, 12 & 13 students are cramming for their exams and many need a place with facilities and peers to do that well. The Main Library (in the city) was anecdotal the first in the world to include both a cafe and bookstore INSIDE its walls; both of which have proven very popular. You’ll also see it has a fantastic web site http://www.wcl.govt.nz/ that has been in place since 1997 and is about to be significantly upgraded to make it more a web2.5 than current state.
The big issue for a library is the number of “issues” they make, as this is where the cost:service ratio is calculated which drives the accountants to look for savings. WCC agreed to a cost per visitor measure years ago, on the basis that the large reference library was a big part of the library’s service that was not incorporated into the performance measures as they stood. After ‘manipulating’ this as the key performance measure, Jane has been able to justify hundreds of initiatives to increase the ‘gate count’ as well as boosting the customer ‘satisfactory and above’ levels to over 98%.
AS I said earlier, and as you are also saying, Libraries will die if they don’t recognise the challenge of technology advances and stay at their bleeding edge as far as thinking goes. I am lucky to live in a city that has a Head Librarian that knows and pioneered that recognition.
Happy Daze
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Wellington Library is a great example.
I remember when it was built, a lot of people complained that it wasn’t like the old library. The old library was their idea of a library – a quiet collection of books.
Wellington library is a social space. And that’s the key. That is the competitive advantage of a public library.
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>>The library also provides access to reference books, which by definition are lever issued, and many of them are very expensive books.
Yes, but those are exactly the type of books that are trumped by the internet. Using the reference book as a metric to validate libraries isn’t going to wash for much longer.
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