The Viability of the Information Institution

I have been mulling this over for some time now and thanks to a recent conversation with my friend Ross and another with my friend Kevin, I think I have this gelled:

Where information is understood to be, or treated as, a commodity, the perceived value of information institutions like libraries is diminished or dissolved.

If I am correct, it means that the viability of public libraries is definitely in question. Specialised business or professional libraries will face many of the same challenges, but it may take longer for them to see some of the impact because their specialized information is more resistant to commodification.

Commodities are undifferentiated products, usually raw materials or agricultural production, where it’s hard to distinguish my bauxite as being somehow superior to your bauxite.

If information is easily available to me in all manner of mediums and in all kinds of contexts, why do I need a library? If I can expect that information surrounds me and informs me and is essentially a given like air, then why on earth do I need to spend tax money on what it may offer?

It is this very situation that every producer or distributor of commodity product will eventually face as any market matures. And libraries, which have traditionally been distributors of information and information access points will find that people understand them less and less and will feel no urgency to support them, especially where public resources are concerned.

What is different about getting information from a library than getting it from a website I trust on my Blackberry?

If I don’t find unique value in what a library does, then will I believe the assertion that “Libraries Change Lives?” I think not, which is bad for any kind of operation public or private. Your users need to perceive value. And assertions aren’t going to do.

Operating in Commodity Environments

This opens the discussion about operating in commoditized contexts and how any organization should conduct its activity therein.Generally commodity markets are dominated by very large aggregated businesses or operations that have the wherewithal to compete on high volume and low price. The dependent organizations in logistics and shipping and sales and marketing essentially are at the mercy of these large businesses.In spite of this situation small companies in steel, agriculture, and natural resource production, to name a few, compete and thrive. How do they do this?

I think it’s because they practice a few things extremely well: they limit their scope and market, they offer some unique advantage over the usual commodity, and they communicate this very well and with persistence and clarity.The rise of green and organic business focuses on these very things. Products like potatoes and corn are differentiated by clear messaging: no chemicals, no GMO, short transportation chains, high nutrition, local focus. Combined they deliver a value proposition that consumers are very responsive to. This means higher prices and higher margins and a chain of added value in spite of the overall environment. It also means a great deal of opportunity and success for distributors and sellers of such products at all levels in the supply chain.

Note how the entire proposition ties together. The entire value idea is predicated on certain things: that their are no chemical fertilizers, that genetic modifications are not allowed, that the transportation cost is small and it’s impact is minimized. All of these things are social positions with economic and political consequences, yet the success of these businesses relies entirely on taking this position and committing to it from inception to product delivery.

Successful related businesses like food delivery companies and organic wholesale distributors, and food product manufacturers benefit too and also predicate their unique offerings based on these features.So it’s evident by analogy that libraries must analyse their position in the supply chain of information and formulate some set of unique offerings that are perceived to have value by the people they seek to serve.The very choice of these things serves to limit their market scope, which actually gives them a real advantage when offering their products to people. They don’t have to compete in the same volume as other commodity producers and handlers. They don’t have to reach everybody in the same way. They are not relegated to being invisible like many natural resource companies are. They don’t have to settle for a harrowing game of razor-thin profits. Just the very act of choosing this set of things automatically gives them a great deal of viability.

So again, this suggests that in a commodity situation, libraries stand to gain a great deal by choosing their role and focus and identifying exactly the unique nature and value of their offerings.Making these choices also dictates how a library might go about delivering its services in a valuable way. Many parts of the ‘green produce’ supply chain operate as one might expect and are really no different than their non-green counterparts. Things are grown and harvested and processed in some way and shipped and shipped again. What does differ is the amount and method by which any one of these steps happen. transport distances are shorter which means geographical allegiances and time to market become major drivers in the success of these businesses. I submit that if the situation was analysed there are correspondent things that libraries might discover about themselves.

Operational conduct is also abetted by new technologies in commodity markets, and that is something that libraries are in a fair position to capitalize on already as many libraries are already offering a range of digital services, RFID circulation techniques and more. Generally these are user facing services, and I think internal tools could be developed to help libraries operationally in a far greater way than at present.

Communicating Unique

Another critical aspect of delivering service and product in a commodity situation, is the effectiveness of communication.

Again, initial choices define the work that needs to be done. Just as the green production chain focuses on production choices like no GMO, the communications mandate is to express that fact as a value to potential customers. Initially it’s simply drawing attention the that fact, but soon after it becaomes a message about real whole food improving your life without any unknown or unintended consequences. The communication objectives are defined and kept clear by the narrow focus of the activity.

Communications in these environments also can focus on things other than statistical data and enumeration. Libraries live and die on statistics, but I am not convinced it must be so, or if it must be, that the same set of statistics need to be used.

The focus on the things that are different, and thereby valuable, becomes the greatest communication content. And when delivering unique ideas, it is a far easier task to engage people, get reaction, make an impression than delivering the same old statistical information. It also make original expression the norm which further distinguishes your situation, and set you far apart from other commodity producers and handlers.

Libraries do not have a great deal of expertise in this, and it seems to me to be generally denigrated within librarianship. In my experience, communications functions have served primarily to support programming activity at the expense of stratgic relevance and branding opportunity and also a the expense of internal communication.

There is a great deal of opportunity here for libraries to get the news out that they’re not playing the commodity game

Experience My Commodity

The PC industry experienced commditization in relatively short order, and the general swing from IBM PC to generically supplied parts integration producers created a culture of sales by specification and focus on the teated performance of component parts. Attempts by Dell and Gateway (large PC commodity aggregators and distributors) to penetrate the lifestyle market through retail failed abjectly. Their very nature as companies dedicated to competing on slim margins and impressive price to performance ratios worked against them when trying to engage consumers in their hearts and living rooms. Sony has had a much easier time of it, stying in retail than these two corporations, and Apple Inc, even more success by focusing entirely on their users experience of every device they make and how it is sold and packaged.

In a commodity situation, the uniqueness of your value proposition cannot be overstated enough and simple advertising and marketing activities will not suffice. The entire chain of experience by your user, customer or patron must convey that uniqueness. The experience that a user has is opening a box, or reading the manual or even that there is a manual all are telling things about the thinking behind that item. In a world of commodity PCs, Dell needed to purchase Alienware in order to get any panache or indiviuality into their product line at all. And Alienware, who were in the same business as Dell, building PC systems on-demand for their customers) had succeeded in the commodity market only because they chose a focused market (gamers) to serve with focused products (high performance gaming machines) in a unique way (Alien allusions and product design and marketing), in spite of cost.

Apple reatil stores thrive and continue to expand their operations because they aren’t retail stores. They’re purchasing exeriences, with products on offer that let you get the features and functionality that other commodity PC and electronics manufacturers offer, but as part of a unique and positive experience.

I think that libraries would do well to study and adopt these crucial lessons.

Making the LeapIn most circumstances, the entire commodity proposition that libraries will confront will be trying, and publicly funded institutions will be hard pressed to change their culture and their outlook to stand out and be valuable in these contexts.

I would venture that by-in-large public libraries will find themselves on the defensive in upcoming years and will be working with shrinking budgets and ever diminishing public interest and support. And while I have used private sector models to draw my analogy, I don’t believe that public-private-partnerships are the solution. Rather I believe that design thinking with an eye to creating unique value and delivering it from promise to experience holds the key to library survival in an increasingly commoditized environment.