I have posted my extensive commentary on my journal.

To draw on a similar media-shift the music industry has had to learn (and is still trying to learn) how to survive the separation of the value from the delivery medium. As music has become abstracted and digital the old supply chain economics have lost their relavance. Vynyl has become CD and DVD for those who still cling to the notion of thingness. But the mainstream of development and growth in the music industrial complex is the download store and with direct-to-market fringe being the highest-value “green” sector: fewer middle-margins resulting in higher profitibility.

The music business has forked into three tiers for largely distinct sets of consumers. Just to be clear, the comparison I am making is between physicaly located object commodities and decentralised abstracted ones, not between books and CDs. The parallel of “direct-to-market” efforts are all over the ‘Net: from personal blogs to Wikipedia and Google.

The distinction is that these are free and inexpert stores or the stuff. The value of music is opinion based: the buyer knows what they like. The value of the library commodity is often found in authority and veracity, differently subjective measures usually found in the domain of the librarian’s expertise. Which seques nicely …

“Libraries are inherently practitioner-centric” Ross states. I concur. The sticking point is as Jon rightly points out that the publici needs to be marketed this idea. The market economy model breaks down when we lok directly at the value of libraries: they are service institutions, not commodity stores.

Libraries are about connecting the innocently ignorant or naiive with the most appropriate range of solutions to their needs. The current social mandate for libraries and librarianship is that they serve as service centres - a sponsored consulting service - a locus for encountering expertise, not for choosing from what is available on the produce counter today. There is nothing in that mandate which dictates bricks and mortar. The implicit archival repository function of libraries is separable from the informational flow which is the commodity form of the emerging age. In the past the quality and appropriateness of a collection was based on the breadth of the librarians’ experience and the size of the physical facility. No longer.

To change metaphors slightly, the emerging library may serve more as a taxi stand, with the experts getting you safely and efficiently through the maze of navigation to your desired locale in the miasma of the information flow. Or perhaps they are limo drivers, or shuttle pilots.

Or marketing experts. Here. This is the Right Way In. I can Guide You Safely. The Good Stuff is Over Here.

The Mac/PC commercials come to mind. There is Public Information all jumbled and confused and unwashed. Here is the neatly buttoned, pedigreed quality asssured authoritative source. You choose. If you liked this, ask us for something else. We really good at this.

The trick to all of this is identifying how to grab that crucial public mindshare, before we lose the support for public sponsored, non-commercialised access entirely. Time is of the essence.

In addition to the increasingly urgent need to respond to market shifts and pressures as described, libraries also have to fulfill their mandates as publicly funded institutions. These different pressures require investment of finite fiscal and human resources in seemingly contradictory directions.

The perspective gained through an honest look at our prospects as a commodity may offer one of the only means towards an integrated solution addressing both our viability and responsibility. In other words, successfully interpreting and utilizing our commodity advantages would secure the market share we need to survive, so that we can be around to fulfill our social responsibilities.

Libraries are inherently practitioner-centric, which is to say we tend to apply our values to the interpretation and solution of problems. Ideas like these offer a valuable shift, a paradym with our name on it.

Thanks Jon