Darnton and the future of libraries

[Thomas Krichel <krichel@openlib.org>]

> you'll likely hear the more prevailing library view from
> Professor Darnton!

It's a nice way of putting it.

It was an entertaining and thought-provoking talk. Robert 
deserves high marks for lot great stories from the past. That 
should not comes as a surprise since he is a historian by 
training. But he scores low on the question of the future of 
libraries. I detected no strategic thinking whatsoever about that 
issue.  (I think Harvard should rather have hired a tech-savvy 
economist to lead its library. I know a good one ;-)) The 
impression that I left with is that the donating libraries got 
outmaneuvered by Google, because they did not study the fine 
print of the agreement.

I did not get to ask a question, because I was too shy. Maybe 
that's a good thing because my views on the future of academic 
libraries are rather radical. As we move from an economy of 
information to an economy of attention, it makes less and less 
sense for libraries to purchase materials produced by other 
universities. All they do that is subsidizing attention to their 
competitors products. Instead they should make sure that the 
institutions research is out there on the open web, and that is 
stays there (and that's a big job!). And they should support 
discipline wide aggregates of knowledge, again because they drive 
attention. Cuts in the serials and manuscripts budgets should be 
cheered, rather than be decried!

Cheers,

Thomas Krichel                    http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                               RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
                                              skype: thomaskrichel