Not in the Aeroplane?

Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport - From Wikipedia (Public Domain Image from NASA)

According to Time Magazine's Techland blog, the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport has opened an “in-transit library”. What this means is that passengers can check out an iPad (or a physical book, both Chinese and English texts are stocked) and read an ebook while they wait for their flight.

Although the dreaded delayed flight has inspired literary business ventures – most airports will sell magazines and “airport novels” - thrillers by authors like Tom Clancy and James Patterson, which are fast paced, and usually very thick - long enough to keep the reader's interest for an entire flight. Many larger airports – such as Chicago's O'Hare – have small, fully-stocked bookstores in their airports.

Yet this is, as Techland pointed out, the first attempt to provide a free library service in an airport. It has different aims than a bookstore – it's simply providing some sanity to those who are delayed, rather than for a full flight – the iPads and books must stay in the airport

Also, this service is severely limited and problematic. As the post pointed out, 30 iPads isn't anywhere near enough for the traffic that the airport sees. According to Wikipedia, the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport had roughly 25 million people pass through it in 2010 – there is just too much demand for the product based on the current stock. Although the 2000 physical books also help decrease demand, I can still see there being a desperate need of more supply.

None of that would be an issue if patrons could download books to their ebook reader/laptop/phone, but this is not possible. Copyright holders are most likely concerned with the users abusing the privileges of the books, and the possibility of international copyright laws causing a problem is most likely what prevents this.

A good solution for this would be for the airport to adopt a similar system used in public libraries – where users can check out an ebook, and then it deletes itself after a short time. This would not only severely decrease the demand for the airport's iPads among travelers with ebook readers, but make the service much more accessiblee to the general populous.

The fact that this library has been put into a public airport is very interesting. Although it has nowhere near the functionality of a full public library, and has some fairly serious issues that need to be fixed, it's still a great idea, an one that I'd like to see implemented in more airports

Fight the Power!

On Friday, the blog Boing Boing posted a link to a website called "Privatization Beast", including the video that you see above.  The issue that caused this is that a private corporation, LSSI, Library Systems and Solutions, Inc. has bought up several smaller, failing library systems, and have outsourced management to their central offices.

There has been a threat of the  Santa Clara (CA) library system being taken over by LSSI. The New York Times posted an interesting article on the subject, which shows the the city's concern for keeping their library stable in spite of California's budget woes, as well as the patrons and librarians concerns about having the library be run for profit. Also, the library is concerned about loosing staff and services to the LSSI management.

Although the concerns that the libraries have - laid out in both the Privatization Beast video and the New York Times Article - are valid, that's not really the most interesting thing about this issue is how the library responded to it, and their method of raising support.

The video itself is designed to gain attention from social media. It's narrated as if it where a nature documentary, shot like it where a Godzilla movie, and most likely cost less than lunch for the production team. However, it's short, humorous, and makes its point perfectly - that privitizing the libraries will hurt them.

The concern about privatization of the Santa Clara library system is purely a local matter, this video (and the accompanying website) is intended to get national attention - and by gaining attention and supporters, their arguement for keepin the library public has become stronger, and the issue has gained more national prominence.

The use of social media to gain attention/support for a cause is hardly a new phenomenon, but it's interesting to see how it's applied for librarianship