The Digital Flip That Matters

This past Wednesday, many notable Internet sites, including Wikipedia, Wordpress, Mozilla, and others, went “dark” in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) under consideration in the U.S. House and Senate respectively. These acts are intended to better control piracy of intellectual content online. The collective darkening was designed to broaden awareness of the legislation, which many deemed potentially harmful to the Internet as a free form of expression. Setting aside the merits and demerits of the actual bills in question, the coverage of the event to me was notable for shining a spotlight on the challenges libraries face in the new digital world. One example was the headline in a story published by Inside Higher Ed read “Libraries: A Paper Wikipedia.” What does that headline say to you?

For many years now, libraries have pursued a “digital flip” in our collections. This began first in the area of serials acquisition. Where once upon a time we purchased a paper journal subscription that may have carried an additional fee for electronic access, publishers and libraries began to convert to a model where the principal cost of access was for a digital subscription, with a small incremental fee for libraries wishing to continue receiving a copy in print. This model “flipped” the primary acquisition model for serials to be digital, and has accompanied large and sustained initiatives to reduce print journals in most libraries. The digital flip is now reaching a critical mass in the area of monograph acquisition as ebook circulations at many public libraries have skyrocketed in recent months thanks to easy availability of ereaders. This trend will pick up speed rapidly as libraries will seek to acquire digital rights to monographs first, and for some select titles may elect to also receive print.

This transition from print to digital resources is not new news. It is a good thing for information access and something most libraries and librarians see as important for the future of information and library service. Yet the headline and tone of the article from Inside Higher Ed is a trigger suggesting that a bigger digital flip is happening, or indeed has occurred. Wikipedia is no longer considered a digital version of a library (or collection of library resources). Libraries are instead considered paper versions of Wikipedia.

I don’t want to read too much into one headline, though the fact that it was written at all (and by a journal published within academe) reflects a view that libraries are not seen to be cutting-edge or relevant as online tools like Wikipedia. The quote from student Bobby Specht of Kansas State University summarizes clearly our challenge:

“Everyone’s like, ‘If Wikipedia is gone, I don’t even know how to research anymore,’ ” he said. “I think encyclopedias have been removed from our idea of ways to find information.”

In the words of Mr. Specht a multi-faceted digital flip is evident … on a practical level from the print encyclopedias he references above to Wikipedia, but also on a broader level from libraries to the Internet as the primary destination for research assistance. That is the digital flip that matters most, for it belies the relatively poor job libraries have done in telling our story, marketing our services, and innovating to deliver our high-quality information services through easy-to-use tools that can compete online with other information providers. We cannot wait for Wikipedia outages to remind users that Wikipedia is but one tool of thousands available to them through their libraries. Libraries are not paper Wikipedias … they are much broader, deeper, and richer than that (and much, if not most information within libraries is not even on paper anymore). We need to seek much greater control of our story and our tools as we seek to build and reinforce a strong presence at the intellectual heart of our communities. We should ensure that students see Wikipedia as a useful and valuable tool in a well-stocked toolbox of information resources, and that they have the skills to use these tools to craft meaningful and relevant scholarship. The digital flip that matters has arrived and we need to embrace it and lead our communities forward to understand together the power and opportunity of digital information delivery.