Monthly Archives: February 2020

Languages Without Borders

Celebrating, protecting and sharing linguistic and cultural diversity helps nurture unity and social cohesion. It builds communities with connections – despite geographic borders.

With digital technology making such connections easier than ever before, sharing a language can mean sharing cultural touchstones and works of creativity that strengthen these transnational bonds.

The UN has designated “language without borders” as the theme of International Mother Language Day 2020. This means protecting language diversity, while also celebrating language as a force for sustainable development and peace.

I’d like to use this as a jumping-off point to explore on how cultural expressions can link those in language groups together, building an understanding beyond borders. And of course, let’s share ideas for the place of libraries within this.

Culture in the Digital Environment

Since the emergence of the digital environment as a major new field for culture and creativity, it has been recognized that language groups form a sort of common “digital territory”. For the most part, this isn’t defined by nationality. Rather, people can consume a diverse range of digital content – be it news, information, culture, or entertainment – within their language groups, regardless of its country of origin.

In the digital age, physical borders are no longer as significant as languages… for example, the most visited website in Spain is YouTube, especially for content in Spanish or dubbed into Spanish that is not from Spain, but from other Spanish-speaking regions.

– Culture in the Digital Environment: Assessing Impact in Latin America and Spain, Octavio Kulesz, UNESCO Policy and Research, 2017.

These “digital territories” can fast-track intercultural communication, sharing and understanding. Exposure to creative content – in an environment where this content is enabled, accessible and discoverable – can have a far-reaching impact.

Protecting Diversity, Promoting Diversity

Language in this digital environment can be a positive force for sustainable development for all people, but to do so must ensure a diverse range of cultural expression, reflecting the multitude of the world’s languages.

We should not forget that despite concerns about the dominance of certain companies, the digital environment is designed to be a great tool for pushing back on cultural hegemony, in that it democratises content creation and dissemination. The “means of production” on a digital platform have a much lower barrier of entry than more traditional media – you could need nothing more than a smart phone and an internet connection.

The question, then, is how can we help ensure that creators have space to make content in many different languages, and how can this content be accessible and discoverable by fellow members of their common “digital territory”?

What about Libraries?

This is where libraries come into the equation.

Making digital materials available to wider audiences through online portals or cooperative systems is a good start, creating a pool of source materials, and a critical mass of relevant content. Putting a special emphasis on minority, endangered and indigenous languages in the materials that are digitized and shared is essential.

What more are libraries doing to act as incubators of diverse cultural expressions: art-making, theatre, music, design, video games and coding?

In some cases, libraries are acting as spaces which provides local creators with the room, equipment, and training to create and share their own cultural expressions.

In others, libraries take on the role of a cultural centre, a space which celebrates and shares cultural expressions made in your local languages.

Perhaps most centrally, libraries can exist as places where the community can access content from their language group. This could be through exhibitions, collections, inter-library lending or the possibility to get online and exist in their language group’s “digital territory”.

Defining the place libraries exist in this digital environment is also important, and then designing programmes around creating, encouraging, celebrating and sharing cultural expression – that represent your communities’ languages – is a way to help link communities to their culture and to one another.

Buy, Borrow or Both? What the Boersenverein’s Survey of eLending Does and Doesn’t Tell Us

Last year, the German book industry organisation – the Boersenverein – published research commissioned from GfK on library eLending, including comparative analysis between physical and eBook buyers and borrowers as regards their age, situation, and habits.

This has been promoted by the Boersenverein as evidence that library eLending harms publishing, and that there is no need to expand the offer of eBooks in libraries. It has started to be used internationally as well as a counter-argument to library efforts to improve eLending terms and offers.

But is this really what the evidence presented says? This blog looks at the data, both from the fuller German and shorter English editions.

 

Who Borrows?

The study aims to provide extensive figures about the people who borrow physical books and eBooks, providing a breakdown between people who only borrow one type, and those who borrow both.

This finds that less than 10% of library users only borrow eBooks – an estimated 900 000 according to the analysis. Three quarters only borrow physical books and the rest – around 1.2 million – combine.

Library use for borrowing physical books is most common among people with higher incomes, and with more education (although a higher share of people with only a high-school education use libraries than those with a university education).

There is a similar story for eBooks (although obviously we are talking about small numbers), except in that use of eLending is highest among the richest and the poorest income groups, with only those in the middle borrowing less.

Finally, the study looks in particular at age groups, finding that borrowers both of physical and eBooks tend to be younger than buyers. 29% of physical book borrowers and 27% of eBook borrowers are under 30, while the figures for buyers are 20% in both categories. The trend is reversed for the over-60s.

The analysis leaps to the conclusion that that library users can pay for books, and implies that they shouldn’t be borrowing. Yet this does not hold water. There has been extensive research into the role of library lending in helping people discover new books, and indeed trying a book out before they choose to buy, while the results of the analysis imply that younger borrowers turn into older buyers.

Put simply, the only thing that the survey really shows is that book buying and borrowing go together – something that has been known for a long time.

 

Borrow or Buy?

The research then looks into the behaviour of physical and eBook borrowers in Germany. The headline identified by the Boersenverein is the suggestion that 43% of users of library eLending have reduced or stopped altogether their buying of eBooks since they could start borrowing.

This would be a strong argument, except for the fact that in the following question – what would users of the library eLending offer do if this were to disappear, a full 48% would either buy fewer eBooks, or buy none at all. The analysis does not break down between the share of people who would completely stop buying, and those who had never bought.

These results are certainly confusing, but what they don’t represent is an argument for trying to restrict or harm library eLending. Indeed, it seems that restricting or preventing library eLending would also have a net negative effect on sales of other media.

The study also looks at levels of contentment with the offer of eBooks for lending, and the timeliness of their availability. It finds that 75% of users are happy with the variety on offer and 68% with the speed at which they are available. This is arguably a testimony to the efforts of libraries to provide books – often at very high prices or on restrictive terms. It does not explore whether a wider range of books, available more quickly, could help attract more people into reading.

Finally, the analysis uses the answers to direct questions to suggest that people who borrow books in general, if given a choice, will borrow rather than buying. It also suggests that borrowers in general do not feel like they are in a situation where they can’t afford to buy. Clearly, the questions are leading – will people openly admit to being too poor to buy? What would they have said if they believed that authors should be paid?. Moreover, this doesn’t fit with the evidence that borrowers are in fact more likely to buy books than the rest of the population.

 

Conclusions

Overall, the study is relatively transparent in its objectives from the beginning, and so already needs to be taken with some scepticism. There are also oddities – the whole study assumes that over 10 million people are borrowing from libraries, but German Library Association figures show that only 7.35 million have library cards.

It makes a lot of noise about one or two results, while ignoring others, and makes some big – and unfounded – assumptions that have rightly been challenged by the German Library Association (DBV) in its own response.

It gives no attention to the question of the costs to libraries of acquiring and lending eBooks, although it is to be hoped that there would be consensus that freeing up libraries to expand collections and offer services is desirable.

Fundamentally, the parallels between book buying and book borrowing tendencies across income groups and levels of education – and the fact that book borrowers are also more enthusiastic buyers – only seems to underline that libraries and bookshops can work in synergy.

However, as the DBV points out, this only brings out an uncomfortable truth – one that the study overlooks – that reading (either though buying or borrowing) is less common among those with low incomes and low education.

The real conclusion, perhaps, is the need to do more to reach out to groups who may need support with literacy. Indeed, with 6.2 million adults in Germany struggling to understand texts, there is a real need to focus on whatever works in helping build reading skills, something that a properly supported library system, freed from unnecessary restrictions, is well placed to help with.

Library Stat of the Week #5: Globally, Finland and Macao have the highest average public library visits per person per year, while Oceania is the highest placed region

Even as the online world plays an ever more important role in our lives, there has been a growing recognition of the need for physical spaces where people can feel welcome and mix with others.

Public and community libraries offer just such a space, with dedicated staff and without any profit motive. As such, they can also be great platforms for partnerships, as well as shop-windows for other public services.

But how often are people visiting, on average? Library Map of the World data makes it possible to calculate this for 81 countries for at least one of the last three years.

We took figures for the number of visits to public libraries for the last year when data was available, and divided them by 2018 population figures from the World Bank.

What does this tell us?

Globally, Finland and Macao, China had the highest average public library visits per person per year (9.03 and 8.51), while Oceania is the highest placed region (5.02 visits per person per year), and North America the second (4.16).

Encouragingly, countries from four different regions appeared in the top ten (Europe, North America, Asia and Oceania).

Graph showing number of visits per person per year to public libraries (top ten countries/territories)

These figures are likely to be conservative. For some countries, figures for numbers of visits are likely to be underestimates. We can expect, therefore, than in many countries, the number of recorded visits will rise. Furthermore, these figures are only for 81 countries – Oceania for example only has two reporting countries.

Finally, the number of visits per head doesn’t tell us everything. We can’t tell what people are doing in the library – how long they are spending there, what they are doing. Indeed, one of the strengths of libraries is the freedom given to users to choose how to use it.

However, once again, these figures can hopefully start a discussion, and demonstrate the levels of use that are possible.

 

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download key library data in order to carry out your own analysis! See our other Library Stats of the Week! We are happy to share the data that supported this analysis on request.

 

Developing partnerships to achieve global library goals: an interview with Jason Evans, Wikimedian in residence at the Wales National Library.

What do you do as a Wikimedian in residence?

Traditionally a Wikimedian in Residence focuses on increasing the quality and quantity of content on Wikipedia and its sister projects, such as Wikimedia Commons (for openly licenced media) and Wikidata (for linked open data). When I first started as a Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Wales the goal was pretty simple. Firstly I would run events and workshops aimed at improving the quality of content about Wales and its people on Wikipedia, in English and Welsh. Secondly, I was tasked with sharing the library’s digital assets on an open licence via Wikimedia Commons so that they could be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles.

As the project evolved we began to collaborate with the Welsh Government on thematic projects aimed at increasing the availability of information in Welsh on Wikipedia, as part of their long term strategy for the language. We have worked to improve content about health and medicine, pop music, Welsh people and literature, and we are currently working with the education department to identify and develop Welsh language content needed by school children to support their studies.

We have also increasingly engaged in sharing our catalogue data via Wikidata as linked open data.

 

How did you get interested in this job?

Before I took on my role as a Wikimedian I worked as a research assistant in the maps and manuscripts department. My first experience of editing Wikipedia came after an article I had published was used as the bases for a Wikipedia article. I was really impressed by the speed, efficiency and accuracy of Wikipedia editors in taking reliable peer reviewed information and making it available to all on Wikipedia. And I was amazed at the ease with which I was able to edit and make improvements to the article. It was shortly after this that the Library, in partnership with Wikimedia UK, advertised for the post of Wikimedian in Residence.

 

What are the biggest challenges in your work?

I’ve been incredibly lucky to have great support from the National Library. However, any disruption to long established norms will obviously present challenges. The public engagement side of my work doesn’t really present any major problems but sharing data openly definitely requires care.

Wikimedia projects all follow an ‘open’ ethos. All the content created on Wikipedia, or media, and data shared on these platforms must be openly licenced in order to remove barriers to reuse. ‘Open’ in this instance means more than simply making something available for free, it means removing restrictions on reuse. Content must be downloadable and licenced for free use for any purpose including commercial reuse. It’s a fantastic approach, which is being adopted by more and more cultural institutions in order to give their users the best possible value, to simplify work streams and to encourage maximum engagement with their content.

But we need to be careful about what we share. If an item contains 3rd party copyright of any kind we don’t actually have the right to share it openly. To minimise risk, we have focused on sharing public domain content (digital versions of items which we know are out of copyright).

Another challenge, as a publicly funded institution of finding the balance between giving our users the best access and meeting targets for income generation. We try to identify where there is commercial potential in collections and share those in a different way, or often we share screen resolution images openly and retain the highest quality digital images for commercial licencing. The current trend though seems to be to simplify these processes by simply giving unlimited access to all digital versions of public domain works

 

Why did the National Library decide to open this position?

About a year before the library appointed a Wikimedian in Residence they made a policy decision not to claim any rights to digital reproductions of out of copyright works. This was the first step towards ‘Open Access’, but they recognised that a policy decision alone would have resulted in very little impact or change. So one of the main aims with the Wikimedia residency was to use Wikimedia Commons to actively share our public domain content on an open licence in order to encourage reuse and engagement.

The position was also fully supported by our local Wikimedia chapter – Wikimedia UK. They initially helped to fund the position and provided training and logistical support. This support obviously reduced the risks for the National Library and made the idea of hosting a Wikimedian in Residence more appealing.

 

What are the impacts of your work in the Library?

Before we started, we knew from similar residencies at the National Library of Scotland and the British Museum, for example, that collaborating with Wikipedia could lead to some big impacts, but I think we were all surprised by the benefits of our early activities.

When it comes to digital images there are few platforms better than Wikipedia for getting your content seen. We are talking about one of the world’s top 10 websites with 18 billion page views a month. We shared a handful of photographs and prints in the first couple of months and the content was quickly added to Wikipedia articles leading to 20,000 views in one month. Now we have shared about 20,000 images to Wikimedia Commons. Thousands of these are used in Wikipedia articles in over 150 languages leading to over 15 million image views every month. As of January 2020 articles containing National Library of Wales images had been viewed 781,121,633 times! It would take us nearly 400 years to get that many views of our own websites. The use of our content on Wikipedia and other 3rd party platforms is now recorded as a key performance indicator and fed back to our funders.

Whilst we half expected big numbers from sharing images, we hadn’t counted on the value of public events. Wikipedia is a ready made crowdsourcing platform with great infrastructure and a massive community of editors. Holding ‘Edit-a-thon’ events to improve content about our collections, about welsh people, history and culture has helped us to engage with new audiences in new ways. Events and projects have directly led to over 15,000 new Wikipedia articles but events are also about building communities, teaching new skills and growing confidence. Events aimed at improving content on the Welsh Wikipedia also provide a forum where Welsh speakers can get together chat and to create content in their native language, whilst improving access to Welsh language information for all.

Another emerging area of impact for use comes from our use of the Wikidata project to share our collection data openly. Wikidata allows us to share open data without having to invest in our own internal infrastructure. Wikidata already has a query service and a raft of tools for analyzing and visualizing the data. By converting out data to linked data in the Wiki ecosystem we can actually enrich our own data by drawing on additional data from Wikidata, like map coordinates, external authority records and biographical data. And because Wikidata is multilingual – data can be described in any language – we are able to convert much of our English language data to Welsh or any other language, thanks to existing user contributed Welsh language descriptions.

We have seen great engagement with our data since we began this work and now hold regular Hackathon events to promote reuse. We are also starting to round trip this rich data to improve services on our own websites. We now pull in links to VIAF records and Wikipedia articles from Wikidata to our Dictionary of Welsh Biography website, and will soon add an interactive timeline to the site, powered entirely by Wikidata and openly licensed images from Wikimedia Commons.

All this work has really helped to raise the profile of the library in Wales and internationally and we have formed some great partnerships as a result of interactions around our work with Wikimedia.

 

What would be your recommendations for smaller or medium size Libraries?

I know not all libraries manage digitized collections, but if you do, using Wikimedia projects to give access to that content can be a really cost effective way of reaching big audiences. The Wikimedia Foundation is currently setting up a ‘GLAM’ (Galleries. Libraries. Archives & Museums) team, to give more support to cultural institutions looking to share their content through the projects, so the support and the tools available to smaller libraries is only going to increase.

Wikipedia’s goal is to give free access to the sum of all human knowledge so there is always more work to do. Notable gaps in content include a lack of articles about women, who currently make up less than 20% of biographies on the site. The global south, traditional and local knowledge are also poorly represented and I believe libraries are the perfect partners to help tackle these issues. Libraries are the keepers of knowledge but they are also community hubs. Empowering those communities to improve subjects important to them on Wikipedia can be massively rewarding and editing Wikipedia has never been easier.

I would definitely recommend that any library interested in engaging with Wikimedia reaches out to their local Wikimedia chapter or user group, or the Wikimedia Foundation directly. Often they can arrange for training, provide logistic or technical support, and they have a grant program for those looking to host larger events or programs.

 

Libraries: Culture, Connection and Transition

When cities leverage their heritage for development, there is the possibility of gaining their investment back in social and economic dividends. Investing in cultural heritage can make a location more attractive for tourism, new residential growth and business investment – changing the landscape of a community and the way people interact with it.

I recently attended a webinar on this topic offered by EUROCITIES, an economic, political and social development network connecting many of Europe’s major cities.

Experts spoke to their experience of social and economic returns on cultural heritage investment, including finding balance between social and economic benefits of urban renewal and the negative effects of gentrification and over-tourism.

When considering cultural heritage as a tool for development, this was a very interesting concept and it got me thinking – as memory institutions, where do libraries fit into this?

Urban Transition in Bakklandet  

This discussion focussed on heritage and social and economic valorisation – that is, the process of creating social and economic value from cultural heritage resources.

The example I’d like to focus on is from the Bakklandet neighbourhood of Trondheim, Norway. Today this area is a must-see for tourists in the city, who enjoy the traditional wooden architecture, colourful buildings, and plentiful cafes.

Colourful buildings in Bakklandet

Colourful buildings in Bakklandet (photo by darolti dan on Unsplash http://bit.ly/3bc3xVI)

However, this was historically a working-class area, which in the 1960s faced the threat of being demolished to make room for a highway. The neighbourhood was saved by locals, whose grassroot campaigning successfully opposed the demolition plans. Given this history, the area for a long time has been home to a deeply engaged local population.

Bakklandet is now in a period of urban transition – valued by tourists for its cultural capital, and therefore valued by investors and businesses for its economic potential.

How does a city in transition balance the benefits that economic returns on heritage can bring while preserving authenticity and social capital for residents?

I would argue one answer lies in libraries, as memory institutions and as public spaces.

Third-Party Preservation of Memory

I wondered if there was any information in this case study on the role of libraries and archives in keeping local’s connection to culture at the heart of Bakklandet’s transition.

The speaker from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who presented this case study informed me that residents themselves have taken action to record the history of their community.

Locals have created an online archive, rich with historic photos and stories about the neighbourhood’s long history, alongside current news and events connecting residents to one another.

The speaker referred to this repository as a third-party preservation of memory. It is a wonderful blend of memory, history and social connection. It is a community centered around a deep connection to its neighbourhood, preserving its memory and building social capital among its residents.

Check it out here (in Norwegian): https://blvel.wordpress.com/hjem/bilder/

The Role of the Library

What if a physical library could function the same way?

Could it become a hub for local history, preservation and social connection to balance the changing landscape that comes with urban transition?

Could it itself be an attractive stop for visitors, which helps connect them to the local heritage through exhibitions, public events and cultural expressions?

What could libraries do to build up their role as providers of connection and social capital, while balancing the negative effects that a changing city can face?

Like the example of Bakklandet, the answer could come from the bottom up. Engaging the local population, especially in areas of urban renewal and transition, could be a valuable first step towards reimagining the library as a hub of culture and connection.

 What can be done?

Are there local stories in your archives waiting to be told? Are there grassroots preservation initiatives that could benefit from a physical space? Could cultural heritage be a method by which to engage both locals and tourists?

Many libraries have already taken note of the value they can bring their communities in this way. From community archiving initiatives to IFLA’s own Local History and Genealogy Section, we are certainly seeing these suggestions in practice within the library profession.

Collecting best practices, sharing evidence of the impact of such programmes, and cooperating with other sectors within cultural heritage and development are positive steps that can be taken to advocate for libraries in this space.

We encourage you to consider these questions, then share your thoughts and ideas!

Library Stat of the Week #4: Around the world, having more public libraries tends to be associated with higher literacy rates

A core function of libraries is the support they provide for literacy.

Traditionally, this has been through providing access to materials. Many librarians have brought their passion for books to their jobs, and encourage others to do the same.

In some cases, libraries are involved in more formal efforts to build literacy, in particular among people outside of the formal education system.

Clearly the capacity of libraries to promote literacy depends on how far they are able to reach people. If there is only one library covering a large area and/or population, this job may be harder.

Early analysis of figures from Library Map of the World allow us to take a first look at the correlation between numbers of libraries and adult literacy rates (taken from the World Bank).

They show that there is a correlation between these. The smaller the population individual public libraries need to cover, the higher the literacy rates of the country.

Graph comparing the average number of people served by each public library in a country and the adult literacy rate

Based on figures forcountries where both sets of numbers are available (numbers of public libraries per head and adult literacy in the past three years), it appears that for every 50000 people the average public library needs to serve, adult literacy falls by 0.4 percentage points.

Clearly it is necessary to be cautious in interpreting these figures, which cover only 32 countries. Moreover, correlation does not mean causality.

Finally, it may well be the case that below a certain threshold of people served per library, the connection disappears. However, it remains clear that countries with higher adult literacy are, in general, characterised by denser coverage of libraries.

 

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download key library data in order to carry out your own analysis! See our other Library Stats of the Week! We are happy to share the data that supported this analysis on request.

 

The Multi-Functional Library: What Libraries Can Represent for Local Governments

The 10th World Urban Forum is taking place in Abu Dhabi next week, bringing together representatives of villages, towns and cities from around the world.

Given the powerful role of local government in decisions about libraries – and public libraries in particular – this is a key audience.

IFLA will be attending, and will use the opportunity to highlight what can be gained from close engagement with libraries as a means of delivering on a variety of local goals and public goods.

Here are just ten examples of what a library can represent to a local authority:

1. A Cultural Centre: libraries are fundamentally about books and literature. They provide an opportunity for everyone to engage with the written word, provide a showcase for authors – especially local ones – and have been key players in initiatives such as UNESCO Cities of Literature.

2. A learning hub: not just through supporting a love of reading, but also through advice, informal and more formal opportunities, libraries are also a core part of the infrastructure for promoting literacy, especially beyond school age. Literacy in turn is an enabling skill for progress in so many other areas.

3. A further education portal: libraries’ contribution to learning doesn’t stop there. In many places, they provide the space for other training opportunities, developing computer skills or entrepreneurship. They can also be a stepping-stone towards more in-depth learning opportunities.

4. A public health information point: many local governments have a role in promoting health and well-being. Information plays a key role in this, enabling people to make better choices about they eat and live, and how to manage conditions.

5. A guardian of local history: Many libraries maintain collections of local materials, documenting an area’s past. Through holding, and giving access to relevant publications and materials, they are a key reference for local historians, as well as for those carrying out wider research.

6. A showcase for the circular economy: libraries are already a great example of the sharing economy in the case of books. More and more are realising their potential to demonstrate other practices and techniques for sustainable consumption, as well as places to provide sustainability education.

7. A shop window: clearly the internet is playing a growing role in informing people about council initiatives. However, it is not possible to be sure that everyone will visit a website regularly. Libraries offer a great additional means of getting posters, leaflets and other information in front of people.

8. An open civic space: public libraries should be open for all, often providing the only non-commercial indoor space in a community. In many cases, libraries have gone one step further, organising debates, or helping people to use open government data and so build democratic engagement.

9. An eGovernment access station: as many government services move to an online-only format, it is essential to offer a means for people who lack connectivity, hardware or confidence to fill in the necessary forms or make the necessary request. Libraries provide this.

10. A source of pride: finally, a great library can represent a real source of civic pride, both for locals and visitors. Either as historic civic buildings, or at the heart of equality-focused redevelopment programmes, they can add to the sense of belonging and engagement with place.

Don’t hesitate to share any other roles you think that libraries perform in the comments box below!