The Coming Enshittification of Public Libraries

While I think we've all settled on Cory Doctorow's concept, I really wish it wasn't called "enshittification". It's hard to take the phenomenon seriously when I sound like I'm just being edgy saying it aloud. There's something to keeping the term as a vulgar word, in that PR people working for companies actively engaging in it can't find a way to turn it around and own the definition, but "enshittification" could still use a little rebrand.

I worked at OverDrive. The stark contrast between the sugary-sweet facade of “helping the libraries and readers” and the ridiculous amounts of money the company makes from these same libraries is quite depressing. Much of their profits come from charging 30%+ on top of publishers’ prices (which are already high for libraries). This plays into their hand very well - publishers get the blame for prices, yet OverDrive still benefits from it. As for Libby’s bad UI - it was made by a single very opinionated person.

I&#x27;m a librarian and while I sympathize with some of the arguments here, they are <i>not</i> arguments I can explain to the public. No one cares, and they shouldn&#x27;t have to. They should be able to read everything from James Patterson to Thomas Piketty and not have to think about it and Libby is pretty good at enabling that. Alternative platform exist, but none of them are as good. Libby works on a lot of devices and Overdrive works with Amazon for people who own a Kindle. More people check out e-books and fewer check out physical books every year; the pubic wants what it wants and right or not Overdrive is the best way to get them that.<p>So yeah, this could come crashing down. But more likely it will be like the transition of any format. Audiobooks have moved from tapes to CDs to digital in the span of about 15 years (in 2007 we still had lots of tape audiobooks) so we tossed the tapes and bought CDs because people got rid of their tape players and then did the same with CDs. We didn&#x27;t dig in our heels and tell people tape players were good enough because it&#x27;s not a luxury we have.

This whole blog post is misunderstanding after misunderstanding it&#x27;s almost hilarious.<p>Starting off with the very first premise: that you need to install an app. Libby is available as a web app, so that first big point the author is making just factually incorrect. They didn&#x27;t need to install the app. So instantly the author here loses a massive amount of credibility to me.<p>Then, it&#x27;s not like this whole &quot;deep search&quot; and &quot;notify me&quot; tag is hard to find, and no you don&#x27;t need to make.it yourself, and no you don&#x27;t need to study the help articles to understand how it works. The only part I might say is tricky is you need to click the filter button to get to the advanced search settings where there&#x27;s a big button that says &quot;deep search&quot; and explains what that means. Then for results not in your library there&#x27;s a dedicated notify me tag button which when tapped explains how it works. I didn&#x27;t have to go to the help area at all to get a detailed explanation of how stuff worked, and I got to it with obviously interactable UI elements.

I appreciated the article.<p>I&#x27;m probably an outlier, compared to others in this thread but I&#x27;ve recently started engaging more with my public library...both physically and digitally (using the apps &#x2F; websites referenced in the article). Since Reddit and other social media companies did their thing, I started to use my time to read books and magazines...so I have really started to appreciate my public library as a source for gaining knowledge.<p>Maybe I&#x27;m just in an unfortunate area of the US but I&#x27;ve noticed a lack of desire to support public libraries from &#x27;leaders&#x27;. Recently, one of my county&#x27;s council members suggested we should close public library locations as a means to save money to give more money to our police departments. Then the county mayor signed some memorandum saying that public libraries couldn&#x27;t prevent people from bring loaded weapons in to the library. The latter is especially egregious considering his own office building forbids people from entering with loaded weapons.

I used to spend a lot of time in libraries when I was homeless, and I owe a large part of my safety and shelter to libraries. I read many books back then, like a lot of Larry Niven, and all the Harry Potter novels. I haunted academic libraries and public libraries alike. I used the computers, I watched music videos, I played MUDs and checked my email.<p>Then, when I got set up with a home, I stopped going to libraries so much, and my card expired. I went back just a couple of years ago, and by that time, my personal situation had changed in a few other ways. For one, I have a good Android mobile device. I also have a little SanDisk Clip Jam MP3 player.<p>I was browsing the library&#x27;s music collection, and I guess it was in the app, Libby or OverDrive or whatever they offer. And I went up to the tech support desk and I asked if they had any DRM-free music that I could load on my MP3 player. And the tech support lady said that if it didn&#x27;t have DRM, they couldn&#x27;t take it back when my loan period expired. And I said &quot;oh, right.&quot;<p>So I browsed the books on Libby and I may or may not have ventured to install the app, but I could tell at that time that it was an odious way to treat library patrons. To tell us that we had to load some commercial app on our device to get eBooks, rather than compatibility with some existing, popular eReader at least, or just give us the ePub or PDF. But I suppose that that market space has been ceded to the online Internet Archive type places, now. My father makes great use of Hathi Trust and he has repeatedly recommended it to me.<p>Personally, I don&#x27;t care how old a book or work is. I subscribe to Sturgeon&#x27;s Law, and so it&#x27;s best to pick and choose from works that have withstood the test of time, you know, unless I want a book on Cybersecurity, or programming Python or something.<p>So while I have renewed my library card, and I stay in good standing and I like the other kinds of stuff that is on offer at my public library, I will not be playing footsie with Libby, and I guess currently that the best way to use my library is a backup Site B for my WFH, when my apartment is unavailable for some reason.

The confusion between libraries, especially school libraries, not carrying certain books, and censorship or &quot;book banning&quot; is disingenuous and hyperbolic. <i>All</i> libraries curate, every single one. In particular, school and specialized libraries &quot;censor&quot; based on what is appropriate for their audience.<p>My highschool library didn&#x27;t carry any Chilton car repair manuals. I asked about that once because I had a rapidly decaying, hand-me-down Ford Pinto. The librarian laughed and suggested I was attending the wrong high school for those books.<p>I <i>am</i> bothered by the trend towards fewer physical books and pushing people towards digital copies — there&#x27;s no substitute for physical browsing as a discovery process.

Coming? This seems like it happened already in every place I&#x27;ve visited. We don&#x27;t even have public libraries here in Puerto Rico, but in SF, Seattle, etc. they are largely...not targeted at people looking to read&#x2F;borrow books.<p>I&#x27;d be interested in what libraries are like in Japan since their first sale copyright doctrine is totally different from the US and most of the rest of the world.

Oh the irony of talking about enshittification whilst using Substack, which has 9 browser cookies, 4 javascript trackers (that I could count) and a frustratingly annoying modal that scrolls into view when you read a couple of paragraphs. Do these dark patterns actually work to monetise a blogger&#x27;s content?

I signed up for ~5 libraries in the US that allow nonlocal registrations, and as a result my Libby account has access to an absurdly large selection of books.<p>It’s super cool how I, person in the middle of the country, can check out a book from the Bronx public library, for a total cost of like $50&#x2F;yr.<p>How is that shitty, exactly?

You know how &quot;basilica&quot; meant a public building in Roman times, and the word came to mean &quot;Christian building&quot;? This is what&#x27;s going to happen to libraries. In 50 years people will use it meaning &quot;homeless shelter&quot;. Some older guy will explain that a long time ago, people used to go there to read physical books.

In the UK we have seen libraries falling like dominos in the &quot;austerity&quot; (post financial crash bank-welfare) era to pay for the failures of the bankers.<p>Those that remain open are often turned into community hubs which while sounding nice on paper don&#x27;t always sound nice in reality with screaming kids and zumba classes, etc; the end result of often being a rather rather un-library-like ambience.<p>Shhhhh!

&gt; Alternative platforms already exist: one promising place to start might be the Palace Project and the associated Palace Marketplace.<p>It&#x27;s great to see the Palace Project mentioned as an alternative in this post! I&#x27;m one of the developers working on Palace. The idea behind the project is to create a single app that aggregates all of a library&#x27;s digital content and makes it readily available to library patrons.<p>If anyone here is interested in it, all our code is open source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;thepalaceproject">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;thepalaceproject</a>.

This doesn&#x27;t address the main point about charging the library for access to clients&#x27; recommendations, but, at least in my library&#x27;s version of Overdrive, it is perfectly easy to recommend a book acquisition to my local library.<p>On the page with the search results, there is a &quot;Make a recommendation&quot; link after the results which goes to a page which has all the expected fields - the book ISBN, my name, my home library, etc., etc.<p>Maybe this is a better version than the author has seen? This is not using an app, which I don&#x27;t know why you would want to do anyway.

Coincidentally I have been working from a public library this week. The majority of patrons are homeless. Many are physically disabled. Some are mentally ill and yell at random at nothing.<p>It&#x27;s sad. I feel conflicted because I don&#x27;t really want them near me but I understand they have no where else to go. I don&#x27;t get how the library because a homeless shelter but it&#x27;s probably not somewhere I&#x27;d take a child.

The whole writing industry in general is exposed to enshittification. Most books selling well nowadays are &quot;personnal development&quot; title written by the writing equivalent to a snake oil salesman &#x2F; charlatan.<p>In the same way internet search is broken by affiliate links heavy, contentless websites looking for easy money, good books end up hidden behind all this huge wall of easy money personal development bullshit.

This whole thread is pretty privileged, well off. Perhaps even &#x27;elites&#x27;.<p>Why do we need libraries?<p>Just go online.<p>Just use such and such open source app.<p>Just use such and such free online source.<p>-&gt; There are too many homeless. Libraries don&#x27;t &#x27;feel&#x27; safe.<p>If you are homeless how do you go on-line????<p>Let me clue you in.<p>There are homeless people in libraries -&gt; IN ORDER TO GO ONLINE.<p>If you are homeless you don&#x27;t have a computer.<p>-&gt; In todays world how do you get a job, to be come, &#x27;un-homeless&#x27;, without going ONLINE.<p>-&gt; How do you access any services without going ONLINE. You are homeless, you aren&#x27;t driving to wherever you need to get to since you can&#x27;t go to their website. Many physical locations have closed, &#x27;just use their web-site&#x27;. How?<p>-&gt; SO, LIBRARIES HAVE A LOT OF HOMELESS PEOPLE USING LIBRARY COMPUTER&#x27;S, BECAUSE, WAIT FOR IT, &#x27;THEY ARE HOMELESS&#x27;. THIS IS LITERALY THE ONLY OPTION FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE.

The problems of &quot;public-private partnerships&quot; and use of corporate services by government utilities are the perverse incentives and gamification that arrises from greed. This is something a nonprofit or the government should run, not a corporation. Personally, I dislike all DRM virtual checkout bullshit and would rather have either a DRM-free ebook or the physical book. And if no DRM-free ebook exists, I consider buying a copy, scanning it, and releasing it online.

My heart goes out to the author&#x27;s plight but am I the only one here who abjectly hates ebooks?<p>I hate reading on an LCD. I&#x27;ll settle on eInk but that&#x27;s still settling.<p>Give me a paper bound book anyday of the week. The only benefit an ebook has is for academic texts so I can quickly Ctrl+f for reference only. If I have to sit there and digest large quantities of text, I need a dead tree product.<p>And it&#x27;s a bloody shame that this method of print is dying.

This is a weird argument, because the libraries the author loved growing up didn&#x27;t have any of these features in the first place.

Public libraries seem heavily romanticized. They aren&#x27;t the places they once were. The big one in my local city is in an unsavory part of town, with homeless and drug addicts all over, creepy dudes looking at porn inside, with the lovely stench of body odor everywhere. Even the entrance is unnerving, with zombies sleeping on the steps. I wouldn&#x27;t feel safe letting a child hang out there alone. Which is a major shame, because I spent many hours in libraries as a kid. This isn&#x27;t hyperbole, just read through some recent google reviews of public libraries. These days, I&#x27;d rather browse the ebook catalog online and drive to a nice park or green space to read. I&#x27;m sure financial interests are somewhat to blame for the decline of the public library, but the other reasons seem more pressing atm.

&gt;I don’t know what KKR’s exact game plan is, although gouging more money from libraries for a reduced feature-set is clearly part of it. I am certainly suspicious of the fact that they appear to be setting up to gather more user data than ever while passing on less of that data to libraries, their ostensible customers.<p>This doesn&#x27;t make any sense. Keeping the feature around doesn&#x27;t cost them any money, so it&#x27;s unlikely they removed it as some sort of cost cutting strategy. The &quot;sell customer data&quot; angle is also unconvincing. They can do all of that while keeping the &quot;recommend&quot; feature. It&#x27;s unclear how removing it, or forcing users to use the &quot;notify&quot; feature benefits them.

This is why I get so annoyed with Doctorow&#x27;s bitching about DRM and blaming &quot;Big Tech.&quot; Until I see you can get DRM free things from libraries, I&#x27;m going to continue to think it is largely the copyright holders demanding these capabilities more so than I think it is a &quot;big tech&quot; company that almost certainly is bound by the same rules in working with the copyright owners.<p>And honestly, I can see some of the reason for the DRM with good faith arguments on how it could completely erode a few markets. I don&#x27;t necessarily agree with them, but I can&#x27;t dismiss them out of hand, either.<p>Anyway, reminds me that I need to support my libraries more.

The tedious ranting aside, this is way off base—and really about ebooks, not libraries.<p>Public libraries are not monolithic; they’re operated differently depending on where they are, and all are trying to navigate ebooks—which, by the way, make up only a small fraction of patron demand. Libraries also serve <i>many</i> functions besides lending books.<p>Public libraries are not being ‘enshittified’. They are more popular than ever (in the US, anyway), and ebooks are just another area where they’re navigating as best they can to offer patrons options.

Like so many nice things, it&#x27;s a wonder that they even exist at all in the US. Nothing like a library could be built today. The country has become so corrupt and the only solutions that anyone seems to believe could ever work are free market services that commoditize every part of life. The enshittification of the entire country will probably be complete in the next 20 years, as even the most basic infrastructure like roads crumbles, never mind nice things like libraries or trains or clean drinking water.

The public library as a place to get reading material has less and less purpose anymore.<p>When you can just download a book for free, or if you want to pay, have it shipped from Amazon, what is the point of the library? Between piracy and online ordering, there isn&#x27;t really much space for libraries as places with books as they offer value only to exceptionally moral poor people.<p>I used to be someone who hit my checkout limit from the library. I haven&#x27;t been in over a decade now to checkout a book.

If you believe in free lending libraries, you also must necessarily believe in piracy. They&#x27;re logically the same thing.<p>Time-shifting is a false meme to manufacture blame, just like identity theft.<p>Read books for free. It&#x27;s fine. Give them to your friends. It&#x27;s also fine.<p>Sidestep all this nonsense. Stop giving money to organizations that ship DRM unless you want more shitty DRM.

im wondering why is it not just shittification but enshittification. shittification seems to have more power to me.

Coming enshittification? Seriously? Where has the author been for the past three decades as public libraries have quite literally debased themselves to chase some modicum of appeal to some nebulous concept of modern generations instead of being what they were and should always remain - public resources for knowledge? Where has the author been when libraries started giving more of a crap about politics than the appeal of their own, er, library? When they killed the user experience of their catalogues in the move away from cards and terminals over to sql databases and crappy websites? The user experience of libraries has been going downhill for at least that long, if not longer.

I took a look at my local library and it doesn&#x27;t have books anymore.<p>Not sure what the end game is. This feels like more than capitalism to me. I feel intentionality in this suppression of knowledge and information.<p>Once the free&#x2F;cheap books and open web are gone, where will you seek the truth?

The author mentions talking to librarians on Mastadon, does anyone happen to know where large quantities of librarians might congregate online?

Coming enshittification? Really? Then what the hell has been happening there for the past three decades if not enshittification.

idk if he&#x27;s been to a library recently, but they&#x27;re already shit. They&#x27;ve become homeless shelters

I&#x27;ve already grown tired of this word, can we please move on and stop using it

&gt; capitalist enshittification<p>Enshittification has less to do with capitalism, and more to do with users&#x27; willingness to put up with bad platforms and products (overused aphorism aside). People who attribute the decay of products to capitalism have a hard time looking over the wall outside of their sandbox to potentials they have yet to know or realize.

wonder if cory considered the name goryshittification.

Just pirate the books, seriously. It&#x27;s called zlib

I am certain things can get enshittified regardless of capitalism. Blaming enshittification on capitalism is lazy.

Non-starter.<p>Libraries were never meant to be distributors of pornography. Especially to minors.<p>There are plenty of outlets that provide free smut. Libraries should not contain materials that make people (especially women) feel attacked.