Warning: Contains questions and no answers.
The question I'm interested in is not so much can we utilize the long tail, but how far down it should librarians/libraries go?
Imagine for a moment that the limits between the library and the end of the long tail are removed. We have a consortium of libraries that can each rival the shelf space of the Strand bookstore. We have a crack team of digital archivists, unlimited digital storage space for all media formats and ebook reader technology has evolved to the point where skimming, searching and reading digital books is as easy or even more so then reading the print version. Say we can chase the long tail to the very end and collect within the library all the infinite niche markets.
Should we?
Should we collect every book, magazine, video, audio recording, blog, podcast, and picture ever created? After all just about everything could potentially be important to someone. Does anyone care what Jane's cousin is feeding her baby for breakfast. Probably not. But you never know, years down the line a sociologist may do a study on what people in the early 21st Century were blogging about. So should we collect as much quantity as possible?
Or should we as librarians focus on quality? Should we continue evaluating what we add to our collection and only select the 'best' and 'highest quality' sources? Who determines what is considered a 'quality' or 'worthwhile' source. Which is more important, the opinion of a learned/self-important (choose you adjective) scholar or the rating on Digg?
On the one hand 'one man's trash is another man's treasure', on the other hand we have an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters. Are we serving all our niche markets no matter how obscure, or are we chasing our own tail?
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2 comments:
I love this post. It's awesome.
@Gabrielle Oh good, I was a little nervious writing this post accually. (Though I have to say it was fun writing the phrase "a crack team of digital archivists")
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