My library is selling its long tail

Posted 01 May 2007 16:01 by Kristof Michiels

Last Saturday, like almost every week-end, my son Kai and I went to the local library. As always we tried to score five new children's books, a goal we somehow always manage to attain :-) And when there's time and attention span left, I get to choose some books and cd's as well.

That fortunately being the case, I noticed that the music department was selling part of its collection. Not junk, but truly magnificent stuff. Apparently, these cd's didn't manage to find any interested lenders, which I found a shame. Highly indignant, I scraped together all the money I had in my pockets (a bit more than 6 euros) and bought a number of cd's from DJ Krush (three titles), Boards of Canada (Geogaddi ), Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (BRMC ), and last but not least: no silver / no gold, a genuine masterpiece from the Baptist Generals.

Driving home, the following came to mind: how do people learn about the existence of great music by lesser known artists? Is it enough for a library to acquire these cd's and just drop them on the shelves till somebody picks them up? This is just not going to happen without an extra push in the back. So librarians should make more of an effort in this area. In the networked world, libraries need to be more than mere access providers and become inspiring guides much, much more than they have been until now.

Something I've always done is create compilation cassettes/cd's with my favorite music every few months, which I then distribute to friends and family (or exchange for their compilations). I've found this a great resource for getting to know new music. So why can't libraries do this? If they want, they can combine forces and use the expertise of peer-librarians and the community of advanced library users for different sub-genres. This 'choice of your librarian' would make a great occasion to explore future roles of libraries. And the legal issues I hear you ask? I'm sure they can be overcome. No doubt record companies these days can be convinced that the extra attention is beneficial for their less commercial products.