Library Music Collections –

Well, it’s the day before my talk at the annual NJLA Conference in Atlantic City – should I nervously get extremely drunk and then fumble my way to the convention (by ‘fumble’ I mean drive 3 hours) half-dressed and dropping speaking notes all over the place?? It might make for a good sitcom episode, or perhaps more darkly a semi-depressing indie film about middle class life drama and mundane struggle.  Well, as it happens I will probably just go for a 5k run at about 9pm tonight (I get off work at 8pm) and then get up at 5am to make my way to the conference 3 hours away. I’ll save the beer for AFTER my talk 🙂

Anywho, I thought I would write about something that came to mind the other day while working with one of the collections I manage at my library. For the past 4 years I have managed the music collection at my library, taking pride in instituting a ‘long-tail’ style methodology for my collection development strategy. In other words, I’ve tried to develop a variety of different genres of music in the collection and make sure that each contained classic examples, indie and lesser known examples, and contemporary and popular examples from each genre. I focused on some collections that I had some personal interest and experience in:  punk, metal, jazz, funk, classic rock, jam, etc. The population of where my library is located is generally young, affluent and has high educational attainment. As such, I thought a long-tail approach might work well for this population – provide them with a robust collection with classic and lesser-known albums and artists to pair with the new popular music. I also focused a good amount of attention on titles reviewed and recommended by the music website Pitchfork, believing (largely correctly) that the local population would be interested in the type of music recommended from them.

So, after a few years we started to build up a pretty good collection and had been receiving positive feedback from the patrons along with higher circulation. However, no sooner did the collection make headway, did we come up against new problems. Our main and really primary problem is that of physical space – we don’t have any. For a while I was able to purchase some different display units to house more CDs in the same space, however this only delayed the inevitable. I lobbied to have the collection moved to another part of the library, which not the best of solutions anyway. This also did not bear fruit. So, at one point I came up to the point of having to begin weeding down the collection and removing titles. For a while I  was able to eliminate items that did not circulate much or damaged materials. This also only bought me a little bit of time. For the past year or so I have been in the situation of essentially having to weed materials out of the collection every time I want to add something new. As contemporary, popular  music also circulates the most, I’ve had to continue to add the new stuff and widdle down the ‘long-tail’ materials I felt made the collection unique. I try my best to keep certain titles in the collection and maintain depth, but certainly over the past year the collection has diminished in quality. I’ve tried to weed on the following, flawed, parameters:

• items that are damaged, do not circulate often or duplicates (mostly already weeded at this point)
• items by bands that were essentially one-hit wonders (guessing game, as I’m talking about bands from less than 4 years from present)
• lesser known items in less popular genres among our library patrons
• random bands that I believe to either be of waning popularity or guess will not do too much in the future (very dubious methodology here!)

So, as you can see, this is a very flawed method. Given the state of the collection at my library, I’ve been thinking about the future of music collections in public libraries. First of all, let’s reveal the very open secret about library music collections: a high percentage of the people who borrow CDs at libraries are going home and ripping them to their computers. Full disclosure, years ago I partially became interested in working in libraries because of my local library’s music collection…which I was ripping to my computer. Without that fact, I would be skeptical of how library music collections would exist today. So there’s that.

Moving forward with advancing technology and the use of various devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.) to consume media, even this may be something that goes by the wayside in the near future. As such, how about the possibility of digital music collections available for patrons to borrow? Well, there are a few existent options right now for digital music collections in libraries, however they are currently fraught with problems. There are likely more options than this, but the ones I am aware of are as follows:

1. Freegal
2. Hoopla
3. Overdrive Music
4. Naxos

Freegal – a service that offers users to download 3 songs per week in MP3 format. These songs are then the users to KEEP and do not expire. They offer reasonable access to popular songs and artists, though largely artists signed to the Sony label as this is their main source. Even still, there catalog is limited for new materials and very limited when it comes to classic songs/albums and lesser known stuff.

Hoopla – songs expire after 1 week,  20 titles per month, also includes streaming movies and television.  While this sounds decent enough, the collections seem to be very limited (extremely for the TV and movies). The licensing is just not there.

Overdrive – similar to Hoopla, with less popular music items and no streaming video. Downloads expire and there are limits to amounts that can be borrowed. Again, extremely limited collection with mostly classical titles and some ‘classic’ jazz.

Naxos – streaming music collections of almost entirely classical music. Decent collection of classical music, but not much beyond that.

So, right now you can see that the options are very limited with some serious problems of realistic collections and access to a wide array of music options. Beyond this, there exists a similar problem that is currently running through the eBook/library world: ownership vs licensing. These are all independent services that libraries pay to give their patrons access to. However, this payment does not give the libraries ownership over any of the content, simply access to the database. This poses big problems for the future of this option for libraries as has been seen in the eBook world, libraries would be susceptible to increases in fees and pricing, restrictions in access and even denial of access if the provider’s terms aren’t met. While this is a big problem, as it currently stands even the services offering these products do not offer attractive solutions. In the eBook world, some libraries (Douglas County Library – http://douglascountylibraries.org/content/ebooks-and-DCL) have taken upon themselves to negotiate with publishers and create their own servers of eBook content. This is a bold new strategy, but one that seems very precarious and very limited in its scope for other libraries to attempt (costs, negotiating abilities, technical ability, etc.). However, in the realm of digital music, it would seem the terms would be much more difficult to undertake and implement, not to mention that there does not exist a groundswell for this kind of thing.

Sooo…where does that leave libraries moving forward?

• Will there  continue to be physical music collections?
• If the transition is made to digital collections, will there be an ownership model or a licensing model?
• Will digital library music collections not be feasible and music phased out of library collections all together?
• Will libraries create a new option by creating their own servers and licenses with music producers?

Let me know your thoughts!