What kind of free is your library service?

Chris Anderson wrote about the Long Tail in Wired magazine in 2004 , encapsulating in economic terms one of Ranganathan’s laws of library science “Every book its reader” . The market for the small number of highly demanded – or “smash hit” – widgets (books, CDs, DVDs) is less than the total market of lower demand items in the latter part of the demand curve (the Long Tail). When you run a business with low inventory and distribution cost, for example Amazon.com with no need for shelf stock, then you can make profit by providing access to items in the Long Tail.

Last week, Chris Anderson published an article in Wired that is forerunner of his next book – Free – why $0.00 is the future of business . It looks at how incorporating some services that are at no cost to the consumer can lead to a healthier bottom line for a corporation. It shows how free can become mandatory to survival if others in the same business are providing services for free.

“Free” is an essential component of our traditional library brand. For the last 6 months I’ve had a question on my Facebook profile for others to answer: “Should libraries still promote as their core brand “a building where there are books loaned for free”?”. I asked it because it is obvious that “building”, “books” and possibly “free” are being redefined.

I had 13 answers – all but one from the library community. There were quite a few yeses, quite a few nos, but many of these in their extended answers said a similar thing – the traditional brand should be a springboard to show people all the other things we offer.

I hadn’t really thought hard about “free” and that it might have a number of models. I thought free was simply free – no charge, end of story.

Here’s Chris Anderson’s “taxonomy of free” – situations where at least some consumers get their service for “free”, even though some others may be making heaps of money elsewhere as a result. The article is rich with references to follow up.

Freemium
Most users get the service for free, but some pay for extra features, thus subsidising all users. Library example: Bestseller Rentals at City of Canning where users pay $5 to immediately access bestsellers, with their pooled funds paying for extra copies that benefit everyone.

Advertising
Businesses pay the organisation to put their name or message where consumers can read them, thus subsidising extra services. Library example: An insurance company sponsoring the National Library of Australia’s Treasures of Australian Libraries travelling exhibition.

Cross subsidies
A product is sold at a very, very low price or given away, but associated consumables are then sold at a high price. Library example: The company Liblime provides free Open Source Library Management Systems like Koha, but then charges for installation, maintenance and support.

Zero marginal cost
Through advances in technology or generosity of the producer, there is virtually no cost to a consumer to consume a product. Library example: Access to items in the public domain via Project Gutenburg .

Labor exchange
To access the service, you do something that increases the usefulness of some other part of the service. Pseudo Library example: Google image labeler . To have the “fun” of playing a game where you see whether you can better describe images than your opponant, you add tags to Google’s image search.

Gift economy
This is often made possible by technological advances that provide zero marginal cost. Some reason other than the monetary economy drives the decision to provide a no-cost service – often altruism. Library Example: The Library Extension Program of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Libraries already do some of these kinds of free. Should we be looking at these models to extend or change some services so we can continue to provide other services for “free”? Would it make sense to ask people to write a book review before they can access book reviews in our catalogue, for example ?

I’m no economist, but I’m very interested in a couple of shadowy ideas toward the end of the article, where Anderson suggests that “reputation” and “attention” may have a scarcity that will give them great value in the future.

Libraries traditionally have a fantastic reputation as trustworthy and reliable places – but are we translating this message into the online realm? Will we attract enough of that scarce attention stuff now that other businesses are encroaching on our traditional brand and are all starting to do “free”?