Orchestrating Another PR-Grabbing Move to Telegraph Supersedence of The Traditional, Curated Library With Distracting Technological Glitz, The NYPL Starts Posting To Instagram Public Domain Books Already Freely Available on The Internet

The story is available from the Wall Street Journal (NYC Library Takes Novel Approach, Posting Books to Instagram The service, dubbed ‘Insta Novels,’ will be available to users of the photo- and video-sharing platform, by Charles Passy, August 22, 2018), but to read it there on the internet you’ll have to get through the Journal’s paywall if you are not already one of its business news oriented subscribers.  The article is, however, also available through Morningstar/Dow-Jones.    

Swaggering fecklessly into the internet to emphasize yet again its asserted faith that technology, represents the future of libraries, supplanting the age old traditions of curated collections and physical books, the NYPL will put what it calls “Insta Novels” on Instagram, the social service network owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. (That’s the same Facebook now involved in current censorship scandals, the scandal being how Facebook, subject to the wrong sort of influences, is censoring valuable content and free speech that it shouldn’t be censoring).

In a previous and similar highly promoted initiative, library administration officials partnered with Amazon to encourage the reading of digital books, back then it was to be on the subway. 

Previous digital reading campaign promotion (some of it)

The few works the NYPL is putting up on Facebook's Insatgram are public domain, and hence already readily available.

Library officials told the Wall Street Journal’s Charles Passy that the idea was to promote the  “NYPL brand” communicating in connection with that promotion “that libraries are changing with the times and fully adapting to the digital era.”  (“Fully adapting”: That certainly makes it sound like it's imperative that libraries adapt need to a lot.)   Just in case anyone missed the point about the NYPL’s fixations on a digital future for its libraries vs. what libraries have always done so successfully, Christopher Platt, the NYPL’s chief branch library officer, took the opportunity of this Instagram stunt to synchronistically dismiss the tradition of physical libraries.  He grabbed and combined some adjectives and nouns to say in a denigrating way that (aside from Instagram stunts?) the NYPL wants people to understand that libraries are not only “brick-and-mortar places full of dusty books.” — Achoo!  Anyone feel that administrative chill?

The Journal article included this reaction supplied by Citizens Defending Libraries:

Michael D. D. White, co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, a New York City-based watchdog group, said the emphasis on online reading works against the idea of libraries as physical spaces where books are curated and knowledge is shared. 

It diminishes the sense of place and purpose,” he said.

When does a library stop being a library?  At the last NYPL meeting in September the trustees during a report about the NYPL’s recent forays into private partnerships (another issue to consider) were told of the NYPL’s expectations that it will go into the film business with HBO to make movies!  Hooray for Hollywood?: That is something we will have to delve into at some later time.

NYC Library Officials Partner To Promote Digital Books With Prizes From Amazon

Go digital with your library, submit a selfie and win a prize from Amazon

New Yorkers love their physical library books. . . circulation is way up at the city’s libraries and the bulk of that circulation increase is physical books. . . And NYC library officials are doing their utmost to promote digital books instead of what they derisively refer to in their board meetings as old-fashioned, archaic “analogue books.”

The library officials' effort to steer patron into digital books includes an expensive new campaign you’ll surely be seeing if you ride the subways in the next few weeks.  Library officials have been proclaiming how they want to follow a new business model of looking for partnerships with the private sector and to garner attention the new campaign offers the public prizes from Amazon.

Amazon “controls 74 percent of e-book sales” and in multiple other ways is one of the world’s hugest monopolies astoundingly unfettered by anti-trust regulation, its proposed acquisition of Whole Foods and its more than 400 stores just another accretion of its formidable market dominance.  See New York Times Op-Ed- Amazon Bites Off Even More Monopoly Power, by Lina M. Khan, June 21, 2017.

We are no down to just five men owning as much wealth as half the world’s population, and since money is power, that’s five men having as much power as half the world’s population.  One of those men is Jeff Bezos, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Amazon.

Among other things, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post which reports on the elected representatives in Washington who decide whether Amazon should be reined in and regulated, the antitrust laws applied to it.

All three of the city’s three library systems, The New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and Queens Public Library have joined together in this promotion, which offers free e-book downloads in subway stations, although reportedly the Subway Library site was developed by the NYPL. The MTA, another public entity, is also engaging in the promotion along with Transit Wireless, the entity that has a 27 year contract to provide wireless in the subways (itself partnering with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon).

The much beleaguered MTA was the entity that got to issue the press release with Governor Cuomo getting the first quote: Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Transit Wireless, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Library Announce "Subway Library" Promotion that will Offer Free E-books in Underground Subway Stations.

It took a long time to get cell phone and wireless service in the subways.  The delay (about five years after technology could have been implemented) was once justified by the explanation of terrorism fears: It was though that the possibility that terrorists would use communications effectively for their purposes if those communications they because available underground, ought to outweigh the advantages and safety enhancements for the public (including a public under attack).  As for being safe, the addition of security cameras were planned at the same time with who knows what else.

Subway placard advertising and ubiquitous posters on subway station walls

The campaign is being promoted by posters throughout subway system stations, advertising placards on the trains, and postings on the digital subway kiosks that now give subway information if you interrupt their other advertising.  The campaign also involves decorating a subway train to look like the "Rose Reading Room," in the NYPL's central reference library.  What makes the decoration an identifiable attempt to to look like the Rose Reading Room is the inclusion of the ceiling painted to resemble the the Rose Reading Room ceiling that keeps getting problematically injured.

There is a video available of the Rose Reading Room train.  Then there is the sweepstakes contest a competition that encourages riders to take selfie photos next to a literary-themed subway car and share it via social media. Those who use the hashtag #SubwayLibrary and tag @TWWiFi have the chance to win an Amazon Kindle Voyage or prizes from the NYPL.  Perhaps not so coincidentally the same subway kiosks advertising the selfie photos contest also advertise Pokemon Go. . .

. . . NYPL President Tony Marx said the program for straphangers was "encouraging reading, learning, and curiosity."

Earlier this week when a Tuesday night presentation by Marvel Architects about their designs for a vastly shrunken Brooklyn Heights Library was poorly received with the public attendees complaining and asking for details about the loss of books, one of the apparent shills for the plan (sitting with library-sale-and-shrinkage promoter Deborah Hallen and hobnobbing with the development types) tried to defend the loss of physical books that resulted from the shrinking of the library by brightly asking: “How many more digital books will be available” in the shrunken library? 

Each of the library heads got one quote in the press program release.  Queens Library President and CEO Dennis M. Walcott said "Subway Reads aligns perfectly with this objective, and will lead even more people to Queens Library's extensive collection of e-books, audio books, music and digital magazines."

Here is other coverage of the Subway Library promotion.  Although some of the pictures are nice, you'll save time if you read the press release that actually tells you more.

•   Publishers Weekly: In New York, a Library for Your Subway Ride, By John Maher, June 13, 2017

•   AM New York: MTA's Subway Library offers up free e-books to NYC commuters, By Adeja Crearer, June 8, 2017

•    The Digital Reader: New York Libraries Are Promoting Reading on the Subway, by Nate Hoffelde, June 8, 2017.

•   Curbed: NYPL's new `Subway Library' may make your commute a bit less horrible- Get excerpts of popular books, experience a less rage-filled commute, by Amy Plitt@CurbedNY June 8, 2017.

•    TimeOut: The NYPL just turned a subway train into an adorable library, By Clayton Guse, June 8 2017

•    Library Journal: NYC Libraries Open "Subway Library" in Underground Stations, Six-Week Promotion Now Underway, by Gary Price on June 8, 2017

•    New York Times: New York City's Transit Agency Models Train After Library, By The Associated Press, June 9, 2017

•    New York Post: `Subway Library' offers riders a read on their commute, By Danielle Furfaro,  June 8, 2017