If there’s one phrase I dislike more than the latest company touting itself as the “Netflix for books,” it’s when the retort is that such a thing already exists and it’s called the library.
The library is not a Netflix for books.
While there are plenty of reasons a company would want to step in and create something as successful as Netflix but for books, the comparison made to how libraries already fulfill this role is a false one at best. It’s a reductive and problematic comparison.
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The library is the center and the heart of community.
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The library gets to know you the person, rather than you, the data.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
View all posts by Michael Sauers
If there’s one phrase I dislike more than the latest company touting itself as the “Netflix for books,” it’s when the retort is that such a thing already exists and it’s called the library.
