Cities as Long Tails of the Physical World: a Challenge for Public Libraries
In his 2006 book titled The long tail Chris Anderson points out that, over the Internet, niches become not only economically sustainable but also profitable, in particular for those products which can be sold in a digital format, like music. The physical constraints which prevented any distributor from having a large catalogue of products (because of the need of larger and larger spaces and the inefficiency of having thousands of products stored for months or years) have been overcome by the convergence of an increasing number of products to digital. He proves that for these kinds of products the sum of the niche markets can be comparable to the mass market.For those products which keep their physical appearance, becoming available on the Internet market has not the same outcome, as they need to deal with the traditional storage and movement problems. Nonetheless, the spreading of information about their availability opens the market to an unforeseeable number of potential users. On the other hand, Anderson stresses the fact that, in the physical world, cities are the environments in which some preconditions of the long tail paradigm occur, as they can count on a large audience where a number of niches spring up and, consequently, even a small and very specialised business can develop. How do all these phenomena have an impact over public libraries? We all know that nowadays public libraries are facing deep challenges which are putting even their existence under pressure, whilst new public libraries buildings are opening in many cities around the world, particularly in metropolitan areas. The aim of this paper is to study if there could be a link between the role of new public libraries in contemporary society and the application of the long tail paradigm to the physical world, and in particular if these new libraries could learn new, useful lessons for their collection and service planning starting from this point. The analysis will be carried out through theoretical means and the proposal of some case studies of new built public libraries in Europe. In particular, an Italian public library, the Sala Borsa Library in Bologna, an English one, the Whitechapel Idea Store, and a Spanish one, the Jaume Fuster Library, will be taken into account. Each of these libraries will offer a different point of view and a different answer for strengthening the relationship between public libraries and citizens needs.
physical world the long tail public library
Anna Galluzzi
Biblioteca del Senato Giovanni Spadolini, Italy
国际会议
杭州
英文
421-433
2010-08-24（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）