Public libraries are stocked with digital audiobooks from Amazon's Audible, and browsers can check reviews on Amazon's Goodreads.
COMMENT
In this article about the Kraken-like tentacles of Amazon.com libraries feature in the role of customers. When libraries lend audio books, Amazon skims a little off the top. Instead of turning to librarians for book recommendations, readers can plow through crowdsourced reviews on Goodreads (which are a lot less useful than you'd think with regard to finding something good to read).
Libraries are a keystone of literary culture. They support books and reading by buying stuff, putting money back into writing and publishing. Yet in the world of librarianship there has not been much acknowledgement of this role. Instead, there is a tendency to prioritize efficiency and cheapness. During the transition to online newspapers, librarians never asked the question of how journalists would get paid. Likewise, librarians have cut down on purchasing books from university presses without ever asking how young professors will get tenure if there is no place for them to publish books.
Librarians like to point to libraries as core institutions for community resilience and civic engagement. Yet abandoning newspapers and academic presses for the sake of "cheapness" was not socially responsible. It's probably not socially responsible for libraries to switch procurement to Amazon.com either, particularly since prioritizing convenience and cheapness are exactly what lured librarians to make bad decisions in the past.
Somebody (ALA?) should take a hard look at library spending in order to understand exactly who and what it's supporting. The long and short is, Big Tech distributes information but does not create it. Amazon.com is the new Wal*Mart, vacuuming up dollars and sucking the life out of communities. Only now it's happening to cities and not vulnerable small towns. The article ends with Emma Snyder, the owner of an independent bookstore who says that her customers will pay $10 more for a book just because they don't like the world Amazon is building: "Part of what people don't like is that Amazon debases the value of things. We're commercial spaces, but we fundamentally exist to feed and nurture people's souls." What if libraries applied this idea to spending? Is there a way to re-focus collection development on building strong communities, not just on getting cheaper best-sellers?
