The British Library

“From Bones to Bytes” is the British Library’s first foray into the world of YouTube and perhaps, by extension, Library 2.0. The British Library posted this—the sole video in their account—on October 29, 2007. Neither the account nor the video seem too popular: it has zero subscribers and only had 105 views as of today. Not one of those 105 viewers has deemed the video worthy of comment (perhaps I should write something there to get the comments flowing!).

Anyway, three cheers for the British Library for actually posting this promotional plug for its new home.

The library and its website bill themselves as “The World’s Knowledge.”

I thought that tag belonged to Wikipedia, but I guess the librarians at the BL think that they have all the world’s knowledge in their new home (at least all the world’s knowledge published in Britain), and we’ll let them continue with this bit of false advertising.

Overall, this is a great video for the library’s image. I can imagine that the old British Library was a rather stodgy place, where Marx hung out and wrote Das Kapital. This is a new era and the BL has a new home, so drumming up some support for it entails a certain amount of “dumbing down” the message. The presenter (love that British word), Tim Campbell, won the BBC’s version of “The Apprentice,” so I suppose he would be well known over the pond and is an aspirational figure. He does a good job of making the library seem like a fun place in which to hang out. In a very subtle way, he invites us to this treasure house with phrases such as: “All sorts of people use the British Library … and it’s all for free.” He sounds particularly proud of the eleven reading rooms that “cover every subject … even newspapers and comics.” In case those antiquarian things called books should turn off the digital-age viewer, Mr. Campbell is quick to point out that, “In fact, loads of what the library does is on the Web.”

 

THE WORLD’S KNOWLEDGE? REALLY! GREAT LOGO; MEDIOCRE WEBSITE. THE WORLD’S HOMEPAGE IS A BIT CROWDED FOR MY TASTE. THEN AGAIN, IT COULD JUST BE MY BROWSER.

The library does a great job of selling itself as a so-called “Third Space.” Mr. Campbell says: “It’s a stunning place architecturally and a cool environment with a café where you can network, a WiFi zone (only a zone?), and shop full of gifts and books. That pretty much covers the details of a great destination space: culture, food, shopping, and Internet all under one roof.

As for the collection, the video points out the enormous range of material available (“All for free!”), including some one hundred and fifty million items “at last count.” As the presenter says, “that’s one serious collection.” He then goes on to point out that there is a serious side to all this material, and that visitors must follow some basic food and drink and coat policies.

I found it interesting that the BL does not have library cards. Rather, it has what it calls a Reader Pass. Nomenclature is important; having a Reader Pass sounds so much more, well, prestigious, than a simple library card. And reading is something that both the old fogies and the Google Generation do, albeit with different media

BOTTOM LINE: Good. On first view, I missed the oracle bones of the video’s title (which didn’t seem to make much sense at first). If a library is going to post something to YouTube, I think the proper tagging is important. Perhaps the library should have used “The British Library: From Bones to Bytes” as the name of the video (that would help searching for it, at least). Finding the video from the BL’s website was a bit tricky (searching on “YouTube” resulted in no hits). There is no direct link to it from the homepage (I would plug it in there if I had produced it). Searching their website under “Library 2.0″ I found this link, which is an interesting analysis of how UK libraries might rise to the challenge of 2.0:

“The public library web environment in the UK, especially as it is contained within the local government web environment, will be challenged to make the requisite changes at the systems and information architecture level to offer seamless integration of applications and services. How much libraries want to engage with these technologies should be dictated by strong, local business cases supported by the needs and demands of their public.”

I wonder how many libraries actually consider business cases before launching into the world of Web 2.0.

 

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