Are we buying too much?

This isn't a post about consumerism and holiday spending. Instead, it's a post about how much money (including staff time, marketing, etc) a library should spend on new innovations.



My soon to be ex-employer, Multnomah County Library has recently purchased a new product called MyLibraryDV. It's downloadable software that allows the patron to watch movies and television shows for free. Primarily, it has programs from public television: Julia Child, America's Test Kitchen, GlobeTrekker, Rick Steves. The movies are old (Angel & the Badman with John Wayne) or independents (Marion Bridge). They promise to add more content soon.



I have no idea how much this new service is costing the library, but I'm sure it can't be cheap.



I'm using it. I watched a GlobeTrekker episode about Mexico City before I went to Mexico. I worked up a sweat in my kitchen last week to a kickboxing video. I plan to watch shows and movies in Omaha because I won't have a television. I do wonder, however, if this is something my public library should be spending money on. It seems to me that there are three major issues:



1. The digital divide. I'm really not sure how divided the divide truly is. Computers are pretty inexpensive these days and I know plenty of kids from poor families who have one. But I wonder how fast the computers can possibly be and how good of a connection they have? The MyLibraryDV software requires a broadband connection and one gigabyte of memory. That's no problem for my wonderful laptop, but I only have nice technology because I have a tech boyfriend. I am able to play with the software at home and figure it out.


And that leads me to.....


What about the staff/patron digital divide? More and more staff here are part-time and may not have the money for a nice computer with a fast connection. Because it's downloadable software, it cannot be loaded onto a library computer and staff doesn't have practice time.


But I'm not sure that matters, because....


2. The overload of "new" stuff at the library. In this world of Library 2.0, I believe there is one thing everyone is overlooking. If we don't tell people about our wonderful products, they won't know they are there. For example, MCL recently purchased an amazing new database called the Gale Virutal Reference Library. I love it because it has full-text of hundreds of reference books. It's great for a small branch that doesn't have a lot of shelf space. MCL had tranings for all reference staff and upper management made a very big deal of it.


How was it marketed to the public? Not at all. There was a tiny link on the library's main page for about a month.


Why do we spend so much money (and I know this one was expensive) on something and then not tell the public about it? We focus so much advertising, money and energy on special events (like Keep Portland Weird) but virtually nothing on our basic services. Don't get me wrong, I love special programming. It brings in the big numbers and can help with good library PR. But for lasting love between the library and the public, they have to see us as necessary.


Helping people find information is necessary and maybe we need to focus more on our basic services. (this is something I want to talk about more in depth later)


And my last issue.....


3. Who is using MyLibraryDV? Well, me. But I don't really need it. I have at my house (in no particular order): Tivo, iTunes, Playstation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, Netflix (3 at a time), DirecTV, 2 laptops, high-speed internet (with Youtube and Google video), Library DVDs and a boyfriend who knows how to steal any show or movie I want to watch. Is it worth the library spending so much money on software people don't need? What exactly are our intentions with this?



I say, give the public tools that they need and not just toys that make us look good. I went into this rant not having an opinion about MyLibraryDV but now I think it's a waste of money.