Reflections on Life, Liberty and Library Science

I was recently asked to provide my thoughts on cultural diversity and collection development for under-represented communities, which is kind of like asking an Amish person how to use a computer.

But since I was being graded on my response, I had to give it the old graduate school try.

I noticed that the ALA Banned Books Week is coming up at the end of September, and in the spirit of the event, I decided to propose a collection of books and other media that are banned in other countries. The objective is simple: To uphold the principle of intellectual freedom by giving immigrants and foreign visitors an opportunity to access information they would not be able to in their native countries. The collection would contain four types of media:

• books (fiction and non-fiction)
• audio recordings (music, speeches, and so on)
• video recordings (movies, events, even cell phone video clips if available)
• computer and video games (for both PCs and video game consoles)

The collection could be broad in scope and variety, but all included media must be in the original language of the country in which it is banned.

To derive more specific demographics about my target audience, I visited the Department of Homeland Security website and downloaded the 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, which provides an annual breakdown of immigrants by country. Here are the top five countries for 2008 in terms of immigrant volume:

• Mexico: 188,015
• China: 75,410
• India: 59,728
• Philippines: 52,391
• Cuba: 48,057

For simplicity, I limited the collection to these five countries, and then compared the relative volume of immigrants from each country to determine the mix of media from each country to include in the collection. For example, 44% of the total pool of immigrants from these five countries came from Mexico; thus, 44% of the collection would be comprised of banned Spanish-language media from Mexico. The pie chart below illustrates the composition of the collection as a whole:

This is admittedly a simplistic methodology; if I were building a real collection, I would probably want the collection to reflect the nationalities of my member base or the local/regional community. It might also be worthwhile to research the volume of non-immigrant foreigners (e.g., students) who are using the library (I grew up in Berkeley where the main branch of the library was used heavily by U.C. Berkeley students, many of whom were foreigners).

Then of course there is the issue of sourcing media for the collection. Aside from availability, there is the unanswered question of censorship policies in the included countries. I know that many books are banned in China, India and Cuba, but what about Mexico? Lastly, I would consider including a list of challenged and banned media in the United States to provide perspective and to encourage library users to go out and find such material.

Enter the Long Tail

As I was thinking about my response to this discussion, there was one thing that kept creeping into my brain: The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. For those not familiar with this concept, it began as a Wired article but has grown into a book (and blog) and is regarded by many as a specialized theory about “niche markets” and frequency distributions. It’s also a direct challenge to the Pareto Principle (commonly known as the 80/20 rule).

Long Tail theory is best explained by example: Borders and Barnes & Noble only carry a very limited collection of books because 80 percent of their sales come from 20 percent of the books in their stores (bestsellers). That’s Pareto Principle. But AMAZON makes a very large percentage of their book sales from items that are not available at Borders or Barnes & Noble–that’s Long Tail. Same goes for the iTunes Music Store vs. Walmart (which until iTunes came around was the biggest music retailer in the country); Apple makes a lot of money off of music you can’t find at Walmart. Here’s a power bar graph (a modified version of a graphic I lifted from Wikipedia–sorry) that provides a simplistic illustration of Pareto vs. Long Tail:

So what is my point? I think The Long Tail could be used as a methodology for identifying niche audiences and collections! Taking my theoretical collection as an example, Pareto Principle would dictate that I build a collection for the Chinese immigrant community because they are the largest pool of immigrants from Asia (75,410 in 2008). But if I followed The Long Tail, I might notice that 74,115 immigrants were listed as “Asia Other” and build a niche collection of banned materials from one or several of these “other” countries.

The obvious caveat here is that the Long Tail is a model best applied on the Web, where scarcity gives way to abundance. But I believe focusing on the other 80% is EXACTLY what diversity is all about, and that it would be worthwhile for librarians to experiment by applying The Long Tail to library collections. Unexpected discoveries may ensue….