Peak books

Are we close to 'peak books'?  You often hear about 'peak oil', the idea that at some point soon the world will extract less oil from the earth each year.  How about books?

Here are some measures of library activity that may have already passed their peak:

• Gate counts at academic libraries
• Physical books circulated
• Public library patrons
• Budgets for physical material
• Catalogers employed
• Physical distribution of government materials to libraries
• Title selection by librarians

Some that probably haven't, but may soon reach their peak:

• Public library patrons
• Physical book purchases by libraries
• Books printed
• Total library budgets
• Physical books/volumes stored on campus
• Physical interlibrary loan
• Reference librarians
• Librarians in general

And some that seem nowhere close to peaking:

• Accesses to material (including electronic)
• Amount of licensed material available
• Physical books/volumes in off-campus storage
• Books published

Libraries have always complained about inadequate/shrinking budgets (e.g. academic library budgets are a shrinking proportion of schools' budgets), but the huge growth in higher education has offset that for total library budgets, but I doubt if that will be true in the future.

These are just my guesses, and I'd love to be wrong about most of them.  What should be moved to the 'nowhere close to peaking' section?  What am I missing?

Thanks to Eric Childress for discussion and suggestions.

--Th

I admit a North American bias in thinking about this, but maybe it isn't so different in Europe? 

 

Comments

[Aaron Schmidt]

Great concept. I explored something similar thinking about sustainability here: http://www.walkingpaper.org/2399

[microscribe]

I think this is very true, even in third world contries. The world is getting to the point that every person will have access to a cell phone. And that brings up-to-date information. Books may be declining quickly.