行書之私(思)

– Posted by Clay Shirky at 10:00 PM

The Distributed Library Project is an attempt to get individuals to register books they would be willing to lend out to one another, in the manner of a library.

Unfortunately, the traditional library system doesn’t do much to foster community. Patrons come and go, but there is very little opportunity to establish relationships with people or groups of people. In fact, if you try to talk with someone holding a book you like – you’ll probably get shushed. The Distributed Library Project works in exactly the opposite way, where the very function of the library depends on interaction.

What’s interesting to me is that if it recapitulates a regular library, where users simply have access to the book lists, it will fail in exactly the manner the famous white bicycles of Amsterdam did, where white bicycles would be left in the street for “the community” to use. The problem is that communities don’t ride bicycles, people do.

The white bicycle idea was tried in the late 60’s and again in the late 90s, and failed both times because of the collective action problem (w00t Mancur Olson w00t!) — it would be to everyone’s benefit to have community-owned bicycles freely available, but it would be of much more benefit to each individual to own their own bike, so the bikes were (duh) stolen.

The books in the DLP will be stolen too, even if through inertia, e.g. I forgot to return the copy of 1984 I borrowed, and the owner rightly figured that the hassle of getting it back would have a higher opportunity cost than the value of having it back.

The one potential saving grace will be the DLP’s attempt not to recreate a standard library, but to include a repuation system and book recommendations as a way to punish defectors:

While this is a community site based on good will, we have an ebay-style feedback system for managing trust. Lenders have the opportunity to leave positive or negative feedback for borrowers when an item is returned. These positive or negative points contribute to an overall “score” which lenders can use to gauge the trustworthiness or responsibility of a borrower. Lenders can also leave comments along with the points to be more specific.

We know that humans will punish defectors even when it is costly to do so [PDF], but we don’t know if book-borrowing creates enough value to trigger that altruistic behavior. With the DLP, however, we may find out.