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A premise — the stewardship and sharing of knowledge…?
Thanks to James for the invitation to blog… I should start out by making clear what I believe to be the ethical foundation for what we do as librarians… Librarianship is founded in two inter-related principles. 1) the stewardship of knowledge and 2) the free, open and effective sharing of knowledge for the common good. Everything we do as professionals flows from – or, at least, should(!) flow from --these two principles. (We can talk later about aberrations…) Stewardship implies thinking comprehensively and synthetically about knowledge and about how knowledge is historically organized but even more importantly, about how knowledge might be organized as it continues to evolve… I hope it is very clear that I am saying explicitly: librarianship is not defined by a physical format (board and rags) or by intellectual domain or by economic or cultural jurisdiction. By implication, stewardship implies a careful consideration of how knowledge is created, of epistemology. I think all good librarians practice epistemology intuitively . A senior scientist for whom I once worked said that he had the uncomfortable feeling that I was “observing” him – and of course, he was right – for many years I have considered ethnography to be an essential part of the librarians role. Though, unlike me, a really skilled librarian-ethnographer is not obvious… What should follow from practical observations is insight and innovation for the benefit of all who seek to use knowledge. As for sharing, the American public library is one of our most fundamental democratic institutions. It embodies the meritocratic notion that every member of our civil society has the right to access to knowledge and should have the freedom to develop knowledge creatively and productively (or even idly and unproductively! – Bertrand Russell, among others, has noted the importance of “idleness” to the creative process – and apparently, Charles Darwin – as he was gestating The Origin of Species -- shot pool with his butler most days… The pool table was next door to his study). The American public library tradition has evolved in parallel with the evolution of science. Both traditions are strongly dependent upon full disclosure, upon full access and upon effective use. In a very fundamental sense, without submission of one’s scientific analysis and data to public scrutiny, one is not practicing science. Similarly in the public sphere, there has been a strong and increasing demand that public policy and decisions taken for the public good, be “evidence-based” . (One might consider Colin Powell's performance before the the UN, just prior to the Iraq War, -- to be a pro forma honoring of this expectation?) In a complexly representative system of government, it is only by provision of the evidentiary basis for policy and decisions that citizens can engage with and evaluate policy and decisions. The importance to access to data as evidence has become critically clear as the discussion of global climate change has progressed… Ultimately not only should the available data as evidence be fully available for examination, but the scientific logic that supports the selection of those data as evidence should also be transparently and usefully available... More, to follow... Continue reading
Brewster Kahle on Google Book Digitization and the Future of Libraries
Of all the things I have read about the Google book digitization project and its consequences, this is one of the best. Listen to the interview (Lunchtime Listen!) or read the transcript.
- Google Faces Antitrust Investigation for Agreement to Digitize Millions of Books Online, interview with Brewster Kahle, Democracy Now!, April 30, 2009.
BREWSTER KAHLE: Let's take the out of copyright, the stuff that's really--it's public domain, meaning belongs to the public. It's lived long enough to become part of the public sphere. But there are perpetual restrictions that the libraries must perform, that if they get these digital copies back, they must put up restrictions on use, such that they cannot be accessible by the general public. AMY GOODMAN: Who can they be accessed by? BREWSTER KAHLE: People on campus can use them, for the out-of-copyright works, but just on campus. And otherwise, they have to put up restrictions. And what's turning out is a lot of these libraries aren't even bothering to get copies back, because what can they use them for? I mean, in the future, people are going to want to have access to as many books as possible. And what Google is doing is pulling these together for many libraries to build a great collection. Terrific. But the bits and pieces that are going back to these libraries don't make up a great collection. And what they can do with them is very, very limited. So these libraries aren't, in many cases, even bothering to get the digital copies back.Second, when Kahle asked if Google would share copies of digitized books with the Internet Archive, Google refused.
AMY GOODMAN: Conceivably, Google could give you the digitized copies, is that right? BREWSTER KAHLE: Yes, Google could, but they have refused. AMY GOODMAN: Why? BREWSTER KAHLE: They say that they've paid for the work. They want to be the place that people go to get them. So they are going to be the proprietors of the public domain.Although Google claims its mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," it would be more accurate to say its mission is to make money controlling the world's information. Continue reading
Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 22
The thing that strikes me as I look through the hundreds of pages of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" is simply this -- how is any normal human being going to deal with this mishmash of legalese, policy descriptions, and billions upon billions of dollars in budget figures? When we speak of the power of "raw data" the positive and pragmatic benefit of government information distribution rests primarily on the ability of people to do something with it. This action can not be determined by the power's distribution mechanism (much in the same way ComEd here in Illinois can't tell me which devices in my home I can and can not turn on -- they just charge me for the overall electricity I use.) Traditional libraries (paper and print universe) functioned much the same way -- people picked and chose information or media depending on what their particular needs might be. Librarians may intervene by limiting who can use the services, how many items can be used, or help users sort out what they might want to use. The power of text clouding, or the ability to pull out different stands of information from a large and complicated information object -- such as what ProPublica did for the stimulus bill -- moves the power relationship from one of passive distribution dominated by personal choices to passive distribution influenced by deliberative contextualizing by a third party. In other words, this third party takes the "raw data" and refines it into another kind of information by-product that might be more significant or meaningful to users. In fact, I would argue many traditional government information sources (i.e. Public Papers of the Presidents, congressional committee reports, Foreign Relations of the United States, Federal Register, or the Code of Federal Regulations) are of this type. What the web offers is the opportunity to make and distribute a wider variety of public information by-products. See you Day 23. Continue reading
12 Questions about the future of journalism
I am often struck by the parallels between libraries and newspapers, librarians and journalists and how technology is affecting these institutions and professions. As I reflect on John Shuler's comments on Government Information Liberation, the following article caught my attention:
- 12 Questions about the future of journalism by Bill Kovach, The American Scholar.
Librarians without Libraries?
December 27, 2008 / Leave a comment
In his continuing series about Government Information Liberation, John Shuler considers the role of collections in libraries. One particularly revealing moment in his discussion is his day 60 post in which he describes a series of questions that he poses to his graduate students to get at the "fundamental things we do."
The Question and Conclusions
One would hope that the questions prompt a discussion and don't just end in "dead silence." Although John doesn't tell us what the discussion, if any, was, he does give us his conclusions: possession of "material" might have once been central to the purpose of libraries but, in the digital age, possession is much less important part of what libraries do.
Even though John qualifies his conclusions to allow for some limited role of collections for some libraries, he overwhelms his caveats with assertions that collections begin and end with the physical ownership of "material" and that "we will not own (possess) much of the material." He even coins the phrase "Gutenberg Librarians" to deprecate "possession and/or control" (66) of information by libraries.
So, John's essential, bottom-line conclusion, regardless of his caveats, comes across clearly: The net, John says, has brought on "the beginning of the end" of library collections (35).
I think his conclusion is wrong and the question he asks is misleading. You can see how misleading the question is by turning it around and realizing that the professions/institutions he uses are not parallel:
But the real problem is that the question implies a shared understanding of what a library is -- a shared understanding that I think we need to articulate explicitly. I think that, before one asks "Can you be a librarian without a library?" one should ask "What is the role of the library is in the digital age?" John has been outlining what he thinks the role of librarians should be and he apparently wants to separate the role of librarians from the role of libraries. Very well: let's examine the roles of both with some discussion, not dead silence.
Librarianship
I think John is implying is his series of posts that librarianship in the digital age will be about helping people navigate a complex, networked maze of shifting, changing information. Librarians will help users "connect the dots" and find connections that are not otherwise explicit (47). While there is nothing wrong with this view, and there is much to recommend it, it doesn't go far enough and it misses a key role for libraries.
As John portrays it, this view accepts that libraries will be less about selecting and preserving information and building digital collections and more about providing services for information over which librarians have no control. Librarians, in this view, are valuable precisely because they have no control over information.
This view accepts that information will be tightly controlled by producers and distributors. What is available, who can use it, under what conditions it may be used, and when it becomes no longer available will all be controlled by government agencies, publishers, individuals, organizations, and other "content" producers.
John also proposes that "librarianship" will be more important than "libraries." To me, this sounds like librarians will be analogous to travel agents who, because they deal every day with the complex, difficult, disparate, unconnected systems, are better able than the traveller to navigate these systems and find the best flight at the best price. So librarians, in this view, will help casual information users navigate a variety of complex, difficult, disparate, unconnected, public-freely-available and proprietary-and-licensed information systems. Just as travel agents have no control over what flights or trips are available or what they cost or what restrictions are placed on them, so librarians will have no control over what information is available or what it costs or what restrictions are placed on its use.
In this view, librarians will not manage collections but will license the right to read from those who control information. Whether the license comes in the form of payment of dollars to a commercial vendor and a written contract that licenses access, or an FDLP designation, or a contractual "partnership" with GPO, or the anointing of permission by Google Books legal department, the result is the same. As a recent article in Library Hi Tech says, "In future, librarians will no longer manage media, they will manage rights" (Böhner, Dörte. Digital rights description as part of digital rights management: a challenge for libraries. Library Hi Tech 26, no. 4 (2008): 598-605). This view reshapes the role of librarians from information providers to information gatekeepers; from information curators to business-officers who sign contracts and pay bills.
Who would want to go into that field?
Libraries
John hasn't said much about the role of libraries except to assert that, for many people, the digital environment is now the "default library" [emphasis added] that supports broad access to a "collection" of government information (51).
But, shouldn't we be asking about the future, not just describing the present?
Shouldn't we be asking about the relationships between doctors and lawyers and information? Certainly doctors and lawyers need a body of literature to practice their professions. Instead of asserting that users have access today, shouldn't we be asking, "Who will build and manage and preserve those collections and ensure long-term, free access to them?"
Shouldn't we be asking what guarantees we have that the information we want today will be available if we want it tomorrow? Shouldn't we be asking who controls access to that information and what are their reasons for providing access? Shouldn't we be asking who will pay for long-term preservation and access?
Just because users who are not familiar with information policy, information economics, or information technologies are happy with current access to information does not mean that they will be happy with the access (or lack of it!) tomorrow or in ten years or a hundred years. Providing easy access at one point in time does not guarantee easy access at a future point in time and can actually mask problems of long-term access.
It is one of the roles of librarians to think beyond today and one of the roles of libraries to guarantee access for tomorrow. We need to think about the long-term. Using short-term convenience as a reason for avoiding that kind of thought is evading one of the key roles of librarianship. And assuming that producers and distributors will have the same values and ethics and practices as librarians is to confuse the role of producers with the role of currators.
Maybe the real questions we should be asking are:
The word "library" does not mean "I have some information." If it did, bookstores would be libraries and publishers would be librarians. We need libraries in addition to publishers and bookstores (and government agencies that distribute information as a by-product of another, primary, mission).
It is all about control
Let's be clear, then. Even in the paper and ink world, libraries and their collections were about wresting control of information from producers and distributors and granting control to local communities and information users. A publisher could take a book out of print, but a library could keep it available. A user could purchase a book and pay for magazine subscriptions, but could use the information for free at the library. Libraries leveraged economies of scale for the benefit of the community, enabling every community member to have benefits of access to information that no individual could possibly afford.
The need for wresting control of information away from those who wish to control the access to and the use of information has not changed in the digital world. But the battle lines have shifted and we need librarians in the fight to keep free, open, usable access.
"Content providers" want to replace copyright with license agreements. Producers want to charge for every single use and dictate who can use information, under what conditions, and in what way. Governments want to be able to alter and even withdraw information after it has been released. And the proliferation of requirements to register to read or use information portends a world in which people will not have the right of privacy when reading.
It is ironic that, given technologies that enable almost unlimited use and re-use of information and that enable information to be distributed and used and re-used almost without cost, we face a horde of stakeholders who want to limit access, charge for every use, restrict re-use, and look over your shoulder to see what you're reading.
More inaccurate conclusions
As noted above, John hedges his conclusion a bit. His wording is that "possession is much less exclusive or destiny for any one institution" and preserving and organizing the information sources "will remain important -- but is no longer our exclusive responsibility" (66). He expands on that idea:
And from these, he draws conclusions:
To me, these summarize one possible scenario out of many. And, IMHO, this scenario is not one librarians should be content to accept or embrace. Why? Because it almost certainly guarantees that a lot of bad things will happen: loss of access, loss of free access, licensing constraints, DRM constraints, loss of information, loss of usability of information, and more.
Different Questions, A Different Answers
In a separate post, I will examine those issues in more detail, but I'll close this post with some assumptions and a couple of final rhetorical questions as a way of addressing John's question, "Can you be a librarian without a library?" The assumptions:
The rhetorical questions:
I think those questions lead us to conclusions that are very different from the the ones John reaches. I will examine this in more detail in another post.
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