Confessions of a Mad Librarian

Current limitations and restrictions:

Why are librarians the ones to sound the alarm? Why is this our job? Why us? We are the only public servants who have been assigned that mission -- the mandate to inform the public
Media claim to have the same mission, but their ideological position and their profit motive have corrupted their effectiveness.

Even scholarly information is commercial nowadays.

Libraries have a crucial difference from other media distribution --
libraries try to gather as much information as possible AND they organize and classify that information and deliver that information to one citizen/patron at a time, without intervention, time/space constraints

Librarians bring no ideological motive to the information query, we're funded by the public/government and we have not an eye to profit

Information is crucial to democratic governance -- a notion that goes all the way to the founding of the Republic -- the Declaration of Independence, the First Amendment ...

Libraries were founded as community agencies -- a communal tradition
Contradicting tradition -- the government that governs best governs least -- individual liberty -- also reflected in library tradition (community vs. individualism)
Libraries are the most used government agency, and the most efficiently run government agencies -- libraries are government at its best

To get all sides of the story, you have to research it at the library

The economic imperative of lighthouses - it costs no more to warn 100 ships of rocks than it does to warn 1 ship

The main job for libraries is to preserve the public sector information infrastructure -- to preserve information access

Threats to information access:
commodification of information
Problems: marketplace failure
"Information is not property" -- corporations that demand deregulation of physical property rights also demand greater government protection of proprietary information
Using copyright to censor

In the interests of an informed public, we must restrict copyright
We must demand a full, strong public domain of information

Free access is threatened by government secrecy and corporate exercise of copyright
government information via the web has been restricted or removed, while FOIA requests are being denied

Librarians must be on guard against these threats
Our duties:
Expert selection, evaluation and aggregation
Must teach advantages and disadvantages of information formats and sources
We must not be afraid to point out ineffective, too costly resources
We must share our expertise in evaluating sources
We must protest, dispute and demand from our government that they uphold and respect our right to know

We undermine our cause with inattention to restrictive licensing agreements, with cost-per-use services in public and academic libraries, by not getting involved in the political arena to protect our users' rights.

Librarians are finally getting militant.

We have the right to be fully informed for work, play, life decisions, community and governance

Information distribution via libraries is a public good and should remain free

Information and knowledge solve problems

Librarians are guides to information, not "information cops"

The core values of libraries are being threatened by rich and powerful foes who view us as commodity competitors

Information escapes ... it never goes away. Until it is shared, it doesn't exist.

Q&A

Why has Ashcroft never been quoted directly as insulting libraries in your publication? The first two articles that appeared in Library Journal reporting Ashcroft's remarks have made it clear that he was referring to a particular private organization -- the American Library Association.

We don't make that distinction. When you say that ALA is hysterical, you're talking about 65,000 members -- a substantial number of librarians.

How does technology enhance or hinder intellectual freedom and information access?

2 problems with use of technology --

Most important challenge - how to overcome the propensity of a younger generation, who are technologically sophisticated, but has no information patience, and have no evaluation skills to judge the quality of the information

This is complicated by the fact that public information experts are not invited to the information transaction -- we must be more activist in our information pursuit: more outreach is necessary

Infrastructure problems -- easy to hack, manipulate or even pull the plug entirely, as they did in Poland to the Solidarity movement.

What is the proper scope of copyright?

The original scope (20 years) was good.
There should be a form of copyright, without limits, for 'frivolous' information (like Mickey Mouse), but for crucial public/government information, it should have a short copyright term.

What's wrong with requiring a small fee for popular items (bestsellers, DVDs/videos, CDs) in public libraries?

What we might consider to be 'junk' may turn out to be very important to our patrons; the debate over popular fiction and introduction of popular material led to the evolution of intellectual freedom; such material are important to people's social lives; the library also provides access to material to people who cannot otherwise access it due to costs.