Info Commons -- Sunday -- Session II
Libraries & Information Commons
Sunday
Panel 3 -- Part 2: The Commons and Policy
Mary Minow
Digital Promise -- initiative started
The public owns the electromagnetic spectrum -- 30% of sales of current spectrum/backbone needs to be set aside for a digital trust devoted to the public interest ... a Digital
If we do not invest wisely and heavily in digital diversity and opportunity, America will be unable to maintain its dominance in the world
Proposed structure: national board resembling the NSF; board would select a director of the trust, grants would be given to libraries, museums, other cultural institutions
Rick Emrich
How to promote commons
Creating commons is about eliminating barriers
The tensions in commons work -- we need a coherent policy/definition/policy, but we also need concrete examples
Currently - market failures in the U.S., but a reluctance to see viable and desirable alternatives to commons; we need to use instances of market failure to connect people to the possible of these alternatives
Commons are about community
Illustration of what commons can be: Agnes Varda's "The Gleaners & I"
Charlotte Hess
We want to foster civic engagement, discourse
We also need to protect the cultural record from enclosure, encroachment, capture, etc.
Collecting at-risk information; ex.: satellite images being discarded by NASA
The preservation of cultural and scholarly information is very important and is a relatively new concern
Path dependency - a barrier (i.e. doing things based on how its been done before/by others)
We need to start recording local information
There's always going to be a break between global standards and local initiatives
Nancy Kranich
How to create a new paradigm
The importance of communitarian values -- "We the People"
How do we change our own behaviours and how do we influence the behaviours of others
Consider how we build information communities -- how do we identify and bring in the stakeholders
Many people/institutions need to be part of the discussion; we are/will be the facilitators of the discussion
Elements of the commons: trust (are people aligned to their institutions or their discipline), reciprocity
We need to learn from our mistakes in order to encourage/build better models
We bring a culture of collaboration
Lakoff -- "Once you reframe the discourse, everything you say is common sense"