Section 3: Libraries are Under Attack: Here’s How They Can Fight Back. by Glyn Moody.
An article from the IFLA website: Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0). creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
“IFLA is the Global Voice of the Library and Information Profession.” www.ifla.org
Key Points:
- The shift to digital has put many core library principles and activities into question
- Privacy is threatened from different quarters, new rights and technology reduce possibilities to access and re-use works, and the notion of truth itself seems threatened
- Libraries can adapt and respond through sharing skills, tools and ideas that empower their users
Libraries are under attack – again. More than a thousand years ago, there were constant threats to medieval libraries across Europe. Migrations by Germanic peoples such as the Vikings saw monastic libraries destroyed or looted as collateral damage of raids on local settlements. Even if libraries were not the direct target, they were nonetheless important victims. As a result, knowledge and thus Western civilisation itself were put at risk. For all the ancient texts that somehow managed to survive the depredations of that time, there are many more that have probably been lost forever in the conflagrations, looting and wrecking that took place over the centuries.
Today’s attacks on libraries are far more subtle. Far more often than not, they do not involve obvious destruction of buildings or their precious holdings. As before, the root cause is a new wave of migration. This time, it is not a physical relocation, but a conceptual one, as billions of people move substantial parts of their lives online.
And as before, the damage being wreaked on libraries is incidental to the main targets, but no less serious. If librarians do not start to fight back, there is a greater risk that the bleak times of the Middle Ages will have to be re-named Dark Ages 1.0, as the new Dark Ages 2.0 begin to unfold.
Under Siege: Multiple Attacks on Privacy
The move online has not just led to major changes in the way people communicate, or conduct business. It is also driving profound and unexpected developments that threaten core aspects of the library world. For example, the essentially private nature of library use can no longer be taken for granted in a world of perpetual and pervasive online surveillance.
As Edward Snowden revealed in 201312, intelligence agencies like the NSA in the US, and GCHQ in the UK, routinely collect, monitor and analyse in bulk most of the data flowing around the Internet. That level of surveillance was simply not possible before people shifted their analogue lives into the digital sphere. The constant governmental spying is matched by the equally intrusive spying carried out by Internet companies like Google and Facebook. They have successfully placed continuous surveillance at the heart of their business models, with little public outcry over the obvious damage to privacy. Online companies track and gather as much information as they can about your digital activities in order to sell advertising that is targeted to your particular interests.
The more companies know about you, the higher the price they can charge to advertisers for the tighter targeting. Just how dangerous this approach can be has become evident recently in the light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal13, where detailed profiling of Facebook users may have been used to influence the results of votes in the US, UK14 and around the world15.
THE ESSENTIALLY PRIVATE NATURE OF LIBRARY USE CAN NO LONGER BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED IN A WORLD OF PERPETUAL AND PERVASIVE ONLINE SURVEILLANCE
The copyright industry evidently wants privacy to be undermined even more, as part of a new EU Copyright Directive16 currently being discussed. The rise of the Internet has made the sharing of information and material that is covered by copyright extremely easy. The EU’s own research shows that small-scale, non-commercial sharing of this kind causes little or no harm to the copyright holders17, and may even be beneficial in terms of promoting sales.
Despite that, the publishing and music industries have lobbied hard for new legislation that would force major Internet services to filter uploads18 made by members of the public, in order to prevent this kind of sharing, which most people engage in routinely. The algorithmic filtering mandated by Article 13 of the proposed EU Copyright Directive, inevitably imperfect, would not only harm privacy through its constant, unblinking surveillance. It would also lead to over-blocking of files that can legally be shared – for example public domain material19 – chill free speech, and discourage EU innovation20. Libraries would suffer the adverse effects of all of these.
Pulling up the Drawbridge: Narrowing Access
The Copyright Directive contains additional attempts to hobble the Internet in ways that will empower the copyright industries but impoverish libraries. For example, Article 11 would create a new ancillary copyright21 that will allow publishers to control and charge for the use of tiny snippets of news articles, including headlines – some have called for even individual words22 to be covered by this new copyright.
Like the rest of the Directive, the details of this “snippet tax” are still being discussed. One proposal is for this to apply to scholarly publications23 too, which would impose onerous additional burdens on academic communications.
THE “SERIALS CRISIS” IS THE MOST OBVIOUS MANIFESTATION OF THE MOVE TO TURN SCHOLARLY KNOWLEDGE INTO A PRODUCT
The snippet tax is just the latest sign of a broader desire by the publishing world to become the main gatekeeper for academic work. The attack on the idea of scholarly knowledge as a commons available to all, owned by none, is being carried out by an industry that is keen to sustain profit margins of 30%-40%24 – levels practically unheard of in other sectors. The “serials crisis” is the most obvious manifestation of the move to turn scholarly knowledge into a product25, and a costly one at that. These actions seriously undermine the role and autonomy of libraries in the academic world.
Mining the Foundations: Fake News
More recently, things have taken an even more disturbing turn. Now, knowledge in general, along with expertise, is both increasingly seen as not just optional, but somehow a sign of elitism. That view naturally poses a challenge to libraries, which have rightly prided themselves on offering both their own expertise, and that of others.
The rejection of expertise as a valid input has probably contributed to an even more corrosive development: attacks on the idea of truth. That is, arguments are no longer about the contours of what is true, but simply a shouting match based on opposing assertions. The recent rise and spread of so-called “fake news”, more properly called disinformation, or lies, is based on the idea that for every fact there can be an opposing fact, just as valid – hardly an idea that will find much favour among rigour-loving librarians.
To the Rescue: How Libraries Can Respond
The list of serious challenges to libraries and the values they embody is long. But the situation is not hopeless. Indeed, libraries are well-placed to play an important role in meeting those challenges. For example, although privacy is jeopardised as never before as a result of massively-intrusive digital technologies, there are also effective technical solutions that can protect personal information.
However, many members of the public are unaware of their existence, or believe them to be too complex to adopt, and therefore forgo their benefits. Libraries could start to use these privacy-enhancing technologies, and to evangelise their use by setting an example themselves.
A good start would be to install virtual private networks26 (VPNs) to provide encrypted channels for all communications. Librarians could explain what exactly VPNs do, and why they are worth deploying. Similarly, the default for library computers could be free software/open source – things like the browser Firefox27, the office suite LibreOffice28, and the operating system GNU Linux29.
Since their underlying programming code is open to inspection, it is harder to hide backdoors allowing companies or governments to spy on users, which makes them more likely to preserve privacy. In the familiar and low-pressure setting of a local library, users could experience first-hand that such programs are as good as expensive proprietary offerings, and no harder to use. Even better, libraries could hand out copies of the software for free.
In the same way, to counter current attempts to demonise the idea of sharing, libraries could actively promote the use of public domain materials30. This virtual library forms an important but often neglected resource that can be shared and re-used in any way, and without any doubts about the legality of doing so.
Creative Commons31 (CC) is another worthy project that deserves to be better known. Libraries are the natural place to promote the benefits of using CC licences32 that encourage wider sharing of materials for mutual benefit. Fighting back against the enclosure of the knowledge commons is perhaps more straightforward, because academic publishing is a familiar domain for librarians. Instead of acquiescing to demands for subscriptions to “big name” journals that are becoming ever-more costly, library departments could suggest open access33 titles as alternatives, and explain why.
More radically, librarians could locate preprint versions of articles users are keen to read. A recent study suggests that publishers add very little other than costs34 to preprints as they journey through the editorial process towards “official” publication in journals. In addition to the original and most famous preprint repository, arXiv.org35 , there are now a host of subject-specific sites36 that offer huge numbers of preprints completely free.
The two other attacks on the foundations of libraries – assaults on expertise and truth – are harder to tackle with specific measures. Perhaps that is not necessary, because the library in itself is an enduring demonstration that expertise and truth exist, matter, and are appreciated. Every time someone visits a library, they affirm its importance as a source of information. Every time they use its resources, they accept that expertise and truth are worth seeking out.
Conclusion: Openness as Response
That still leaves a secondary problem: encouraging more people to visit and benefit from the wisdom of libraries. And this, in its turn, reveals how the threat of the Dark Ages 2.0 will not be countered in the same way that the Dark Ages 1.0 were vanquished. Where medieval libraries sought to avoid being noticed, and closed their gates in the hope that doing so would keep the marauders out if they did pass by, today’s librarians must do the opposite. They need to trumpet that they exist, and then throw open their gates to draw in and welcome as many people as possible.
Although the challenges facing librarians today are probably greater than they have been for a very long time, so are the opportunities for tackling them. The Internet may have a frightening power to destroy, but it can also become a way of working with others to build. The core skills of librarians to gather, preserve and transmit knowledge remain as vital today as they were a thousand years ago.
LIBARIES NEED TO TRUMPET THAT THEY EXIST, AND THEN THROW OPEN THEIR GATES TO DRAW IN AND WELCOME AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE
That continuity enables librarians to join forces with activists who fight against common enemies, but who lack experience in saving civilisation from the barbarians. While its proud heritage endows the profession with a special place in the resistance movement against the new Dark Ages, it also imposes on librarians a corresponding responsibility to engage in the struggle as fully as possible.
Notes.
12 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-nsa-files
13 https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridgeanalytica-files
14 https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica-chriswylie-brexit-trump-britain-data-protection-privacy-facebook
15 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-43476762
16 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593&from=EN
17 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170920/08463638245/eu-buried-own-400000-study-showing-unauthorizeddownloads-have-almost-no-effect-sales.shtml
18 https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/censorship-machines/
19 http://copybuzz.com/copyright/dont-let-upload-filtersundermine-the-public-domain
20 https://juliareda.eu/2017/04/copyright-reform-kills-eustartups/
21 https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyrightfor-news-sites/
22 https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4383152/12-Feb-IP-WP-Press-Publishers-Comments.pdf
23 https://sparceurope.org/copyrightreform/
24 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502
25 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science
26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network
27 https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
28 https://www.libreoffice.org/
29 https://www.wired.com/1997/08/linux-5/
30 https://publicdomainreview.org/guide-to-finding-interesting-public-domain-works-online/
31 https://creativecommons.org/
32 https://creativecommons.org/2018/04/14/announcingopen-registration-for-cc-certificates/
33 https://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
34 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180308/03225939387/research-shows-that-published-versions-papers-costlyacademic-titles-add-almost-nothing-to-freely-availablepreprints-they-are.shtml
35 https://arxiv.org/
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