Robert Jensen brings up an interesting point in his article, “The Myth of the Neutral Professional” from 2004 when he states that an intellectual in any society is not neutral. Intellectual Professionals, such as librarians, serve a function; that function is to solidify the position of the elite. They do this by validating what they choose as important for the masses. Jensen talks about how librarians take on the agenda of the elite through things like acquisitions and programing, but something he does not acknowledge is the tagging system which also confirms the agenda of the elite. Librarians are the gatekeepers of information. Today, patrons have access to sources not kept by librarians for almost any information they like, however, the most valid source of intellectual information is still housed in some form of library. Libraries get their funding from somewhere, which makes them some form of extension of the elite as well. A library may house many voices, but a higher structure chooses those voices. Accessibility has changed how patrons interact with information. Librarians can use this to create a more open library system, and acknowledges its bias.
Intellectuals cannot ignore the interconnectedness of institutions in the United States. Institutional libraries do not stand alone in a web of power structures. A government unit of some kind does fund them. By extension, the rich and powerful elite, to some extent, control said government units. Libraries extend much farther than just career academics and intellectual professionals, especially academic libraries. Today the average millennial has to go to college to be financially secure; therefore the impact of an academic library reaches into more minds than ever before. The impact of so many people having their own perspectives in the social sciences could alter the future of how Americans think. The question is, with so many sources for information accessible, how will the average American react?
Just because there is an option for someone to verse themselves in new ideas, does not mean that, they will not simply narrow their field of view in order to focus on what matters to them. Whether to embrace knowing a little bit about everything, or accept that knowing everything about one thing is impossible seems to be the intellectual conundrum of the 21st century. I feel that in this paradox is where the excuse of neutrality is most dangerous. The idea of neutrality allows for those desiring to narrow their field of view to continue to do so without recognition of the bias they are gaining. By not advocating for new voices, libraries can enable this behavior, “[…] to take no explicit position by claiming to be neutral is also a political choice, particularly when one is given the resources that make it easy to evaluate the consequences of that distribution of power and potentially affect its distribution.” (Jensen, 2004) If you look at the structure of cataloging there is a particular field where this distribution of power is transparent: tagging. In the tags field, the goal is to describe a book in key words, findable to the patron. In a sense the librarian has freedom to tag something as whatever they like, but at the same time that person is limited to the acceptable “neutrality” where they must tag the item with accepted terms recognized by society as associated with the object. Using conventional tags for these materials is good for someone seeking out that information. But it limits the ability for someone to stumble upon this material, exposing them to something new or a new viewpoint on the subject matter. If it became the convention to tag things as related to a field that oppose it, or give a new view on it; less direct tagging, could be a solution to this small scale interest situation. The internalization of people is something that should be acknowledged by the intellectual professional, as well as their own biases. Another solution can be to add a new field to the tagging system recognizing the source’s lens before interacting with the source.
For example, if someone has limited themselves to knowing only about the issue of deforestation of the Amazon, they might limit their keyword search to “Deforestation” and “Amazon” which will educate them on that specific topic. The materials that person gains access to could include animals placed on extinction lists because of the deforestation, active parties causing the deforestation, and what governments might be doing to stop it. On WorldCat there is a field where that person can limit further by ‘Topic’. They can look at their subject of interest through a sociological lens, agricultural, anthropological, and many more. This field is the best solution one can find to the lack of neutrality in the library field. There are still limited available sources about the ‘medicine’ topic as a lens on the subject of the deforestation of the Amazon (one to be exact) but the patron can recognize a different lens on the same subject they have interest in.
The concept of neutrality in a library setting is an excuse for legitimacy at best. It needs to be clear to a patron that there are necessary biases involved when dealing with a body of information, whether that be in a physical library or when accessing an online catalog. As library professionals there are steps we can take to identify our catalog’s limits that will create transparency with patrons. Informing the public that they are exposing themselves to a limited collection of viewpoints at any given time could make that person more open to new voices. It may help that person realize that there will always be another way to view something, which is the true issue of the neutrality illusion; it creates an authority in something that can only honestly claim to be a small collection of intellectual thought.

Jensen, R. (2004). The Myth of the Neutral Librarian. Progressive Librarian, 28-34.

Access to information is widely viewed as a core principle of democratic society. But what if there are populations who don’t know how to find what they need, or even know that it is available to them? This thought occurred to me as I read Chapter 1 of “The Wealth of Networks” by Yochai Benkler. Benkler, an optimist who believes deeply in the potential power of the internet as a force for good, argues that “From a more substantive and global perspective focused on human development, the freedom to use basic resources and capabilities allows improved participation in the production of information and information-dependent components of human development.” [1] While this is almost certainly true, Benkler’s reasoning relies on the assumption that potential users (and producers) of information know how to access and use it.

As we discussed this topic in class, I thought of the library in my neighborhood, the people who use it, and what they might use it for. The library, obviously, houses a wealth of information, and also provides practical services like help with becoming a citizen and registering to vote. But how do people learn how to access that information? How do people even know where their library is? What if they don’t have one in their neighborhood, or town? I believe that, in fact, there may be vast “information deserts” here in our own city, as well as around this country and the world, where most people are not able to access the resources that are, in theory, available to them.

The idea of an “information desert” is based on the “food desert” concept, defined by the USDA as “…parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas…largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers.” [2] An information desert, therefore, might refer to both geographic areas without libraries or perhaps internet access, as well as groups of people – the elderly, possibly, or non-English speakers, or people without cell phones or home computers – lacking the ability to access available resources.  

A specific example of the latter concept is discussed by Jeff Cohen in his 2013 article, “Living in a College Information Desert.” Cohen responds to a piece in the New York Times, “Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor,” which highlights a disturbing statistic: “Only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of income distribution attended any one of the country’s 238 most selective colleges.” [3] Cohen argues that “This phenomenon is largely due to a lack of information and access to cultural capital (i.e., knowledge about college and the associated application and financial aid processes)” and that “there are entire neighborhoods and even regions where nobody knows about or has attended selective colleges or, more importantly, that there are meaningful differences between the colleges that one might attend with respect to support, learning environments and graduation rates.” [4]

The effects of this situation are far-reaching. As the Times article points out, the graduation rate for low-income students attending local colleges is only 50 percent, versus 89 percent at selective colleges. [5] This fact alone limits the future prospects of these students, without factoring in that graduates of selective colleges will likely have better job opportunities than those who graduate from local colleges. When high-achieving students don’t attend universities with high academic standards, they are denied opportunities for success – and the world is denied their potential contribution.

The Times article suggests that the onus is on universities to address this issue. [6] Cohen has a number of suggestions, including funding more college counselors and programs that bring graduates from selective colleges to high schools in low-income communities. [7] I think a combination of efforts could, in this case, have a significant effect. I also think there is a role for the government, especially in ensuring that all public high school students know how to apply for financial aid (which may open up more possibilities for them).

More broadly, information deserts affect a variety of populations (but especially those in low-income communities). How, for example, do the unemployed search for jobs? If one has a home computer with internet access, we might say that it’s easy enough to use employment websites. But what if one doesn’t have a computer or internet at home? They can certainly use the library. But what if their community doesn’t have a library, or it’s too far or difficult to reach? This limits their options to a very narrow scope. (And even if they do have internet access, we are assuming that they know what sites to use and how to use them; we assume that they know how to write a resume and cover letter, etc; this is a different kind of information desert, perhaps – an information literacy desert.)

Benkler’s fantasy of the internet as a great equalizer has merit. But we still live in a time when not everyone can access the internet, and not all of those who can know how to use it to their advantage. This will surely change organically over time as our culture becomes more and more “plugged in.” But in the meantime, we must work to ensure that all populations have ways of accessing information that is critical to their lives. This may mean bringing computers into senior centers; providing free wifi in public spaces; advertising campaigns advising people as to where they can find information they need; and any number of other case-specific solutions. Awareness of the issue is the first step towards finding a remedy.

[1] Benkler, Y. (2006). “Introduction: a moment of opportunity and challenge” in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, 1–18.

[2] http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defines-food-deserts

[3] Leonhardt, Dave. “Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor.” The New York Times, March 16, 2013.

[4] https://www.fsg.org/blog/living-college-information-desert

[5] Leonhardt, Dave. “Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor.” The New York Times, March 16, 2013.

[6] Ibid.

[7] https://www.fsg.org/blog/living-college-information-desert

 

“Information, knowledge and culture are central to human freedom. How they are produced and exchanged in our society critically affects the way we see the state of the world.” (1). In our electronic world, a huge amount of our information comes from the Internet, and the production of that information is a complex thing, which requires, from the consumer a critical approach. Benkler is very optimistic about the way we use the public Internet space to inform our reading of this information.  This shared public space allows for many different voices to be heard, and Benkler claims that because so much information is available, there emerges ” a more critical and self-reflective culture (Benkler, pg 15) Whether this optimism is justified or not is another matter.

Recent issues with Facebook over trending topics and the its algorithms that monitor site content both support and challenge the idea of the user’s critical view of information from Facebook. How important is Facebook’s influence.  The NY times says Facebook has 1.71 billion members worldwide, and half of American adults get their news from Facebook.(2) This is a new narrowing of a news source. Certainly no single newspaper or single TV news show is relied upon by half the adult population for news. That many people relying on Facebook as their single source for information means everything that Facebook does matters.

Kincheloe talks about electronic media as providing us with a “secondhand culture, filtered and preformed in the marketplace and constantly communicated via cultural and mass media.(3) This is what Facebook is doing in a very concentrated way, feeding us our culture and information, “filtered” as it chooses. Giving us a filtered monoculture.

In May 2016, The Wall Street Journal wrote about bias in trending topics posted by Facebook. They claimed that conservative news is down played, and liberal news stories are chosen and emphasized. Facebook replied that these stories are chosen through algorithms, and so are neutral, and that guidelines are “in place to support consistency and neutrality. (4)

While Facebook claimed neutrality, nonetheless it responded to accusations of bias by changing its in house training program. In June 2016, Facebook included political bias in its standard training sessions, beyond racial, gender, etc bias.(5)

In September Facebook removed a 1972 Vietnam War photograph (that had a depiction of a naked child) from its site. However member response, (thousands of people reposted the picture) was such that Facebook reinstated the picture on its site. In both these instances Facebook responded to user concerns.

What we see here is a constant back and forth between members and Facebook, in a fight over the control of the content.  Members are not passive recipients of filtered information. They do question what they are seeing and reading. This supports Benkler’s idea that “individuals are less susceptible to manipulation by a legally defined class of others- the owners of communications infrastructure and media” (Benkler pg 9) and that there is not control that is gained once, but “hegemonic consent is always in flux.” (Kincheloe, pg. 93.)

However, these two examples, of member push back, what do they really mean? We have two examples of Facebook changing its content because of outside input. Are these two examples exceptions, instances where the members are critical and aware that they are being manipulated?  Is the norm the opposite? Is it true that most of the time Facebook’s readers are not critical?  The bias in trending topics was reported by a former employee (a whistle blower) not by a user. Only once that it was exposed did members push back. Would even the most critical of readers have noticed a bias? Or would the members be more likely to think that just because it was on Facebook it was authoritative?  To draw a parallel, “The information encapsulated in an article stands alone, authoritative by virtue only of its presence in the volume. Legitimacy is conferred by its place on the Library shelf, (6), or to paraphrase, news on Facebook is legitimized by being there. How many users will be able to take the critical stance described by Kincheloe: “critical hermeneutics traces the ways the cultural dynamics (of popular media) position audiences politically in ways that not only shape their political beliefs, but formulate their identities.” pg 103.? How able are we to “trace” the way Facebook “positions” us? Do we have the knowledge to do so. It does not seem that the open common space of the internet, as described by Benkler, is routinely able to give us a “more critical and self-reflective culture.” Perhaps we can only hope that whistle blowers (Snowden) will continue to come along, as we, users might not be able to maintain a critical stance that is educated and robust enough to unearth these manipulations.

 

(1) http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks_Chapter_1.pdf, p.1

 

(2) www.nytimes.com/…/facebook-vietnam-war-photo-nudity.html

 

(3)  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261773451_ Rethinking_Critical_Theory_and_Qualitative_Research

 

(4) http://www.wsj.com/articles/five-things-to-know-about-facebooks-trending-controversy-1462915385

 

(5)   http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-introduces-political-bias-training-after-trending-topics-controversy-2385911

 

(6)”http://www.jstor.org/stable/4309685 pg 435

 

 

 

I recently visited the Brooklyn Historical Society to conduct an interview with Brett Dion, whose official title is Oral History Project Archivist. Dion received his library science degree from Pratt, and began working at the New York Transit Museum during his final semester in school. He was there for seven years, at first in the archives and then as a registrar (which involved maintenance of the collection and loan paperwork). During his last couple of years at the Transit Museum, Dion began taking workshops at the New York Writers Coalition, and ended up volunteering with StoryCorps. As Dion describes, StoryCorps is a mutated version of oral history, because of the editing and streamlining process: often, when relating a story, people jump around and meander along in the telling. While from the oral history perspective, the narration should be left in its original state, StoryCorps condenses and edits to create a more straightforward version.

When Dion heard of an opening at the Brooklyn Historical Society in the oral history department last October, he jumped at the chance to interview. He wanted to expand his experience in collections, as he had never worked with audio recordings before. He was hired to stay on for two grant-financed projects; he is still working on the first, which must be 70% complete by this upcoming spring in order for the funding to continue. Much of the work done to preserve or archive collections at BHS is funded by grants, so much so that there is a staff member whose sole job is to apply for funds and write proposals. The project Dion is working on now is with legacy oral histories, which date back to 1973 and are stored on audio cassette. He is digitizing, doing conservation work for the tapes that are falling apart, and making the histories more available than they’ve ever been before. Using a system called the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), developed at the University of Kentucky libraries, Dion will put them online and make them accessible in a novel way: the audio will be synched with the transcripts. When uploading an MP3 and a file of the transcript, it is possible to lock them in place and match up the words that occur at every one-minute mark. This entails Dion (or one of his two interns) listening to each oral history within the system. At every fifty second mark, a bell goes off to tell the listener to pay attention; another bell goes off at sixty seconds, which is when Dion or the intern must highlight the word that is being spoken at that exact time. It then jumps to the next fifty second mark, and so on. Dion says that after an adjustment period, the process can go pretty quickly. Before matching up the audio, there must first be an evaluation of the transcripts themselves, which were created when the histories were recorded, back in the 1970s and 80s. Dion and his interns listen to each recording while carefully going over the accompanying transcript, to make sure that the initial transcription was accurate, and to correct any misspellings. Often the narrators of the histories will share their birthdate, but that information must be bleeped out, as a protection against identity theft. The Oral Historian at BHS, Zaheer Ali, wants the year to be left in, so that listeners can have context about what was happening in the world at the time, so only the day and month are removed (in both the transcripts and the audio).

The tapes are composed of sixty-seven interviews (starting in 1973) of Puerto Ricans, most of whom were born in the 1880s, and emigrated to Brooklyn in the 1920s and 30s. As a result, many were trying to get jobs just as the Great Depression was hitting; not only did they have this going against them, but they were very badly mistreated by other immigrants at the time. Dion says the tapes have survived remarkably well, but that as he is doing the transcription and audio work, he is often struck by the scripted quality of the interviews. He notes that it seems clear the interviewers have some purpose in mind, and are guiding the narrators to tell a specific story. This, of course, made me think of “The Ethics of Fieldwork,” by PERCS, and how one of their specifications is to not ask leading questions (p. 6). I was not able to hear the recordings Dion has been working on, but his description led me to believe that the interviewers at the time were not being as ethical as one may have hoped (of course, at that time, the ethics of fieldwork were much less defined than they are now). We can also only hope that the participants were not chosen to be interviewed because they were seen as “exemplified or erotic,” (p.8) and that it was simply because they were new residents of Brooklyn. Zaheer Ali’s philosophy is much more within the ethical framework PERCS lays out: he usually has a certain theme in mind, which dictates who he conducts the interviews with, but his strategy consists of letting those he speaks with tell him about their lives in whichever way they choose. One such theme revolves around the neighborhood of Crown Heights; in 1991, a riot broke out between the Hasidic Jews and African Americans who lived there. Fatalities occurred, followed by days of violence and unrest. BHS went to the area two years later, to find out how people were healing and recovering. As it is now the 25^th anniversary of those riots, BHS is collecting new oral histories, and making the 1993 recordings available to the public.

I see oral histories as giving voice to those who are not always heard, and undermining what Kincheloe and McLaren describe as discursive practices, which they write are “defined as a set of tacit rules that regulate what can and cannot be said; who can speak with the blessings of authority and who must listen; and whose social constructions are valid and whose are erroneous and unimportant” (2002, p. 94). This might be a romanticized view, as the decision of who to interview and why is up to the organization collecting the oral histories; as a result, one person (or, more likely, a committee) is deciding who is worth interviewing. This means that many groups who may greatly benefit from being heard may never get that chance.

References:

Elon University. Program for Ethnographic Research & Community Studies. The ethics of fieldwork module. Retrieved from http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/org/ percs/EthicsModuleforWeb.pdf

Kincheloe, J. L. & McLaren, P. (2002). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In Y. Zou & E. T. Trueba (Eds.), Ethnography and schools: Qualitative approaches to the study of education (87-127). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Ever since their onset as a public institution, libraries have been political in nature. After the death of Alexander the Great and the subsequent break up of Macedonia in the Hellenistic age, there was a boom in the creation of libraries as institutions of the state, where previous collections of merit were kept privately by the elite. Kings recognized the value information had in a world that was continuously vying for power and control. In many instances they would go to great lengths to obtain scrolls and works of prominent thinkers, which in turn would draw scholars and the elite to their libraries, only furthering their prestige and power. Most notable of these first state-funded libraries was the Library of Alexandria, which became a “comprehensive repository of Greek writings as well as a tool for research” under the Ptolemaic dynasty (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-fierce-forgotten-library-wars-of-the-ancient-world). Threatened by the new and growing status of the Library of Pergamum the Ptolemaic kings adopted strategies of war to ensure that the Library of Alexandria would remain at the top of the pedestal, by cutting off trade of papyrus and imprisoning scholars wishing to trade sides. While by no means as violent or even overt in its undertaking, I would argue that libraries and fields of librarianship remain arenas of political advocation today, whether used as such or not. What is born political, remains political. As Birdsall puts it, modern “libraries are the creation and instrument of public policy derived from political processes” (Birdsall, 2). And it would be more advantageous to embrace this sentiment than attempt a detached stance of neutrality or impartiality.

In the vein of the political, libraries have long been heralded as institutions embodying democratic values. Ideals of intellectual freedom, free and open access, literacy, and inclusion have been championed by public figures like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and even Keith Richards, with the library specifically in mind (Bushman, 3-4). Many of these ideals are ones that this country claims to be governmentally founded on, but have not been fully realized or enacted until quite recently. In keeping with this tradition and continuing to break with the structure of white, male, elitist hegemony, librarians are in a position to enact change in a professional and academic setting. Whether it is advocating for more politically correct classification and subject headings through the Library of Congress or using displays in local libraries to address social and cultural issues in their specific community, librarians have a great opportunity to channel democratic values, expand perspective, and seek social justice in seemingly small but penetrating ways. There are many in this field who wish to remain apolitical and would like to keep politics out of libraries altogether. This can be exemplified in a fairly recent comment by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a U.S. Representative of Florida’s 23rd congressional district and member of the Democratic party. In respect to the discussion of the Library of Congress updating the subject heading of ‘illegal alien’ to ‘noncitizen’ or ‘unauthorized immigration,’ she is quoted as saying that the Library of Congress should choose “subject headings without political influence” (http://www.theestablishment.co/2016/07/15/the-surprising-political-power-of-libraries/). I, however, would argue that it is impossible to create an appropriate subject heading for people who wish to be and are not yet citizens of this country without any allusion to politics, just as I would argue that removing politics from the library altogether is impossible. In shadowing both Desmond Tutu and Robert Jensen, the application of neutrality in any professional environment simply does not exist. There will always be a distribution of power and to “either overtly endorse or reject that distribution is, of course, a political choice” (Jensen, 3).  Furthermore, to remain detached from the issue by claiming neutrality is essentially the same as agreeing with the powers that be or the current state of affairs, a specific stance and also a political undertaking. Instead of tiptoeing around this issue or keeping the political nature of ourselves dormant, I propose we embrace it as a catalyst and a much more constructive and productive way to bring about change.

In order to truly and fully express how this can be accomplished, I would like to showcase Jenna Freedman, a blue haired reference librarian at Barnard college, and the work she has done to actively bolster politics in the field of librarianship through her creation of a feminist zine collection at Barnard in 2003. Zines are themselves an anomaly, in that they are an untraditional medium for cataloging in libraries. They are do-it-yourself magazines that run the gamut from handwritten and stapled to professionally printed, serving as a unique form of personal expression on an array of topics and can be considered primary source material about contemporary popular culture. As a self-proclaimed anarchist and punk, it is Freedman’s nature to “critique privileges and challenge social hierarchies,” (Eichhorn, 126) “in favor of egalitarianism and environmentalism and against sexism, racism, and corporate hierarchies” (Eichhorn,126). It is through this lens that she has founded the feminist zine collection at Barnard, which currently consists of more than 1,500 zines in their open stacks collection and over 4,000 zines in their adjoining archive. All of the zines in their open stacks collection are duplicated in their archive for preservation and cataloged in Worldcat, so they are visible to not just Barnard, but the library community at large and available through interlibrary loans (Eichhorn, 128-29). The political and activist nature of this collection is two-fold, encompassing the “actual space of the library and the more conceptual space of the library catalog” (Eichhorn, 129). The fact that Freedman herself is not just a reference librarian, but crosses over the boundaries of special collections librarian, archivist, cataloger, and scholar makes her a defier of professional library tradition within the space of the library. Her decision to catalog the zines was a “way to change the status of the zines,” (Eichhorn, 129) giving them validation and making them as important as any other published material. Additionally, by adding the zines to Worldcat she has given researchers greater access to contemporary feminist material, a “discourse on feminism that, at least until the late 1990’s, was still primarily accessible in private collections” (Eichhorn, 130). There are only a few other collections of zines of this nature, including the Riot Grrrl collection at the New York University and the collection at the Sallie Bingham Center at Duke University. As if this wasn’t enough, Freedman keeps an open dialogue with the producers of the zines in her collection due to the highly personal content in the zines, in the case that they want their name removed or in the case that a female to male transgendered zinester no longer wants their work apart of a feminist collection (Eichhorn 130-31).

In an age where we have just appointed Carla Hayden, a woman and an African-American, as the first person in 214 years to hold the post of Librarian of Congress other than a Caucasian man, it is high time we went the way of Freedman. Her willingness to cross boundaries of librarianship and assert her tenacious beliefs in order to provide greater access to knowledge are most definitely political, as well as something to be admired.

Having worked at the New York Public Library since January 2010, I was only around to see the end of the library’s active partnership with Google on their ambitious Books project. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to recount the entire history and controversy surrounding the Google Books project, from its informal beginnings in 2002 to today. However, I will try to place the project and the NYPL’s participation in context, but more importantly consider whether such a project could be a beneficial tool for use in Siva Vaidhyanathan’s concept of Critical Information Studies, as well as whether it would raise his concerns about copyright issues.

Google Books began with the idea of doing nothing less than scanning all of the world’s books and making them available and searchable online. Work on the project began in secret in 2002. A small group visited some of the more notable, existing digitization projects, including the Library of Congress’ American Memory Project, Project Gutenberg, and the Universal Library at Carnegie Mellon University, to see how they worked and the challenges they faced.[1] Google co-founder Larry Page also reached out to his alma mater, the University of Michigan, site of digitization projects such as JSTOR. When told it would take an estimated 1,000 years to digitize the university library’s seven million volumes, Page said he believed “Google can help make it happen in six.”[2]

It wasn’t until December 2004 that the NYPL became involved with the Books project as an initial partner in what was then known as the Google Print for Libraries project. The Print for Libraries project was the next big step in the Books project, attempting to scan and make searchable the collections of several major research libraries, including Oxford, Harvard, the University of Michigan, and Stanford.[3]

However, it might have been the announcement of this next big step that led to the controversy and lawsuits that would mire the project for years to come. While the agreements Google made with the research libraries would only allow it to “publish the full text of only those library books old enough to no longer be under copyright,” it also stated that for copyrighted works, ”Google would scan in the entire text, but make only short excerpts available online.”[4] Even if they were only making short excerpts available online, though, the fact that Google was scanning entire texts of copyrighted work without first obtaining the permission of the author or copyright holder led to lawsuits. The most notable of these lawsuits were the ones filed on behalf of authors by the Authors Guild[5] and on behalf of publishing companies by a group consisting of McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons.[6]

What, then, would Vaidhyanathan make of the Google Books project, particularly as it relates to his concept of Critical Information Studies (CIS), as well as his concerns about copyright? Just as it would be difficult, if not impossible, to recount the entire history and controversy surrounding the Books project, it would be just as difficult, if not impossible to include Vaidhyanathan’s possible reaction to each point of history and controversy. Instead, I will try to imagine Vaidhyanathan’s opinion of the Books project around the time of the NYPL’s initial involvement and ensuing lawsuits.

On the surface, a project to scan all of the world’s books and make them available and searchable online would be a tremendous tool related to the first field of CIS as described by Vaidhyanathan in his article “Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto.” Vaidhyanathan believes that people should have “the abilities and liberties to use, revise, criticize, and manipulate cultural texts, images, ideas, and information.”[7] Although not a complete fulfillment, Google Books would certainly have allowed people to use and criticize cultural texts in previously unimaginable ways and scale.

However, in a June 23, 2006 conference hosted by the Library and Information Technology Association entitled “Contracting for Content in a Digital World,” then Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive of the Research Libraries at the NYPL David Ferriero described two troubling anecdotes that seem antithetical to the second field of CIS, quickly ending any possible embrace of Google Books by Vaidhyanathan. Ferriero described Google as “very private about their scanning operations; we’re not allowed to take pictures; they developed their own equipment, their own software for the OCR, etc.”[8] Such a secretive, proprietary process to digitize the books seems at odds with Vaidhyanathan’s support of open source software as a way to “facilitate access to and use of scholarship and information.”[9]

More damning, however, is Ferriero’s explanation that “according to the terms of the agreement, the data cannot be crawled or harvested by any other search engine; no downloading or redistribution is allowed.”[10] While he did note that “the partners and a wider community of research libraries can share the content,” it still goes against not only Vaidhyanathan’s previously mentioned support of open source software but, more importantly, the second field of CIS.[11] Vaidhyanathan believes that users should have the “rights and abilities…to alter the means and techniques through which cultural texts and information are rendered, displayed, and distributed.”[12] With Google limiting access to their search engine and prohibiting downloading or redistribution, the Books project fails to be an appropriate tool for use in Vaidhyanathan’s CIS.

But what about the issues of copyright raised in the lawsuits filed against Google by groups representing authors and publishers? Vaidhyanathan spends time in his article describing everything from the history of copyright in Europe and the US, famous writers’ interest in copyright, theoretical concepts of copyright, to more recent, controversial copyright laws and cases. Despite that, it doesn’t seem that Vaidhyanathan would have as much of an issue with Google Books, at least regarding the copyrights of authors and publishers. It’s not that he wouldn’t want authors to be fairly compensated for or have no control over their work. But in his commitment to the dynamic, interdisciplinary nature of CIS, Vaidhyanathan exhorts that “every scholar committed to CIS should insist on retaining some of her or his rights to publications and making them available as widely and cheaply as possible.”[13]

Where the question of copyright and the Google Books project might become more concerning for Vaidhyanathan is what Tim Wu described in his 2016 The New Yorker article as a possible “monopoly in online, out-of-print books.”[14] To that I would add that through their partnership with many of the world’s leading research libraries, Google would have access to books that, while they may no longer be under copyright, are rare or difficult enough to access that Google would have an effective monopoly on them as well. Combined with their above described walled garden approach of access to information and it would almost give Google an implicit copyright and ability to make money on any out-of-print or rare out-of-copyright books they can scan.

A plan to scan all of the world’s books and make them available and searchable online at first seems like it would be an ideal tool for the scholarly analysis and debate of such dynamic, interdisciplinary fields as those found in Critical Information Studies. However, the restrictions of access placed on the project by Google itself are antithetical to those fields of study, as well as the abuse of copyright with which CIS often concerns itself.

[1] “Google Books History.” Accessed September 9, 2016. https://books.google.com/googlebooks/about/history.html.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Markoff, John, and Edward Wyatt. “Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database.” New York Times, December 14, 2004. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/technology/google-is-adding-major-libraries-to-its-database.html.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Authors Guild Sues Google, Citing “Massive Copyright Infringement”.” The Authors Guild. September 20, 2005. Accessed September 9, 2016. https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/authors-guild-sues-google-citing-massive-copyright-infringement.

[6] Wyatt, Edward. “Arts, Briefly; Major Publishers Sue Google.” October 20, 2005. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E4DA123FF933A15753C1A9639C8B63.

[7] Vaidhyanathan, Siva. “Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto.” Cultural Studies 20, nos. 2-3 (March/May 2006): 292-315. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals.

[8] Stuivenga, Will. “Contracting for Content in a Digital World.” LITA Blog. July 11, 2006. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://litablog.org/2006/07/lita-preconference-contracting-for-content-in-a-digital-world.

[9] Vaidhyanathan, Siva. “Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto.” Cultural Studies 20, nos. 2-3 (March/May 2006): 292-315. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals.

[10] Stuivenga, Will. “Contracting for Content in a Digital World.” LITA Blog. July 11, 2006. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://litablog.org/2006/07/lita-preconference-contracting-for-content-in-a-digital-world.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Vaidhyanathan, Siva. “Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto.” Cultural Studies 20, nos. 2-3 (March/May 2006): 292-315. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Wu, Tim. “What Ever Happened to Google Books?” The New Yorker. September 11, 2015. Accessed September 9, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-ever-happened-to-google-books.