The survival and utilization of libraries is in many ways interlinked with their visibility, or how much value and relevance they are seen as having within their wider communities. Proof of library value is in turn related to budgeting within institutions, how money is allocated, and to the general satisfaction of users at large. Digitization of records has created new issues for libraries, as circulation data can be used as an asset for demonstrating library value, or as a means for them to compete with other 21st century means of book/information retrieval. But as libraries find new ways to feel relevant to users, they must also face new challenges to their roles as centers of privacy.

Recently I did a field observation at the Humanities Campus Library at West 18th St, where I spoke with Campus Librarian Lisa Egan. Ms. Egan had been hired the previous school year, when the library re-opened after being closed for years. She has worked hard to develop the book collection almost entirely from scratch, a task complicated by the reality of the library being designated for serving the needs of six different schools, including Quest, James Baldwin, and Hudson- all different schools with varying age groups, curriculums, and teaching needs.
During a busy lunch period, as middle school aged students with lunch passes filed in, checked out books, and scrambled for computers, Ms. Egan explained the importance of circulation records. During the entirety of the first year it was re-opened, the number of books circulated by the library totaled 880, a fairly low number given the student population it serves numbers over 2,000, but this year it the number was already at 600. Although still low, this was a sign of higher student usage, and equally importantly, data that could be used to demonstrate the value of the library to the school and its community. And while Ms. Egan expressed gratitude for the funding and grants she received, she also said that she was struggling to attain what she considered to be a comprehensive non-fiction collection for the students.
Looking around the library, there was an impressive amount of students making use of its facilities (students have a choice during their post-lunch recess to go to the gym, hang out in a common area, or go to the library). Students of varying ages came to request books; some wanted dystopian novels like Hunger Games, some older students were looking for what Ms. Egan called “gritty urban romance novels.” Also in the library were parent volunteers, interested in getting involved and helping the library thrive. It seemed hard to imagine that there could be question marks surrounding the value of the library, but I as Joanna Fantozzi explained in “Clearing the Shelves,” at the moment there is lobbying in Albany to get waivers over the law necessitating libraries for all public schools in New York. I was also told that even if the importance of the library itself wasn’t in question, there were numerous other ways it could be encroached on, from giving up part of its space to a speech teacher, to principals using funds library funds to buy supplies for other teachers.

While it can be seen how circulation data is important to the visibility of the value of the library in the tough world of public schools and their funding, other ways in which libraries have attempted to use circulation data to increase visibility have been more problematic. In a November 5, 2012 article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Marc Parry described the backlash felt by librarians at Harvard after a social media experiment with Twitter went wrong. The idea had been to set up Twitter feeds with the names of books being checked out from libraries on campus, complete with links to the book’s library catalog entry. Despite precautionary measures to protect privacy (checkout times were randomized by the Twitter stream, and the identities of the people checking items out were not given), the practice was controversial and quickly suspended.
The Harvard Library’s Twitter incident is a good example of what privacy-and-social-media scholar Michael Zimmer calls “a Faustian bargain” facing libraries as they expand into digital services. In order to make use of the internet as it has come to be, with all of sharing of social and personal information, libraries will have to make use of and encourage greater degrees of personal information from users. In order to make library catalogs more similar to online services like Amazon, with its ability to provide recommendations based on personalized taste, libraries would also have to track the browsing and borrowing habits of customers.
The idea of tracking users and their borrowing habits in this way may seem a mere theoretical problem; sure, the ideal of “privacy” might be sacrificed but wouldn’t this be made up for by libraries appealing to more people who, to be honest, already face this lack of privacy throughout their lives? Is this much different from Ms. Egan, the school librarian, suggesting books to her high school students based on her knowledge of their past likes and dislikes, or from her gentle suggestions to younger students who find their way into books meant for the older and more “mature” teenagers that there might be other books they’d like better instead? These are important considerations, but the centrality of user privacy at libraries should not be turned over so lightly. In his article, Mr. Parry describes how states had to pass laws requiring libraries to keep data private in response to attempts in the 70s and 80s by the FBI to spy on scholars by enticing library clerks to disclose information on their reading and borrowing habits. In the culture of surveillance and information flow we live in, there is a strong argument for the continuing practice of privacy by libraries.

Despite these dilemmas, new solutions have been explored as well. Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab developed LibraryCloud as a means for libraries to share metadata, with the idea that with metadata collected from different libraries developers could use them in the development of new services. Another project called StackLife shows users how books have been used in their communities by measuring “importance”- quantified using information like how many libraries own the book, how often it’s been checked out, etc.
It is clear from these examples that digital records hold a lot of potential for libraries to develop and evolve. What form this evolution will take remains open.

Sources

Fantozzi, Joanna. 2013. Clearing the Shelves. Nypress.com/clearing-the-shelves (accessed November 28, 2013).

Parry, Marc. 2012. As Libraries Go Digital, Sharing of Data Is at Odds With Tradition of Privacy. M.chronicle.com/article/As-Libraries-Go-Digital/135514/ (accessed November 28, 2013).

 

Why should we care about whether we’re being watched or not? Most people would think that they’re not doing anything wrong but there are so many statutes and laws on the books they probably are. The National Security Agency (NSA) has run roughshod over our basic liberties, especially after 9/11 and the passing of the USA Patriot Act. According to the American Civil Liberties Union “The result is unchecked government power to rifle through individuals’ financial records, medical histories, Internet usage, bookstore purchases, library usage, travel patterns, or any other activity that leaves a record.”

Surveillance orders can be based in part on a person’s First Amendment activities, such as the books they read, the Web sites they visit, or a letter to the editor they have written. This has serious implications for libraries. Under the USA Patriot Act, if a library receives a formal request they are under a legal obligation to disclose the relevant information available. Additionally, under the act’s provisions, librarians who receive an order are prohibited from discussing the issue with anyone other than a library’s attorney and any staff who assist in fulfilling the request. Anyone who violates this could face severe penalties.

The U.S. Depart of Justice has put up a handy page that offers highlights of the law here.

Welcome to Panopticonia

“. . . supervision, control, correction—seems to be a fundamental and characteristic dimension of the power relations that exist in our society.” —Michel Foucault

The 18th century English philosopher Jeremey Bentham came up with a design for a circular prison, (the Panopticon), that in the 1970s the French philosopher Michel Foucault used to illustrate that constant surveillance can be used by the state as an means of control and disciplinary power. There are some theorists who reject Foucault’s premise and think we’re in a post-Panoptic world. One such argument is from the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman who posits that we’ve moved beyond Panopticism to seduction. I see that as just another tool in the surveillance arsenal, (albeit a subtle one). Ubiquitous video cameras, smart phones and tablets that double as tracking devices, incredibly sophisticated tracking software—surveillance has become so pervasive that we’re not living in a post-Panoptic world but pan-Panoptic one. Besides for all this surreptitious surveillance most of us are willing participants in the amassing of all this information. Through Internet outlets such as social media and  consumer sites we’re happy to share information globally that previously would have been private or shared with just family or friends.

The enormous blanket of surveillance extracts a huge toll on us. Manipulation and distortion of news, self-policing and censorship of news organizations, threats to freedom of expression—these are all things that have been enforced since the law went into effect. This reinforces a Panopticonic ideal that whether you’re being watched or not you assume you are giving the watcher, (i.e. government), total control. A recent example of this: the writers’ organization, PEN American Center conducted a survey, Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self-Censor, which found a large majority of its members deeply concerned about the extent of government surveillance. Like the canary in the coalmine, if artists, writers, and journalists are feeling uneasy what are the implications for the rest of us?

The clip below is an apt visualization of our sense of fear and frustration in the face of this incessant surveillance. In this, is the final scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film The Conversation, Gene Hackman plays a surveillance expert who finds out he himself may be under surveillance. He sets out to find the bug, destroying his apartment in the process. Not finding anything he ends up sitting in the wreckage playing his sax . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uivHPkrlAPo

The new David M. Rubenstein Gallery, part of the National Archives in Washington DC, will be opening an exhibit on December 10, 2013, called Records of Rights.  This will be a permanent exhibit of documents that are considered central to the history of civil rights in America. The press release about the exhibit states that it “showcases original and facsimile National Archives documents to illustrate how Americans throughout our history have debated and discussed issues such as citizenship, free speech, voting rights, and equal opportunity.” For example, it will include the Congressional resolution proposing the 14^th Amendment in 1868, certification of the 26^th Amendment, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. These documents illustrate America’s continual commitment to ensuring all citizens have their civil rights respected and their equality assured.

The exhibit presents the history of the United States as one of progress, moving ever forward from the unfulfilled promises of freedom and equality laid down in the Constitution and Bill of Rights towards true realization of them. It emphasizes three issues: slavery and racism of segregation after slavery; women’s suffrage and rights; and immigration restrictions and immigrant’s rights. While these are all important movements that have shaped our nation, the way they are presented must be delicate to ensure that the current state of affairs is not distorted. These fights for civil rights are not just part of our history, they’re part of our present. While there are multiple civil rights battles going on right now, such as the struggle for LGBT rights, the most prominent is the National Security Administration is violating the rights of Americans and people all over the world through their comprehensive surveillance and data collection programs. The information revealed over the summer by Edward Snowden detailing the extent of surveillance practices by the NSA has rightfully shaken beliefs in America’s respect for civil rights. As such, the opening of this exhibit raises some questions about the responsibilities archivists have to present as full of a record as possible in their collections. By presenting only civil rights victories of the past and not including an emphasis on current issues, this exhibit runs the risk of presenting a distorted view of American government.

The examination of the journey of how Americans have fought for civil rights does demonstrate that the nation has come a long way since it’s founding. However, while the victories of civil rights battles deserve to be commemorated, we should in no way encourage a view does not take into account current struggles over our rights. The NSA’s bulk collection of data is a violation of constitutional rights outlined in the fourth amendment, for privacy and freedom of association, all done in the name of protecting us from the great, nebulous threat of terrorism. These violations of privacy are not limited to Americans, but citizens of foreign countries and even other political leaders such as Angela Merkel. These programs, we are told, are to protect us from terrorist threats and that the information collected through them has been used to prevent attacks. Despite these claims, evidence suggests the information gathered has proven to be almost negligible in counter-terrorism operations.

David Lyon and Zygmunt Bauman discuss the role fear plays in getting people to accept such extreme measures in their book Liquid Surveillance, and the NSA’s stated justifications for their surveillance programs often exemplify these ideas. While the authors acknowledge that surveillance is not a new phenomenon, they discuss how it now permeates and seeps into our lives in previously unheard of ways. This, they argue, creates new and more intense feelings of insecurity. This sort of surveillance and the fight against terrorism forces people to conceptualize a nebulous Other, one who is not so easily identified as terrorists have no shared physical characteristics but come from a variety of backgrounds and locations. The sense of insecurity is increased as “there’s not knowing when the categories of risk may ‘accidentally’ include us,”[1] meaning that we begin to support more intense measures to catch the real threat out of fear that we will be somehow classed among their number. This sense of fear and insecurity has been an important tool in shaping the development of the state of surveillance, which is now a the forefront of the debate on civil rights.

The Society of American Archivists, in a statement on the Core Values of Archivists, asserts “By documenting institutional functions, activities, and decision-making, archivists provide an important means of ensuring accountability,” and that this accountability is “an essential hallmark of democracy.” In other words, preserving the historical record is essential to holding governments accountable and ensuring the future health of a democratic system. However, this same document says “archivists serve the needs and interests of their employers and institutions.” This Records of Rights exhibit presents some interesting questions about balancing these two responsibilities, as the archivists’ institution, in this case, is a federal institution. This exhibit has the potential to present a skewed picture of America’s commitment to civil rights, illustrating the extensions of rights through the country’s history while neglecting to account for the current state of affairs. The exhibit could potentially engender the idea that the struggle for civil rights is part of our past only and not an ongoing part of our present.  However, the archivists are serving the needs of their employer, and are therefore limited in their capabilities to make changes to the collection. Though, by serving their employer, they could be violating the mission of archivists “to preserve and make accessible a comprehensive and trustworthy American historical record.”

There are ways that the current rights issues could be incorporated into this collection. The press release details a digital, interactive section of the exhibit, which seems like the perfect place to produce a digital project that could detail current developments about this issue. Also, surveillance and privacy issues are not the only civil rights issues currently being debated, and another digital piece about the struggle for LGBT rights and the debate over healthcare, which is considered to be a right by some but not others. Additionally, as this is a permanent exhibition, this interactive area could be used to update new developments in these struggles as well as others as time goes on. While it is not possible to adequately represent every issue in one exhibit, the omission of current civil rights struggles, particularly over NSA surveillance programs, has a strong capability to skew the historical record. Archivists, as keepers of this record, should make an effort to include the information about the current state of affairs in any way they can in order to present a more comprehensive view of civil rights in America.

Every generation will dream the following. Postmodernism’s dream was network culture. Today, digital technology is an undeniable presence in everyday life and is inseparable from mainstream social needs and conventions. Network culture is a broad cultural of social with no limited to technological developments and new media. Obviously, the Internet was not yet privatized or significantly colonized by capital and the nature of network culture is a big question, complicated and messy — for example, the growth of open source, the rise of knowledge workers, the widespread piracy of informational commodities, the importance of bottom-up production, and the rapid decline of traditional informational industries such as newspapers [1. Kazys Varnelis：The Immediated Now: Network Culture and the Poetics of Reality

http://varnelis.networkedbook.org/the-immediated-now-network-culture-and-the-poetics-of-reality/]. Does copyright really adapt to the network culture and what is the future of the network culture?

In the book of Free culture, professor Lessig pointed out that over years, music albums, movies and software of digital industry constantly tells us how digital network and technology caused the spread of piracy. But at the same time, they deliberately hide a fact that digital network and technology also play an important role in promoting the development of creative works[2. Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity http://www.free-culture.cc/].  It should not be ignored that the method they used to curb piracy also will limit the creative.

For example, we know the iconic Pop Art image of Love. It consists of the letters LO over the letters VE; the O is canted sideways so that its oblong negative space creates a line leading to the V. The original image, with green and blue spaces backing red lettering, served as a print image for a Museum of Modern Art Christmas card in 1964 (wikipedia). The designer is American artist Robert Indiana. He did register any copyright of the image. People are totally free to use this image. Now the image has been rendered and parodied in countless forms around the world. The image was designed as US postage stamp also parodied in many languages and the sculpture was created in many cities. This image becomes world popular. If Robert is the right holder, he will earn lots of money. The fashion industry also has little intellectual property protection. They have trademark protection, but no copyright protection and patern protection. However fashion industry is main consuming behavior target [3. Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion’s free culture， http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html].

Professor Lessig also said that the copyright of  “anti-circumvention” regulations helps decrease the piracy, but it also damages the public’s right of “fair use”. Anti-circumvention prohibits any person to circumvent the copyright owner to control their works are used and taken contact with technology, so the interests of authors can be protected in the digital environments. These technologies include preventing piracy and prevent unauthorized reading, audiovisual and use and so on. If this provision is fully implemented, the fair use of the public will be compressed and exhausted which with great significance and is the fundamental right of the public.

Every time people upload their video to Youtube, the system will automatically analyze and compare the video with the copyright materials in their huge database even though most people didn’t know about this. And the scale and the speed of this system are truly breathtaking. Youtube have the policy with other company who hold the copyrights of the original videos and music such as Sony. When they find a match, they will apply the policy that the rights owner has set down [4. Margaret Gould Stewart: How YouTube thinks about copyright ， http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_stewart_how_youtube_thinks_about_copyright.html]. The right holder decides whether this video can be published which also based on this video will bring them benefits or damage. This definitely protects the right holder’s interest, but also limited everyone’s freedom of using those contents what are really easier to find out in the Internet context.

Professor Lessig’s main discussion is that if we are only interested in how to effectively curb piracy, regardless of other issues, the purpose of reaching the curb piracy, the free culture also will be die. Rights holders biggest blind spot, their only concern is to stop the piracy to carry of interests less than in the other. They also convince everyone to legislators in order to effectively curb piracy. But for the people who are not rights holders, we must also pay attention to the culture, information and freedom of speech issues and so on what the current copyright law mostly neglected.  We participate in the digital rights ecosystem everyday. Rights management is no longer simply a question of ownership.

Admittedly, digital technology enables individual easily copy the content on the Internet, causing serious damage to the authors. It is necessary to legislate to protect the author, but professor Lessig believes that we must think about how to make the rights of authors damage to a minimum while not destroy the good side of the network functions. Why he would be so concern about strict copyright laws will hinder the development of cultural freedom? The main key is when we use other’s works it is really difficult to obtain a license. For this, we certainly cannot ask the copyright holder totally free, with out the decisions of whether or not authorize the right. But how people can easily obtain the authorization for a reasonable price and the use of books, it is the copyright holder’s social responsibility concurrently in the pursuit to improve the standards of protection and enforcement of the law.

Many people think that the copyright contributed the creation. However, copyright protection is not the only virtue of cultural creation. Professor Lessig said that in Shakespeare’s time, there is no concept of copyright and legal. Shakespeare still completed a lot of works. So the copyright protection is not entirely unique incentive for cultural creation, there is many other factors that also encourage the creation. For copyright law, only when the benefits it brings more than harm it has the value, which is what we have to strive for.

Recently, the author of Out of Control, Kevin Kelly present that new revolution of technologies will out of the mainstream come from margin area and industries. The company Dropbox succeeds because it is outside the monopoly Internet groups such as Google, Amazon, twitter and Facebook. The copyright law may not protect them. Therefore, these low-quality, high-risk, low profit margins, small markets, and other non-market characteristics will be the key to power of future. The future will certainly be some things that change our lives.