Lost Knowledge As Libraries Go Online

My local library recently ended a pretty big sale; most of its books were sold for about $0.25 each. Many of the books were technical (though introductory level): programming, mathematics, sciences. But there was also a good amount of history and fiction available. I love books and snatched up a bunch, but I did so with a heavy heart at seeing so much knowledge being given up by a place of a learning – particularly when many of the shelves that used to hold books now hold DVDs.

Shortly afterward, I was able to grab many technical books from a university library book purge. I obtained a pretty good collection of computer science stuff out of the trash, which again gave me mixed feelings.

The reason for all of these purges, I’m told, is that libraries are moving online. Why hold onto shelves and shelves of books gathering dust when one can find all the information one desires on the Internet? The library will simply pay to have access to an e-Library (particularly universities, which can pay for online access to academic journals and libraries), and we’re off to the races.

Short term, I think they’re right, in a sense. The Internet provides an amazing opportunity to provide access to our citizens. People in smaller communities that maybe couldn’t afford for their small local library to have a collection of abstract algebra books can now search online and find them. We don’t need paper copies of academic journals when I can search the journals online and find exactly the article I need. This is indeed a fantastic development.

Long term, though, I am worried. Are we cutting ourselves off from future knowledge? Are we centralizing our knowledge in a few online databases, largely controlled by for-profit private interests, to our own detriment?

I am reminded of Richard Stallman’s Right to Read. Like many of Stallman’s works, I don’t think his concerns were as outlandish as some made it sound, it was simply ahead of its time. With our books moving online, under the control of publishers, who’s to say what they will or won’t do in the future? Maybe the e-Library is cost effective now, but in 5 years when no one has a physical book collection anymore, will the e-Library hold a monopoly on knowledge? Will the price to access materials online skyrocket? Without competition, will the publishers require DRM, making it more hard to access and use knowledge, with stronger rules against sharing? Perhaps only 5 people per year can check out a book, or the library will be sent additional bills. I’m of course speculating, but this is all possible with e-library licensing. In the past when libraries had physical books, once the library owned a book, it belong to the public forever. Can we say the same about e-libraries? I’m sure publishers would be very angry to hear us talking about “owning” their electronic content; you don’t own it, you license it now, in their view.

To prevent a dystopian future, we need to do two things. First, oppose DRM in electronic libraries. They need to operate exactly as they did when it was paper books. The Free Software Foundation runs Defective by Design which fights to eliminate DRM for exactly this reason.

Second, we need to develop books and knowledge with appropriate free licenses. Wikipedia uses Creative Commons licensing, which is fantastic, but I want to see more original research doing the same. Let’s write books, tutorials, essays, etc., all under such licensing. If you’re in academics, publish in open access journals, and release your textbooks under a Creative Commons or similar license. If the publishers’ e-libraries turn on us, we need to be ready to cut them out. We won’t need them when so many books and articles exist under free licensing.

Author’s Note: This is a slightly edited update of a blog post initially posted to Blogger in 2017-01-17.