How Libraries Help Make Communities Stronger
Speaker 1: 00:00 We are in the midst of National Library Week and the friends of the San Diego Library or celebrating their 40th anniversary this week, they're marking the occasion by bringing bestselling science fiction author Cory Doctorow in for a lecture this evening at the Central Library downtown. He'll be speaking about the role of libraries in the community. And joining me is Cory Doctorow, author, blogger, and journalist. Welcome Cori. Hi, it's my pleasure. Thank you. Start with the part that libraries have played in your life personally. Well, you know, I grew up Speaker 2: 00:30 in libraries. I worked in libraries as a kid and, and when I started high school, it didn't agree with me. And uh, my parents were up for my plan to go to a groovy alternative school. So I just stopped showing up for school and started going to the big reference library in downtown Toronto every day and, and kind of perusing the stacks and looking at the newspaper morgue and generally doing this stuff that we would today call browsing the web except doing it with microfilm readers. So it's always been part of my life. And in Toronto we had the Merrill Collection, which was started by Judith Merrill, my mentor. She was a great writer and critic and editor, and she used to critique manuscripts for anyone who brought them down and put writers together and writer's workshops. So really libraries have been central to my whole life Speaker 1: 01:10 and something that with the interim net, the libraries are all but obsolete. But what rules are exclusive to libraries? Things the Internet can't do well. I think that that more than anything else, a library Speaker 2: 01:20 presents a place where you are valued for who you are, for the fact that you are a human being who deserves to be in the world and not because you have a wallet with some money in it. It's one of the last places in our world where your relationship to the institution isn't as a customer, but as a patron. Think also of how, you know teachers have pupils and doctors have patients. You know, those relationships that are not defined by commerce, they're moving away and libraries are one of the last bastions of them. And they're really important because that essential human dignity that goes beyond your, your buying power is something that binds us all together. It's what makes us a society. And so, you know, I think that in addition, libraries are obviously very important for navigating complex information spaces. And I always say that, you know, if, if you think that now that we have the internet, we don't need the libraries, it's like saying now that we all have the plague, we can just shut down the hospitals that libraries jobs is to help us navigate information, not to merely be a repository for it. Speaker 1: 02:17 Well that gets to my next question, which is about the role of libraries and how that changed now that the information is so easily accessible on the internet. Well, I think that, you know, libraries still remain a place where people go to access information sometimes with computers and sometimes in print. But libraries also have taken on this very important public role where they provide a space where people can physically be, they convene communities, they have maker spaces in them, libraries now lend resources that go beyond, uh, books. So you know, there are libraries that will lend you a Wifi hotspots so you can take the whole Internet home with you. There are libraries that will lend lend you tools or a tie and a suitcase to our briefcase to take to a job interview. You know, and think that's not just so much about the changes that have been wrought by the Internet, but the changes that had been brought at the same time as the Internet, as we become more financial ISED in unequal library's role has become much more important. They've been, they've stepped in to fill all the gaps that used to be filled by a whole variety of services that have since fallen by the wayside. Speaker 3: 03:18 And many people are concerned about privacy. We've got news constantly of personal information being hacked. Uh, our library is more dependable, maybe more even more democratic than the Internet. Speaker 1: 03:27 Well, it's definitely the case that librarians have always fought for patron privacy in a way that puts even the most privacy oriented ISP is to shame. And given that libraries are themselves, Internet service providers increasingly that, that they're a place where people go to get their internet. That's, that's obviously very, very important. And there are libraries around the country and around the world where they teach people how to use privacy tools like tour messaging tools like signal and so on. And The library privacy project that was started by Alison Macrina has done very important work in that regard. I also think that libraries have fought in policy circles for our privacy. You know, during the debate over the Patriot Act, when there was this question about whether or not the FBI or law enforcement will be able to secretly ask for your, uh, reading information to figure out whether you constituted some kind of threat. Speaker 1: 04:16 Uh, a librarian named Jessamine West came up with a beautiful idea. She put up a sign in her library that said, the FBI has not been here this week, watch very carefully for the sign to be removed. And that's actually been adopted across the board by tech companies. They, now they call it the warrant can area, it's like a canary that dies in a coal mine when you get a secret warrant. And so many of the large technology companies now publish a, a quarterly or annual report that lists all the secret unmentionable confidential warrants they've received. And so that starts as a line that just says zero. And then when they get one, they just stopped publishing that line altogether. And that tells everyone that the canary has died. And government agencies are seeking to subvert the, uh, integrity of those systems. Speaker 3: 04:59 Oh, how interesting. Will you say the concept of libraries, if it didn't exist now, we wouldn't be able to create them? What do you mean by that? Well, Speaker 1: 05:07 no, imagine trying to start a library today where you turned all the big publishers and you said, okay, what we're going to do is we're just going to buy one copy of every book and then we're going to let as many people as want read them and we're going to do it with government money. And, um, we're not going to keep track of any metrics. We're not going to tell you how your books are performing. And then you turn around to the taxpayers. Uh, and there are a lot of people in our world today who would vote for a dead raccoon if it would promise them $1 off on their taxes. And you say, we're going to spend public money to provide anyone who wants it with any of the information in the world. And anyone who wants can come in. It doesn't matter if they're homeless, it doesn't matter if they're poor, it doesn't matter if they're undocumented. Speaker 1: 05:45 Anyone. And everyone is welcome here. They're not our customers, they're our patrons. It's hard to imagine that kind of system getting off the ground today. It does feel sometimes like libraries are a relic of a, a nobler and gentler age. When we were more tuned to our shared destiny. And the last question is kind of a a com combo one here. What do you think are the biggest threats to libraries now and in the future, and how do you see libraries in the future being different from what we have now? I think that that the future of libraries is obviously to, to be more engaged with digital collections. And we're seeing that now with the Internet archive, digitizing huge amounts of work that were never stored before. Um, everything from, uh, multiple TV stations worth of just continuous recording. So the Internet archive has, um, all of the TV networks in America on nine 11, their whole 24 hour cycle and they've actually put up a service where you can start on Channel One and start at nine in the morning and hit play and then move up and down the dial to see how the world was and that moment. Speaker 1: 06:47 So obviously more digital collections, more repositories of things that are in the public domain or that are intended to be freely shared, which will blend the, the line between things that are a borrowed and things that are simply given. And I think more participation because we've squeezed out places where you can participate as a participant instead of as someone who is generating data to be monetized. And so that's libraries hosting things like games and game jams hosting maybe potentially in the future. Social media or those other highly surveillance systems that are nevertheless very beneficial. It's great to be able to talk to your friends. It sucks that you have to let giant companies spiraling you while you do it, and maybe libraries can step in to fill those gaps to. All right. I've been speaking with science fiction author, blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow. He'll be speaking tonight from seven to 9:00 PM at the Neal Morgan Auditorium in the San Diego Central Library. Thanks, Corey. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you very much. Speaker 4: 07:50 Still Ahead.
