Owning the Future:
Looting the Library
By Seth Shulman
A few years ago, I was walking down the street in one of Manila's poorer neighborhoods when I came upon a gaping hole where a sewer grate used to be. It was an experience doubtless familiar to many who have traveled in the Third World: someone had presumably looted a humble—but essential—piece of the city's infrastructure. It brought home to me not only what a robust infrastructure we take for granted in the West, but also how easily it can erode.
I am reminded of that missing sewer grate by an all-out battle brewing here in the United States—only the gaping hole we're threatened with is in the stacks of our public libraries. And in this case it's the publishing industry doing the looting. As we plunge into the digital realm, the nation's 16,000 public libraries are striving to uphold their tradition as protectors of public access to new books and articles. But publishers, in an increasingly bald, frontal assault on the library's mission, have something very different in mind: a pay-per-use model for information content that will largely shut libraries out.
thanks to BookNotes
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