Library Futures

We need sharing, preservation and co-existence, a balance of imperatives in order to create the most vibrant and lasting digital culture for the future. We need a balanced publishing ecosystem with many authors, publishers, libraries, and communities 9/ (h/t @mariabustillos)

Big publishers make noise about caring about the rights of creators, but let's be real: Blaming poorly paid author contracts on the public institutions that are most likely to purchase materials is a strawman argument. 8/

Not to mention the moral argument, laid out by @PaneziArgyri in "A Public Service Role For Digital Libraries: The Unequal Battle Against (Online) Misinformation Through Copyright Law Reform And The Emergency Electronic Access To Library Material" 7/ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3813320 …

This lawsuit isn't about the National Emergency Library: It attacks the entire concept of digital library ownership, preservation, and lending despite data that demonstrates its importance and efficacy time and again, particularly for out of print works 6/ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3339524 …

While private vendors might provide some bestsellers (often with long waiting lists), the closure of physical libraries meant that the majority of printed human knowledge went from being free to all in our libraries to suddenly unavailable overnight. 4/

With little time to prepare, schools and libraries found themselves scrambling to provide the digital infrastructure that librarians are uniquely prepared to provide like WiFi and programming, but there was a big problem: Digital books are expensive and extremely limited. 2/