... [James] Boyle challenged the stereotypical image of libraries as conservative, dusty places, arguing instead that they are extraordinary institutions which combine the fundamental roles of archiving, facilitating research and enabling public access to cultural material. Nevertheless, libraries developed in a world where the container for knowledge was the book: only one person at a time could read any one copy of a book, and libraries provided valuable repositories for these documents. In the age of digitised knowledge, books and papers can be read simultaneously be anyone on the planet – in theory, at least. What effect does this have on the notion of the library?
To address this question, we were asked to consider three trends. Firstly, according to Professor Boyle, attitudes towards information dissemination are characterised by a fear of openness. If asked to predict the outcomes of the World Wide Web in 1992, we would have easily predicted the risks of spam, illicit copying, and pornography, and we may have rejected this decentralised model in favour of a closed, carefully-controlled system. In contrast, he suggests, we would not have been able to imagine the blossoming of information and knowledge sharing which the Internet has enabled, nor the dramatic benefits it has brought in areas such as information layering, blogging, open source software, and whistleblowing. This fear of openness, or “cultural agoraphobia”, leads to an asymmetry in our perception of risks and benefits. As a result, we are too reluctant to embrace open systems and methods of production or distribution, and we are not yet able to differentiate effectively between appropriate and inappropriate developments in the sphere of “openness”.
The development of copyright formed Professor Boyle’s second trend: as the cost of copying has decreased to almost zero via the invention of the printing press, copying technologies, audio recording and the Internet, the perceived need for stronger protection has increased – when you needed a monk to copy a book, copyright wasn’t so much of an issue! The third trend which we were asked to contemplate relates to the contrast between the evidence-based nature of most policy-making (for example, in medicine or environmental science) in contrast with the anecdotal or philosophical basis of most intellectual property debates. ...
In a world of open access and digitisation, therefore, do libraries still have a role to play? Absolutely, concluded Boyle. We should increasingly look to digital libraries to provide “global access to everything”, we should invest in ensuring the stability of digital archives to preserve access to cultural objects in the face of evolving technologies, and we should develop novel ways to use and explore the information which is increasingly becoming available to us. ...
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
