of treasured kids’ books while my parents had walls coated with books. The books and periodicals of my writer and publisher grandfather were on a special bookshelf in the room next to the kitchen—maybe not consulted often, but proudly protected and displayed. But the delight of first going to the White Plains Public Library is indelibly imprinted in my mind—the bookshelves seemed to go on forever.
in Wonderland in the card catalog, books
I could not imagine finding anywhere else, and record albums I could borrow. And I still remember the librarian saying, “You can read any telemarketing data of these books you want, and if we don’t have the one you want, we can get it for you [through the magic of interlibrary loan].” And this was all for free, which was the only thing that worked for a child. And available to everyone who could get their bones through that door of that magic place.
As a child, I did not know how special
I thought it was just how society worked—I thought there always were and always would be public libraries. I did not realize how fragile this system was until I became a digital librarian in order to make this promise come true for the next generation, a generation of digital learners. I did not think that in my lifetime this offer, this seeming human right, would be threatened by the people that made the fantasy-land of the White Plains Public Library possible: the corporate publishers.
Based on a simple but catastrophic
the big publishers are making it impossible for libraries to do their core functions of preservation and enduring access in the digital era. Netflix, for instance, recently changed its terms of service to explicitly prohibit archiving, therefore allowing them to remove or change any movie for all subscribers at once.1 that is so threatening to the mission of libraries is to stop selling their products. Their books, music, and videos—as the world moves digital—are only available for temporary access by library patrons from databases the publishers control.