ACCESS: Not Just Wires
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   Date posted: March 3, 1995 [9]Copyright Karen Coyle, 1994
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   By Karen Coyle
   University of California, Library Automation *** and ***
   Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility/Berkeley Chapter

   This is the written version of a talk given at 
   the 1994 CPSR Annual meeting in San Diego, CA, on 
   Oct. 8.

   I have to admit that I'm really sick and tired of 
   the Information highway. I feel like I've already 
   heard so much about it that it must be come and 
   gone already, yet there is no sign of it. This is 
   truly a piece of federal vaporware.

   I am a librarian, and it's especially strange to 
   have dedicated much of your life to the careful 
   tending of our current information 
   infrastructure, our libraries, only to wake up 
   one morning to find that the entire economy of 
   the nation depends on making information 
   commercially viable. There's an element of 
   Twilight Zone about this because libraries are 
   probably our most underfunded and 
   underappreciated of institutions, with the 
   possible exception of day care centers.

   It's clear to me that the information highway 
   isn't much about information. It's about trying 
   to find a new basis for our economy. I'm pretty 
   sure I'm not going to like the way information is 
   treated in that economy. We know what kind of 
   information sells, and what doesn't. So I see our 
   future as being a mix of highly expensive 
   economic reports and cheap online versions of the 
   National Inquirer. Not a pretty picture.

   This is a panel on "access." But I am not going 
   to talk about access from the usual point of view 
   of physical or electronic access to the 
   FutureNet. Instead I am going to talk about 
   intellectual access to materials and the quality 
   of our information infrastructure, with the 
   emphasis on "information." Information is a 
   social good and part of our "social 
   responsibility" is that we must take this 
   resource seriously.

   From the early days of our being a species with 
   consciousness of its own history, some part of 
   society has had the role of preserving this 
   history: priests, learned scholars, archivists. 
   Information was valued; valued enough to be 
   denied to some members of society; to be part of 
   the ritual of belonging to an elite.

   So I find it particularly puzzling that as move 
   into this new "information age" that our efforts 
   are focused on the machinery of the information 
   system, while the electronic information itself 
   is being treated like just so much more flotsam 
   and jetsam; this is not a democratization of 
   information, but a devaluation of information.

   On the Internet, many electronic information 
   sources that we are declaring worthy of 
   "universal access" are administered by part-time 
   volunteers; graduate students who do eventually 
   graduate, or network hobbyists. Resources come 
   and go without notice, or languish after an 
   initial effort and rapidly become out of date. 
   Few network information resources have specific 
   and reliable funding for the future. As a 
   telecommunications system the Internet is both 
   modern and mature; as an information system the 
   Internet is an amateur operation.

   Commercial information resources, of course, are 
   only interested in information that provides 
   revenue. This immediately eliminates the entire 
   cultural heritage of poetry, playwriting, and 
   theological thought, among others.

   If we value our intellectual heritage, and if we 
   truly believe that access to information (and 
   that broader concept, knowledge) is a valid 
   social goal, we have to take our information 
   resources seriously. Now I know that libraries 
   aren't perfect institutions. They tend to be 
   somewhat slow-moving and conservative in their 
   embrace of new technologies; and some seem more 
   bent on hoarding than disseminating information. 
   But what we call "modern librarianship" has over 
   a century of experience in being the tender of 
   this society's information resources. And in the 
   process of developing and managing that resource, 
   the library profession has understood its 
   responsibilities in both a social and historical 
   context. Drawing on that experience, I am going 
   to give you a short lesson on social 
   responsibilities in an information society.

   Here are some of our social responsibilities in relation to information:
     * Collection
     * Selection
     * Preservation
     * Organization
     * Dissemination

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*   Copyright Karen Coyle, 1994      *
*                                    *
*  This document may be              *
* circulated freely on the Net       *
* with this statement included.      *
* For any commercial use, or         *
* publication (including electronic  *
* journals), you must obtain the     *
* permission of the author           *
*   kcoyle@kcoyle.net                *
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