One of the formative texts of my life is Accomplices, Not Allies. While I will not recapitulate the stirring language that deserves to be read in its own context, there is a certain idea that I will draw from, that of the ally industrial complex. Most would agree that the phenomena of industrial non-profits is not relegated to any particular domain of action; queer, indigenous, or otherwise. The liberation of information is one thing that I dare consider myself somewhat knowledgeable in, and thus it is from this framework and experience that I draw my conclusions.
I am what some may consider an “academic”. More than that, I am an academic who is professionally and morally bound to protect information. It is my opinion that the most effective way to protect information is to truly liberate it from its context as an object to accumulate capital. Indeed, it is the moral imperative of all librarians to liberate information. This is the guerrilla open-access. It is the duty of librarians to release this information for free forever. Kant’s moral imperative is not, as some say, the golden rule. It is to act in a manner that if all people always acted that way, one would enjoy living in that world.
I do not wish to live in a world where no one will ever share a PDF.
The second point I wish to expand upon is that of the non-profit industrial complex. This certainly, includes OCLC. The Online Computer Library Center operates as a monopoly in the library catalog market. The ghouls at the OCLC dress themselves in the cloak of language such as “cooperative non-profit” and “empowerment”. One will note in this that the CEO of OCLC is Skip Prichard, a business executive with a law degree. Markedly not a librarian. OCLC, fashioning itself as non-profit, sued Anna’s Archive for scraping its catalog. This, again, is a betrayal of the principles of librarianship.
I believe that it is high-time for a de-centralized replacement for OCLC. Something that takes advantage of new technologies, and new modes of computing. Something that truly reflects the values of librarianship.
In my conversations about this with colleagues who have been in the profession for much longer than I have, the response has always been “it would be nice, but would take a lot of time and development.” These are allies. We need, at risk of de-valuing the term, accomplices in building information infrastructure that liberates information, and does not gate-keep it.
It may be that I suffer from what Ettarh calls “Vocational Awe”. But, aligning to Ettarh’s definition, I do not believe that libraries qua the institutions are beyond critique. Nor do I believe that librarians are beyond critique. Of course, there are inevitably those in the profession who are gutless and do nothing but enforce esoteric policy. These people are embarrassments to the profession. But, as I have stated before and in above, there is a certain sacredness to the act of information liberation. Perhaps I should finally read some liberation theology.
Perhaps I am naive. I think sometimes that is what some of my colleagues think of me. I become a professional librarian at 22, but have been working in various positions in libraries for nearing a decade now, coming on 9 years in February. I am perhaps young and arrogant. I did not have a ton of friends growing up, but libraries felt like a place that I was at peace. When I went to college, I worked for Heather and April Hummons, both then working at DePaul library. That is where I met friends, felt a sense that I belonged. That I could talk to the fellow student workers and the supervisors about almost anything. I think that it is not exaggeration when I say that April urging me to go into librarianship saved my life. I shudder to think about where I would have ended up if the librarian thing didn’t work out. Would I be selling my soul? At Northwestern, I am extremely fortunate that I am able to set my one boundary, that the day I am made to publish something that restricts access to information would be the day I left Northwestern Library. Fortunately, it seems that my colleagues are of similar mindsets.
I am a very emotional person. When I reflect on how I feel making information completely free for everyone in an environmental and cost-friendly way, it genuinely makes me want to cry. Not tears of sadness, of course, but a kind of bittersweetness that I feel like my work will outlive me long after I am dead and dust. There is something that stirs in my chest when I think of how generations of librarians came before me, painstakingly creating catalogs by hand. All of the cumulative hours and days and years of work by people underappreciated then and now. It is a moment of clarity for me. That I am not the first, and I will not be the last.
More than almost anyone else in my life, teachers, professors, and librarians made my life bearable. If I can make the same impact on just one student’s life, then it will all be worth it in the end, and I can die proud of what I accomplished in life.
Only those blind by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. The Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto