Libraries

[David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

The Spring 1993 issue of the journal Representations (orange cover, widely
available on newsstands in college towns) is a special issue on the future
of libraries, taking as its point of departure the new national library
that Francois Mitterand is trying to build in Paris.  The whole issue is
interesting, but the main Risks-relevant article is by Geoff Nunberg:


Geoffrey Nunberg, The place of books in the age of electronic reproduction,
Representations 42, 1993, pages 13-37.


Nunberg argues (among many other points) that printed newspapers have served
to help create what Benedict Anderson called "imagined communities".  The
idea is that, since everyone in San Diego (say) gets more or less the same
version of the San Diego Union-Tribune, readers of the Union-Tribune are
aware that everyone else who is reading the paper sees the same articles.
Thus they can get a sense of what "everyone knows" about the day's events
that help to knit together a coherent concept of the community.  Of course
in San Diego people read the LA Times and the NY Times as well, and many
people get all their news from TV.  The point is that people get their news
from only a small number of sources that are the same everywhere, and these
provide a way of imagining what "we" know, think, read, have opinions about,
and so forth.


In the age of electronic distribution of information, though, it's quite
possible for everyone to get customized information which is filtered down
in various ways and then assembled from a patchwork of different sources.
The result might be greater difficulty in imagining communities, as opposed
to imagining professions or other specialized interest groups that would
tend to steer toward the same information sources.


The same issue contains an article on the future of copyright:


Jane C. Ginsburg, Copyright without walls?: Speculations on literary property
in the library of the future, Representations 42, 1993, pages 53-73.


Phil Agre, UCSD