RLUK and the Democratization of Knowledge

#rluk10 @RL_UK #jiscopenbib

I’m talking later this week on the Democratization of knowledge to the RLUK conference. RLUK is the professional body for Research Libraries (i.e. mainly University Libraries) in the UK.

I don’t yet know what I shall talk about. I had hoped that we could generate a bottom-up activity in the domain of libraries which would excite people about the new possibilities and help to grow new activities. I had thought that the Open release of the BL’s catalogue data would excite librarians and give rise to community activities, but I can’t find interest by blogging and tweeting. I’d hoped we could arrange a mini-bookathon in 30 minutes using this as a focus. I wanted at least 15 minutes of the session as constructive but tough discussion.

I am told that I uspet people. Brian Kelly describes me as a “critical friend” – someone who stands outside and tries to help by making suggestions and analyses. I’ve been trying to do this for at least 5 years – the only positive sign that it’s useful is that I occasionally get invited back. But maybe it’s time to move on.

So you can relax. I am not going to say anything that can be seen as critical of research libraries. I am going to paint a picture of the present and future that is active and exciting in other fields. I will leave space at the end to see if the participants want to pick up on ideas and translate them to the library domain. But I shan’t attempt to do it myself other than in the area of bibliography and scientific research where I actually know a little.

My current theme is simple:

We are engaged in a struggle between the freedom of knowledge and its centralised control by commercial and political organizations/companies.

The tools available to the forces of undemocratization are many. Here are a few:

• Paid Lobbying.
• Acquisition or control of the means of electronic distribution
• Control of the creation of electronic content
• Changing society’s thinking through universal dissemination (media, books, etc.)
• Digital Rights Management
• Renting knowledge (e.g. journal articles, books, etc.)
• Lawyers

Of course not all of these are universally bad – universal dissemination can be a major force for good or bad. But some have very little positive sides

The tools that are available to the democratization of knowledge are:

• Constant re-affirmation of fundamental rights
• Immediate and universal announcement and dissemination of unacceptable practices
• Cross-fertilization between different groups leading to an n-squared enhancement of power
• The ability to reach and hear from (almost) anyone on the planet
• The ability to create bottom-up democratic content
• Virtual communities

I don’t know which is going to triumph and whether it will be a jigsaw of good and bad. On even days of the week I think that web democracy is winning. On odd days that we are being swamped by forces of control.

What is clear is that if we stand and observe we shall not get a second chance.

Here are some examples of bottom up democracy. One area I have helped to spark off.

• MySociety. A group which creates tools through which ordinary people have a democratic voice. I have used:
• What Do They Know. To ask why and when the BL introduced DRM on ILLs.
• OpenStreetMap. Where 250,000+ people worldwide have taken democratic control of the production of maps
  
• Zooniverse. Where again hundreds of thousands of “ordinary people” are carrying out real, top-quality science, annotation, cataloguing, etc.
  
• The BlueObelisk and the Quixote project on QC databases. Bottom-up, zero-cash (but not zero-cost) communities which are inexorably bringing openness to chemistry because they are Free gratis, Free Open and better than commercial offerings.
  

In Quixote we have the potential to create an infrastructure which provides enhanced (possibly even standalone) teaching and learning for computational chemistry. It’s less than 2 months old and already we are getting volunteers who want to use it as a new way of publishing scientific research in this area, and also a different approach to “teaching”. Possibly one where the students themselves run the course.

My question to RLUK before the meeting is:

“What aspects of the democratization of knowledge are you interested in? Which of these are you interested in putting effort into?”

According to the answers I get I’ll try to arrange the session so there is a real chance for bottom-up discussion at the end.

If I get no response I will leave the elephant unmentioned.

But it won’t have gone away.