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The 21st Century Commons
posted 07/14/03
Historically, the commons was the shared pasture, usually located in the center of town. It was an area that was publicly owned and maintained, and was available to anyone for grazing their livestock. Now that we have entered the so-called information age, a public space for feeding sheep and cows is no longer essential to day-to-day survival. Instead, we need public space for the gathering and dissemination of human knowledge. According to Naomi Klein in a speech at the American Library Association conference, " information - [the public library's] stock and trade - ranks just below fuel as the most precious commodity coursing through the global economy. The U.S.'s single largest export is not manufactured goods or arms or food, it is copyrights - patents on everything from books to drugs." Klein feels that globalization is less about reducing barriers and more about putting a price on previously public property. " The role of international trade law must be understood not only as taking down " barriers to trade" - as it claims - but as a legal process that systematically puts up new barriers - around knowledge, technology and the commons itself, through fiercely protective patent and trademark law. There is absolutely nothing free about it." This is one of the reasons I chose to become a public librarian, instead of an academic or corporate librarian or an information broker. While all of these fields are valuable and important, the public library is the place where anyone can come in search of data, information, knowledge. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," said George Santayana. My corollary is: thank goodness we still have a place where we can look it up.
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