TELECOMMUNICATIONS RADIO PROJECT Program #4-94: "Info-Surfing the Libraries of Tomorrow" KPFA Radio - July 26, 1994 Panelists: Ken Dowlin, Theodore Roszak, Patricia Glass Schuman Project Director and Host: Jude Thilman Director: John Reiger Creative Consultant: Adi Givens Executive Producer: Bari Scott Feature Producer: Claire Schoen Managing Editor: Alan Snitow Project Researcher: Carol Klinger Introduction by Host Jude Thilman My strongest memory of the neighborhood library of my childhood is how the librarian would paste stickers on a page for each book we read during summer vacation. That, and the smell of books. Computer terminals and CD-ROMS will never replace that smell...but they may replace the rest of the library. I'm Jude Thilman, and this is the Communications Revolution. Have you looked for a booke at your local library lately? If you have, there's a good chance you spent more time at a computer terminal than wandering in the stacks. The talk now is of a virtual library, where everything is computerized, with no stacks at all, with inofrmation delivered electronically right into your home. Sounds fast. Sounds easy. But does it sound free? Joining me today to talk about the future of the public library are Ken Dowlin, City Librarian with the San Francisco Public Library; Author and Social Historian Theodore Roszak; and from the studios of WNYC in New York, Patricia Glass Schuman, immediate past President of the American Library Association. We'll begin our discussion with this report from Claire Schoen. "Remembering that an "N" is a name, a "W" is a word, a "T" is a title, you do two forward slashes and whatever the type of search it is you wish to perform." "It's actually easier to use an electronic product than it is a print product, and kids especially hate dealing with print indexes." Welcome to the annual convention of the American Library Association. We are in San Francisco with librarians from across the country and around the world. On the exhibit floor are over 900 booths displaying everything from children's books to the latest in telecommunications technology. "Uncover 2 is the overlay of the uncover system which allows for document delivery." "We provide the patron or the librarian with the ability to intellectually access the materials. . . " "Now do an "S" to stop the switch, I mean we can kind of bounce articles around the country at will." What's going on here? These vendors are pitching tools for the virtual library, a new buzzword of the telecommunications industry, but what does it mean? Increasingly information is being stored electronically in data bases. They can contain anything from Shakespeare to census statistics to photos of the planet, and with computers, phone lines and satellites, libraries can now plug you into vast and interlocking networks of databases, bringing information directly into your hands. In the library of the future you can get information from anywhere, anytime. "The amount of personal time that you have to do things is becoming shorter and shorter as society becomes accelerated. . ." "The patron would be standing at the terminal in the library and it might say, do you want to order this article? And you say yes. And it would say, do you want to charge it to your Visa or your Mastercard? You type in your card number, and then there it is, that fast." "We may be seeing that more and more, the librarian becoming more of an operator, if you will, assisting electronic searchers of data, but not necessarily required in the physical presence." Not required in the physical presence? What will happen to the neighborhood librarian who has always been our teacher and guide through the world of books? In the age of the virtual library the librarian's role is changing along with the institution of the library itself. "With a personal computer and modem in your home plugged into a network and database, direct access to digitally stored and processed information can be achieved without the need for obsolete human interface or book storage edifice." There's only one problem: who knows how to make this stuff work? That's where librarians come in. "I think that without the kind of training that librarians have about helping people find information, then what we will have is this digital world in which you either sink or swim." That's Howard Rheingold, editor of the Whole Earth Review. He says most people don't have access to a computer, let alone the knowledge of how to use one. "What about the citizen on the street, what about school children, what about the people who didn't have the education, who don't have the money to have access to a personal computer? The question is who's going to be excluded from it and what are you going to do about that? Public libraries might be the place where you could go for free to sit down in front of a terminal, have someone who speaks your language show you how to get started." Not many librarians know the language of the Pomo Indian tribe of Mendocino County, California, but members of the tribe can now see and hear their own history on a special computer archive at the county library in Ukiah. Steve Cisler, a librarian for Apple Computers, was a consultant to the Native American Memory Project. "What we're looking at is a color computer screen with a series of small postage-stamp size images, and there's pictures of obsidian blades, of other hunting tools, of material for making jewelry, of headdresses and so forth." Cisler is looking for hunting songs and stories of Steven Knight, a Yokut Pomo. "And what we can do is use the computer mouse to click on one of the images, something like say deer hunting, and it will bring up larger pictures as well as the audio clip, and it will start playing it. There's a tremendous wealth of material of Native American subject matter and they've been pretty much disenfranchised of a lot of their culture, and we hope to use this high technology to redeliver it to them." Before taking on this project, Pat Hunt was the library's bookmobile driver. "To create this as a living database was our real vision. Not only would we be just handing out the information in the usual academic style, but we'd be able to bring more of the current community, the living culture, the culture that's still out there, the shamans that are still practicing, into almost immediate availability." This new library technology creates several paradoxes: An Indian culture, defined by the land, by a sense of place, is being preserved on an electronic network, a placeless technology, yet that placeless technology depends on the people, the organization, and in fact the building of the Mendocino County Library, and the library almost shut down this year due to budget cuts. "Now we're in this paradoxical situation in which libraries are all going on-line, so with the cost of a computer and a telephone line suddenly you can have access to vast information resources. At the same time libraries are suffering because people don't want to pay taxes. They're closing library buildings down." In California half of all school libraries have closed in the past decade. Across the nation library cutbacks are the worst since the Great Depression. At this rate, instead of the library of the future, we may have a future that is virtually without libraries. I'm Claire Schoen for "The Communications Revolution." Host Jude Thilman: The world of the virtual library, or a world virtually without libraries, or maybe something in between. We're going to talk now about the new role of the library in the telecommunications age. I'm Jude Thilman and with me are Ted Roszak, author of The Voice of the Earth and certainly a frequent user of the library. Ken Dowlin is also here in the studio. He came to the San Francisco Public Library from one of the most electronically sophisticated libraries in the US in Colorado, and he's working to transform San Francisco into a similar direction. Joining us from New York, Patricia Glass Schuman is the recent Past President of the American Library Association and she's an activist on behalf of free speech and information access. Pat Schuman let's start with you. What role do you see libraries playing in the future? Let me put it a little more bluntly: Do we need libraries at all anymore? Pat Schuman (PS): I think we need libraries more than ever, particularly with the changes that technology are bringing to us. Libraries are a very radical idea you know--the distribution of information to everyone regardless of income, sex, class, race. It's the one educational institution that's open to everyone. I think that the role of libraries and librarians will be very much the same. Technology is changing our methods and the way we look at things--we're moving from a way we looked at just ownership of information to access to information. Technology can offer us broad ways to access information for people, but it also has real potential for limiting information if we're not careful. Libraries are the one agency that are really dedicated to safeguarding the public's right to know. Host: At the risk of overstating it, I think Pat just said it's the one educational institution open to everyone. I would say the public schools fall in that category as well, but certainly the point is well taken that this is a tool of democracy. PS: Schools are limited by age. Host: You're absolutely right. Ken Dowlin, what is the democratic potential for these new library technologies? Ken Dowlin (KD): Well first of all I think we need to understand that the public library is the hallmark of democracies. Public libraries have never flourished or almost even existed in dictatorial societies, and there's almost a one-to-one relationship between a democracy and the health of a public library. So, in a symbolic sense, I think it's a very strong statement of a nation's or community's commitment to democracy, and the institutions and vehicles--if you will--that are essential to make that happen. Host: But what is it about the technologies that are going to enhance their democratic potential? KD: First of all I'd like to say that technology seldom displaces earlier technology, it's additive. And in fact the television did not do away with the radio, the radio did not do away with the newspapers, the newspapers did not do away with books. And so to a large degree we talk about the library becoming an electronic library and that whole discussion, and even though I wrote a book called titled The Electronic Library which Pat Schuman published, as I talked to more and more audiences throughout the world about that subject, I reached the conclusion that the electronic library in the public sector will not happen within my lifetime, and perhaps not even in the next century. What we need to consider is the fact that a library is a neographic institution, and in fact I made that word up. Host: What does it mean? KD: Well, the library deals with all technologies and we deal with them simultaneously. The issue of whether a library is a book place or not--the battle was over when libraries bought their first magazine, bought their first microfilm, whatever, and we deal with videos and CDs and so on. So to us our challenge is how do we integrate these and how do we optimize the particular technology, so in many respects that becomes of a technical nature, and if we go back to what we consider our basic function of mission in a library--in San Francisco we defined that fairly specifically as to provide free and equal access to information, knowledge, independent learning, and the joy of reading for a diverse community--there's a very important role for all technologies. Host: So far we don't see many changes with the electronic library. Ted Roszak, let's bring you into the conversation, your view of the new electronic library as a frequent user? Ted Roszak (TR): I should make it clear in the background of everything I have to say, there's I think a healthy appreciation for this new technology, the electronic technologies, I mean I use them as a writer and a teacher. In the foreground there's a lot of caution and the caution connects with a couple of specific points: First of all there's a general cautionary remark I think always has to be made about new technologies. It has to do with the fact that we're not dealing simply with a technology but with commodities in the marketplace, and so they tend to be surrounded by a lot of hype. I often find that in discussions of these subjects, it's hard for me to tell after a certain point, say 30 seconds into the discussion, whether we're talking about fact, fiction, fantasy, hallucination, or wishful thinking. I mean you can get people to say this new technology can do anything on up to saving your soul, so you have to very careful about the over-selling that goes with technology. What can it actually do? It can do a lot, but it can't do everything. Host: Well let's talk about what it can do, but I would like to--on that cautionary note--you mentioned the word marketplace, Ted Roszak, I think that's an important aspect of this, the changes that we're seeing in the library. Bruce Sterling is a science fiction writer and a science journalist who spoke at the American Library Association conference this past summer. He sounds the same sort of cautionary notes about libraries becoming business. Here's Bruce Sterling: "Welcome to the Library of Congress. Jolt Cola is the official drink of the Library of Congress. This is our distributed electronic data network brought to by PRODIGY Services, a joint venture of IBM and Sears. You'll notice the banner of bright red ads that spools by your eyeballs while you're trying to access the electronic full text of William Wordsworth. Try to pay no attention to that. Incidentally there's a hypertext link here where you can order our Wordsworth T-shirt and have it billed to your credit card. Did I mention that the Library of Congress is now also a bank? Hey, data is data, digits are digits, every pixel in cyberspace is a potential sales opportunity. Be sure to visit our library coffee bar too, you can rent videos here if you want. We do souvenir umbrellas, ashtrays, earrings, fridge magnets, the works. We librarians are doing what we can to survive this economically difficult period." Host: Economically difficult period, Pat Schuman do we have a choice? PS: Sadly, I have to say. You know there's a bill before the Congress of the United States right now which, if passed, would allow the Library of Congress to charge fees for new technological services. The library community is quite opposed to that, particularly the American Library Association, but that science fiction is not far from the truth, but I think it was Theodore Roszak who said there's a lot of hype going on here. I think libraries adopting a business agenda is a very dangerous game, because it means we follow the marketplace rather than forging our own agenda. And you know libraries have always been about equity. Business is about efficiency, the marketplace is about efficiency. They're very different things. People will say well we don't have any money and this is the only way we can finance services, but do you know in this country all funds for libraries equal less than two-tenths of one percent of all taxes, and they serve 66% of the public. It's the best bargain in public services this country has, and if we turn libraries into businesses we're going to lose what is really a national treasure. A really interesting thing--I think Ken Dowlin mentioned it--I happened to be in Moscow during the coupe at a library meeting, but it was very interesting because the first thing east European countries are trying to do is to emulate our system of public libraries. Host: Realistically, Ken Dowlin, what Pat Schuman was just saying sounds great. You want to be very wary of becoming businesses and the logic that would be involved with that--niche markets, not serving the public, that sort of thing. But libraries have already been charging fees for all kinds of things--videos, on-line services, to download databases, fees for reserving books, or for inter-library loans for example. The electronic virtual library offers an opportunity for libraries to become financially solvent, isn't that true? KD: I would not go that far. I don't know that libraries would ever generate a significant amount of revenue to solve our infrastructure budget problems that are going on. I think it's key, and the reason I brought up the mission of the library for libraries to understand or clarify and be able to articulate the role that they have, one of the things we forget, we have a tendency--and I think the media is the among worst--to lump all libraries together as if we were MacDonalds' franchizes. One of the major strengths of the library is we are of the community we serve. We had a major issue of that yesterday in the Library Commission of San Francisco where we resisted censorship attempts, primarily from out of state, to force their values onto the library, and the Commission said that that is not appropriate for San Francisco. So that we are of our community, and the mission and the purpose in our community may differ from library to library, but I think we all share the common goal and the professional goal, if you will, of enhancing people's access to information, knowledge and learning, and the vehicles for that. Host: Information, knowledge, learning--these are fine abstract concepts, but in concrete reality there's a difference, Ted Roszak, between the data that libraries are increasingly providing to, say, corporate users or even institutional users, members of academia like yourself, and the general knowledge that people want from the libraries, isn't that true? TR: There's a rather deep philosophical problem that usually gets glossed over in these discussions, and the library may have a very special role to play in solving that problem or helping people to solve it. There's a tendency--you can see it in this discussion we're having here--to keep using the word information as if we know what we're talking about. The fact is the word information needs to be very carefully defined. You hear most people talk about information, including librarians sometimes. You might feel that there's not much difference between a telephone book and playdough or Shakespeare. The fact that you can digitalize an awful lot of things is about as meaningful as the fact that you can reduce a lot of literature to ink. Nobody ever talked about having an ink culture in the past, and to say that we now have an information culture because you can turn everything into digital bits and pieces is really quite trivial, and what it does is that it flattens everything into some one thing called information, so that there is not a distinction about those things that are properly called information, rigorously defined--and I prefer a rigorous definition of information--as distinct from knowledge, as distinct from judgement, as distinct from wisdom, as distinct from beauty, and it seems to me that librarians as living human beings that deal with people who come to them asking questions about god-knows-what--everything from telephone numbers to how am I going to get through the night and live through the next day and what's the meaning of my life and so on--the librarian might be that humanistic element in the system that points out these distinctions to people, that sometimes what you want you can get out of a database, and sometimes what you want you can only get out of a good book that you can take with you into the woods and read at length, and that these are distinctions in life, these are distinctions in culture. The main problem that I see on the philosophical level about information technology is that we are flattening everything into some one thing called information, and that impoverishes us, and this is not to say information isn't important. It is, but it's not the most important thing in any culture. Indeed I would defend the proposition as I have in books I've written that information is one of the least important things in any culture, and you can even do without it. Host: Let's talk about the humanistic element that you so eloquently speak of, Ted Roszak. I have to say, a lot of the hustle-bustle of the American Library Association conference this summer had to do with how information brokers, big corporations, could come in and sell their services to libraries. And there's an allure, isn't there Pat Schuman, for librarians to upgrade their status and become info brokers? PS: That's another hype that I think the business community is perpetrating on librarians. The Special Libraries Association a couple of years ago did a study on the image of librarians, which we in the profession are always very concerned with, and they had a whole list of titles from librarian to information manager to information broker to information scientist. They surveyed community leaders, newspaper reporters, and you know what they found out? The only title people understood was the word librarian. So I think some people look at it as a way to glorify the status of librarians and I think there is a lot of hype. I would agree with Mr. Roszak about information. There's also a lot of hype to say that all information will be digitalized. You know five companies control 90% of the sales and uses of databases in this country. It's a very scary prospect when you talk about all information being available electronically. There are very few people making decisions about what information will be available commercially. Host: Ken Dowlin, whether we're talking about information or knowledge, the fact that we can make it available electronically, what does that really mean in terms of a person's ability to use this material? I mean we heard in the top of the hour, "N" is for name, "W" is for word, two forward slashes--I mean this is complicated stuff. How are you going to make this stuff accessible for users, for the average persons? KD: Obviously it's an evolving continual of working with the users to come up with systems that they can use. At the same time the kids who are in elementary school now are learning how to deal with keyboards and mice. And so over a period of time that'll become somewhat less of an issue, but Pat touched on and I just wanted to bring out: There are two major elements where I think the library has a very special role. One was what I alluded to earlier--the sense of community. One of my concerns with the electronic information milieu, is virtually there are 6,000 to 10,000 databases available today to anybody who has a computer and knows how to use it. None of them are on San Francisco. Host: Where are they? KD: They do not exist, because the marketplace to create these is either national or global. And so there is no financial incentive for the developers to do that, and I would contend that as a key role for the public library to preserve that community element in this knowledge-information-data stream, because I would say virtually no one else is doing that. The public library is an institution who not only serves all generations simultaneously, but we serve to define communities--our cities, our counties and so on. And I worry about that, if libraries do not do that it will not happen. TR: Here in Berkeley we've had a library that's sought to be an ombudsman for the disadvantaged. There is no database called Jobless Net or Paupers Serve. That kind of information tends not to become electronic, you have to find it on scraps of paper and brochures and leaflets and flyers and so on. And I know Berkeley is among the cities that has tried to provide that service for that public, which is a very large public in our society. KD: I'd like to characterize the library's role as dealing with the past, the present and the future. In dealing with the past I would contend that we need to be the cultural anchor in the electronic age, that we connect to our historic resources and incorporate the electronics. In the present I say we need to be the community institution, and in the future I think really leads into the concept of the global library. Host: We're talking about how new telecommunications technologies are changing the role of the public library, and whether in fact the public library is going to be accessible for regular people in the future to use. My guests are Patricia Glass Schuman, the immediate Past President of the American Library Association and a frequent testifier before Congress on right to information legislation. Ken Dowlin is the San Francisco City Librarian who has led in the fight to fund new electronics systems, and Ted Roszak is a noted social historian and critic who has raised concerns about the new high tech information services in the library. This is "The Communications Revolution." **** break **** Host: My guests are Ken Dowlin, City Librarian with the San Francisco Public Library. Ken is developing new electronic information services for users of the public library system here in the Bay Area. Ted Roszak is the author of The Cult of Information and The Voice of the Earth. He raises questions regarding the benefits of electronic information and what it means for access. And Pat Schuman is the recent President of the American Library Association. She's especially concerned about the availability of government information. Valerie from Berkeley, you're on "The Communications Revolution." Caller #1: My question has to do with all these numbers and words and digits and things. How does this all transform our lives to make it better? Is there anything that says this is going to help us in some big way? Host: Good question. Ken Dowlin, how is this helping people's lives improve, all this technology? KD: We're talking about electronic computer-type telecommunications technology--there's a whole issue of technology as a whole. People forget that bicycles are a technology, running shoes are a technology--all of those things, and I think that a case can be made that, for example I'm a bicycle fan, I think they've improved my life tremendously. But in terms of access to information, I think to a large degree the major impact comes through the multiplicity of channels that are available to you now, and I think that has been a major change in the communications technology. In the old days we had three national television networks, we had a handful of radio networks and so on, so there were a limited number of channels available. The technology whether it's CDs or VCRs or whatever, have given you many more choices to have access. Host: Isn't it true those choices are only available for people who have computers or know how to them? I mean libraries are shutting down, never mind having computer equipment. PS: There are still a lot of libraries left in this country. I do think technology can bring us many advantages if we're careful about it. For example, the National Library of Medicine is on-line. I have heard hundreds of stories of people being able to search that database and find a specific doctor specializing in a thing, and to be able to research a disease for example. One of the things we're fighting for in the American Library Association is to be able to access government databases, which has all kinds of information that we can use in our daily lives about nutrition, about health, about the environment. The government has a right to know toxic police inventory database now which it's putting in libraries. You can actually go and research what toxic wastes are being put into your community. Host: When you say government information access databases, how would an average person who's all of a sudden concerned about a toxic dump down the block, how would they access this information? PS: They would probably as a first step go to their local library and ask if they have the toxic release inventory database. If they don't they would ask their local librarian where the depository library is for that region. There are 1400 libraries in the United States designated as depository libraries, which means they are supposed to get all copies of information published by the government. One of the battles we're facing now with the government is what is the definition of publication? And on an experimental basis they're making some technological products available to libraries, but we still have not won the battle of getting electronic access to government databases. Host: We're seeing problems from both ends--both making the information available from the government or wherever, and problems that I want to concentrate on--the user end. On the user end of getting this information, in the earlier piece that we listened to they talked about--if you want this information that you're seeing on your screen, enter your Visa or Mastercard. This again seems to connote that this is a very well-to-do or middle-class clientele that's going to be using this technology. What if you don't have a Visa or Mastercard? PS: That's the very reason why I don't believe that libraries have any business being in business. Libraries are a public service agency, and while it's true that they have traditionally charged fees for photocopies, for fines, and what are they--20 cents a piece? I don't know how many of the listeners have tried to search a database lately, but that's more like $25 dollars an hour. Host: But as you've noted yourself Pat, fewer and fewer people are providing the information, and it seems to be for niche markets. So in effect you're saying taxpayers, that is public money for the government, should go to support information that right now is largely tailored for specialized clientele, is that not true? PS: I don't think I would put it quite that way. What I'm talking about is information collected, stored and digitized at taxpayers' expense that ought to be available to the taxpayer without the taxpayer having to pay a fee for it. Government information isn't copyrighted--the business community is welcome to all the bells and whistles they want. The question now is that the public can't even get basic access to, for example, census data, that used to available in print form. Some of it's now available only on a database, and it's only available from the private sector for a fee. You know, that's stuff that our tax dollars have paid for. That's creating information haves and have-nots, depending on whether you can afford to access information from your own government. KD: That's a key issue and the debate rages in the library community over that. I have a somewhat different cut on the perspective, in that I do think it is feasible and defensible for a library to charge for convenience, and in some cases added value. The taxpayers in San Francisco put up x-number of dollars every year for the library service that is prepaid library service, and we will provide those functions for which they traditionally have felt that they have paid for, and we're very committed to that. On the other hand I think it is feasible to charge for convenience. If you want to check out a book you can come to the library, check out that book free, take it home. If you want that book transmitted to your desk top at a particular time, like in the next five minutes, I think we can charge for that, and I think we can charge for that in a way that subsidizes the access for the people who cannot pay for that. Host: Rita from Clearlake, you're on "The Communications Revolution." Caller #2: I would like to make one point, maybe a philosophical question: My personal opinion is, I would not like to see any central authorities trying to distribute or regulate or determine what kind of information is made available. Right now, I think it's a very exciting frontier sort of atmosphere where information which is available is mostly determined by how many people want to use such information. I got articles published in the Election Forum on America On-Line and The Non-Profit Connection on GENIE, which are some very relevant things you won't even hear on KPFA, and I'm really disturbed by the trend--it's one thing to get the information from government and it's another thing to talk about having a central library program, so why don't we address both of these as two separate issues? Host: Thank you for your comment. Any response from the panel? PS: Interestingly enough, the United States is one of the few countries in the world that does not, in essence, have a national library. The Library of Congress, although it performs some national functions, is really the library of Congress. I don't think anybody has been talking about a centralized system. What we're talking about is trying to get access to information by and about us that the government is letting the private sector sell at a great profit. Now no one wants to stop the private sector from doing that, but what we want is basic access for the public. Host: Another call now, Charles from Richmond, you're on "The Communications Revolution." Caller #3: I was wondering about a couple of things. One, this technology is racing ahead and there's a core of people who've learned to use it, but what programs are being created that are going to bring the public in general into the system to teach them how to access information electronically? PS: We have a very bad state in this country where one out of four Americans can't even read a book. I think that's going to take a lot of public investment and a lot of cooperation between libraries, the education community, and possibly partnerships with the business community. It's a grave necessity, but you know we have a 30% dropout rate in New York in our high schools. Host: Ken, how are you training people to use these? KD: At the present time we don't have the on-line catalogs out, but they'll be out early after the first of the year, and obviously people will need assistance in working with the technology and locating material. In some cases though people almost assume that all of us were born with the ability to use a card catalog, and in fact that has taken years if not decades to try to understand how to use that particular technology. So it's an ongoing process for the library to train, support, and that's a major issue I think as we move into more technology orientation--which is where do people go for training in the access mode? But I see it as a continuation of what we've done. . . TR: Though actually this question which comes up frequently might be one of the easiest questions to deal with and the easiest problems to solve. That is, if we saw our way clear to making the public library a people's information service, and if it had the resources to do that--meaning the people, the machines, everything it needs for that purpose--people might be able to do what I do. I'm a university professor--I don't search databases, I don't have any interest in learning that skill. What I do is I ask librarians to do it for me. I know what I need to know, I tell them what I need to know. I depend upon them to do the job. And I think that is one of the roles the library could provide, it could be that intermediary between a very complex technology that requires great skill--far more skill than I want to acquire in order to use it myself--and the public that needs, perhaps needs, that information, often does need it very urgently. The library could be that, and you would not have to go to private information brokers to provide this service for you. Host: And Ted have you had success in asking your local librarian to do this? TR: I've used a couple of public library database services over the years for my writing. When I finish a book for example, about 10% of what I put into a book is information. The rest is out of books that I read in my own home, thinking, that sort of thing. But you come down finally, if you're writing nonfiction, you need some information, and if it's hard to find, if it's more trouble than I can take, I turn it over to an information search in my library. And there are a couple in California--one in southern California--an L.A. public library called the Southern California Answering Network. We used to have one in the Bay Area called the Bay Area reference center, and I found that they were marvelous to work with. Host: You're listening to "The Communications Revolution." Our subject is the library, the new virtual library, electronic library, whatever you want to call it--what our libraries are going to do in the future when their materials go on-line. Our guests today are Pat Schuman. She's a former President of the American Library Association. Ted Roszak was just speaking. He's a frequent user of the library and social historian, and Ken Dowlin is also with us. He is from the San Francisco Public Library. Let's take another call. We have Paul from Oakland, you're on "The Communications Revolution." Caller #4: I was wondering if your panel could talk about the French approach with the MINITEL system, where basically the phone company gave each one of their customers a modem and computer for home use. Host: That's a very good question because, in fact, some people have suggested that libraries shouldn't be providing this electronic information. We should use something that's already in place such as telephone lines. What do you say, Ken Dowlin? KD: Well, first of all you have to remember that the telephone company in France is run by the national government and they made it a public policy to provide MINITEL terminals in lieu of telephone books, and right there it reached a critical mass to have enough utility in the home. They made it simple in terms of the technology to use, and its primary use is still looking up telephone numbers. In the United States we don't have that vehicle, we have no way to decree in Washington that everybody will use these things. So here in the United States the MINITEL is simply, as far as my perspective, the same as a PRODIGY service or the things you can sign up for and get particular services. The real issue from the library perspective--and there is a program here that is somewhat supported by Pacific Bell to implement the MINITEL program here--and from my perspective that's the same as the PRODIGY and other services that are available. From our perspective, when they've reached the critical mass of users, it justifies our being an information provider and we will probably do it, but we would do that with any information provider. PS: We're talking about methods of transmission and not actually what is communicated. My understanding in France too is that MINITEL is not really being used for information services, that most of the use is on pornographic (laugh by all). That's what I have read except for the phone book. Most of the general public is not particularly interested in using information services per se. When they need to know something then they will think of it, but the phone is a transparent thing and that's one more way that you can access information when you need it, but there are those of us who are junkies and can access PRODIGY or COMPU-SERVE every day, but most of the public is never going to do that. Host: I see. Well to be fair to MINITEL my understanding is that people were able to do grocery shopping and that sort of thing as well from their home via a computer terminal. KD: That's been the real dream for the marketers, if you will, and the United States has had a number of cable television experiments. The Cube experiment in Columbus, Ohio put millions and millions of dollars into it. And there've been a number of those--PRODIGY--and their big hope is that they will make this financially feasible through marketing services, and you'll never have to leave your house. To be honest I do not think it will fly because, I mean my wife going shopping is a social experience as well as a utilitarian one. So, there are a lot of dimensions to that. To me the basic reason in the United States that the on-line interactive information systems have not become economically feasible, is because they are so limited in what they can provide. They are not neographic, they only have one dimension and that's the electronic transfer, and at the same time almost all of those have no history. In other words, they were created the day they were started and moved forward. They do not go back. Host: Neil from Eureka, you're on "The Communications Revolution." Caller #5: I've haven't really thought this through but I'm sensitive to the idea of putting a library in the center of the city. I've lived in San Francisco for 20 years and I probably only went to the main library 10 times because for me it was a major hassle. And I wonder why, with the technology that we have today, we wouldn't consider putting reference terminals in shopping centers, in small branch libraries, as opposed to putting a whole lot of money in a big building next to City Hall. Host: A very good point, Neil. What about the physical structure of the library? Do we need it at all, should we be putting terminals in gas stations or supermarkets, or what's the future of this space as you see it? PS: Well there are two questions there. One is the location of the building and the other is whether we need a building. Libraries are important public buildings in most communities, and in fact they're defaced more often than we like, but they're buildings that people respect and use for all kinds of things in addition to just accessing a terminal or checking out a book. They use them for community meetings, they use them to meet their friends, we use them for story hours for kids, students have club meetings, there's all kinds of public community reasons to have a library building. The idea of the large, urban public library building, that's a question and I guess I would throw that over to Ken Dowlin who's building one right there and ask him why in this point in time has the city of San Francisco decided to put their money there instead of branches? KD: Well this gives me two dimensions, if you will. One is to point out that in San Francisco, although we're investing in technologies, it's a small portion of what we're investing in buildings and collections and staffing. The issue, and I used to use all the reasons why we needed libraries as a social experience, as a communications center, all that as well as a warehouse, and actually over the years I've boiled it down very simply: The reason we will continue to have major library buildings or library buildings in the future is because the public wants them. In fact we have a Gallup poll that shows that the public still supports libraries and they want them. In San Francisco we know that 80% of the citizens feel that the public library is a worthwhile institution, not a waste of money that could be better used elsewhere, and 77% of them voted in 1988 to build a new main library at $140 million dollars, which will be one of the large ones. So the public wants them, they see them for their social value, but I also think they see them as an icon for their society and for their democracy. Host: Another call now. Eric, also from Eureka, you're also on "The Communications Revolution." Caller #6: Awhile back the FBI asked individual libraries for the right to make available lists of books that were checked out by individuals. That was an alarming idea. The Librarians' Association decided to go on record opposing that concept as I understand it. Now you have mentioned that the government is deciding whether or not to make information that has, in the past, been generally publicly available, no longer available or available only through limited channels. In the sense that a library has historically been a place where freedom might reign supreme and, in fact to the extent that--and it's rather radical--you give people the opportunity to use ideas and have information without even paying a copyright to the person who created the idea, it's one of the few places in our society where that happens. How are the librarians going to work to make sure that ideas and information that people did pay for, that the government collected, remain available to people; and also, a subset of that: How can the public work with the librarians to accomplish that? PS: That's a very good question. The library community has been extremely concerned and has been lobbying hard in Washington. We have testified, we have formed a coalition on government information, but we are facing a very big information industry that is extremely powerful and is growing. KD: I wonder if you couldn't take it as a rule of thumb, I mean we talk so much about the value of information these days, and we are a data-intensive society because of the nature of our business community. I wonder if you couldn't take it as a rule of thumb that the more valuable information becomes, the less likely it is to be given away? That is, it becomes a basis for somebody making a profit and profit means restricting, either by cost or by license or by copyright. It seems to me one of the roles the library has to play in this is almost an adversarial one--it is a public service as opposed to a market institution, and so one of the roles of the library is to fight to keep the information accessible, almost in spite of the technology which tends to be privatizing a good deal of previously public information. So it gives the library a special role as a democratic institution in an information economy, as we call it, which is more and more being run by profit in fewer and fewer hands. PS: I agree. That's something that we can do right now. It's a baby step, but it's a very important step to getting electronic access to government databases and to libraries. That's one of the things you can do right now is write to your congressperson or call them and tell them that you're interested in this bill. Host: Let's take another call. Irving from Mill Valley, you're on "The Communications Revolution." Caller #7: My question was, particularly since this is all depersonalized, how does one distinguish between misinformation, disinformation, considering for example that our government just poured out disinformation all over the world recently to turn things around. Host: It's certainly an interesting question connected to the larger one of who controls the content of all this information that the library is going to be making available, hopefully, in the future. KD: I think part of that is going back to the earlier statement that we feel in the library field, a major part of our function is advocacy, to advocate access, the legal right to have information produced by the government. I think the problem comes when the information gets filtered or held back or buried or what-have-you. Personally I don't have the answers to all the problems in the world, nor would I be so elitist as to say that I'm the only person who could do that. On the other hand I think multiple channels and availability enhance people's ability to make conscious decisions between right and wrong and what is real and what isn't. Host: The optimist viewpoint, and I have to point out that that runs somewhat contrary to what Ted Roszak was saying a minute ago about how librarians, it's incumbent upon them to keep information available, almost in spite of the technology. So we're exploring today not just the notion of what the information is, its content, etc., but how the technology influences that availability. PS: It's very important also that people understand that just because information and large bodies of information are available through technology, that is not all the information that there is. That's one of the things that is very frightening, and one of the roles of libraries I think is what Ken Dowlin was saying, is that it has always provided multiple channels. We see the private sector channels really shrinking. Elsevier and Reed International just merged to make a $500 billion dollar company that's bigger than the revenue streams of most governments. They will control a large part of magazine publishing in the world. Libraries will provide those journals when they can afford them, but they will also provide other sources of information. That's one of the great things about libraries is the diversity. Host: We have only a few minutes left, but Chuck from Mountain View has been very patient and has a question about a specific service. Caller #8: Just to expand a little bit upon some of the thoughts of the previous callers on intellectual property and copyrights and some of the comments you've been making, I've recently read a book and seen Ted Nelson speak on his vision. The book is called Literary Machines, and he's developing a system called Xanadu, and I was just wondering if your panel has heard of that and if they've heard any status of it and comments I haven't heard in awhile? Host: Does anyone know about Xanadu? KD: To some degree I think the Xanadu project was a little bit like the Shangrila project. There may be more vaporware at this stage than a concept really. It's a very interesting concept. I would be very surprised if it ever became generally operationalized. Host: Interesting concept that unfortunately we don't have time to explore. I'll have to ask about that another time. Just speaking was Ken Dowlin. He's here from the San Francisco Public Library. Our thanks also to Ted Roszak who joins us here in the KPFA studio, and Pat Schuman joining us from WNYC in New York. Additional feature music was provided for this show by Don Swearingen, and our thanks to Don O'Neil for his help at WNYC. For "The Communications Revolution" I'm Jude Thilman. #### .