Commons- Kacie

1) Public libraries are very important for democracy because it allows the freedom for all to read and learn as we please. Without this free knowledge, the people of our country would be sorely uneducated and possibly illiterate. As a child, I adored going to the library to check out books. Reading was and is one of my favorite pastimes. As a college student, I don’t have enough money to constantly buy books from a store or information from a website. Without these free educational sources, we would lack the intelligence to run an efficient government and country. Bollier states that the “linkages between Learning and Liberty have never been more fragile, or more important, than today”. It is crucial that we fight for our right to keep these resources free for the good of all. If we don’t stand up for ourselves, no one will.

The function of public libraries relate to the internet because we use this medium to utilize their resources. We now have online libraries where books can be read for free. Many university libraries also provide free databases for scholarly journals. Bollier explains that this has created a “digital common” in which we can use these resources. Surprisingly, these types of information commons “are able to produce and distribute information and creative works more efficiently than Centralized Media”.

2) I think what Vaidhyanathan is trying to explain through describing anarchy in the library is that there is a continuing threat that the freedom of accessing information is becoming larger. Whether the freedom is that information is available at no cost or one must pay to retrieve the knowledge; the phenomenon is becoming less and less controllable. Vaidhyanathan describes this situation as he compares it to an arms race, the “locust man”, patented genes, and others. Each of these instances happened because of some law prohibiting or reducing the accessibility to something that was once rightfully owned by the people. This could be free speech, personal ethics, or genetic testing. Simply put, Vaidhyanathan states that the “cultural and technological trends are increasing freedom in ways many people find threatening”. This may be why people feel a need to regulate information by putting a price on the content. Can’t we decide for ourselves what we should or should not read? Apparently not.

Because of this debate, Vaidhyanathan hopes “to prompt more careful thinking about how much and which freedoms are excessive or dangerous” and “to identify and criticize ‘moral panics’ engendered by the common perception that freedoms are getting out of hand, that the anarchists are taking over the libraries” (p.xii).