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fee-based service in public libraries -- action requestedwriting

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1993-06-30 · 8 min read · Edit on Pyrite

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fee-based service in public libraries -- action requested

``` Date: Sat, 22 Jul 1995 00:56:37 -0700 From: honeybee@netcom.com (Melissa Riley) To: pagre@ucsd.edu Subject: URGENT to IF COMMUNITY: Help Oppose SFPL Fee-Based Service

Dear Phil:

I am requesting your immediate response. Please write to the SFPL Library Commission opposing fee-based information services.

Please advise the SFPL Commission that they must thoroughly understand our professional ethics and practices before making far-reaching policies, and urge them to oppose fee-based information services. Write to SFPL Commission, SFPL Civic Center, SF CA 94102. OR fax them at 415 557-4252. I would appreciate an email copy of what you write, and If I can I will post responses to IF distribution lists.

Unfortunately, I will be on vacation and will miss the August 1 meeting. I hope those of you within reach of SF will try to make it to the meeting and keep the tide of fees from overwhelming California and then the nation. Public testimony is generally limited to three minutes each, but will probably be going on after 6:30 and for quite some time.

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The SFPL Library Commission will vote August 1 to approve or disapprove a fee-based service at SFPL. This service will supply information for a fee ($60/hour for librarians' time [$15/ minimum], plus the costs of any online searches, phone calls, copyright, and faxing, copying [$10 minimum], and delivery. Payment requires a credit card.

The business plan (6/1/95) described InfoExpress as supplying "access to over 1,500 remote databases (e.g. Dow Jones, Dialog). . . . This research and document delivery service will offer customized research services and information products not currently available from the SFPL." Very few commercial databases are now available (and far fewer in full text) to regular SFPL patrons directly or indirectly, and there is no apparent plan to make access available to the vast majority of the 1,500 InfoExpress would use.

Presumably most of these databases include texts, searching capacities, and other information not readily accessible in or through the library in any other format--CD-ROM or hard copy subscription.

I have developed three primary distinctions to use in looking at charges in a public library to help determine if they are acceptable according to our professional ethics. (I won't deal with timeliness here. See the statement after mine.)

1. Are the fees for information? The information we supply to library patrons should be readily accessible to all. Information includes not only texts or images, but the expertise of the librarians and the Boolean and keyword searching capacities of databases, without which some information would never be discovered.

2. Are the fees for tangibles? Most discussions of FEE or FREE? fail to make the essential distinction between information and tangibles. We should not mush all kinds of fees together, but determine whether they make receipt of information inequitable. If someone demands to OWN a copy of a text or other information entity, it is not necessarily unethical for the library to find ways to help the patron acquire a copy (within the bounds of law). This is why we don't object to Xerox machines in libraries. Nevertheless, the same information entity MUST be readily available to those who do not require to posses the entity, but merely wish to read it. They MUST have adequate time and space with the entity to actually be able to take it in. This means that, if it is an online source, they must be able to sit and read the source on the screen, or get a free print out or download, and they must not have their time unduly rationed if those who have the money can just pay to imbibe the entity at their own leisure. We find pay-printers ethically questionable in part because it is hard to read long pieces on screens, frequently there are not enough computers to read them on, and the screens are often glarey and dim.

[Sorry this sounds so Star Trekish, but "information entity" seems to cover the gamut from material to non-material instantiations of information.]

3. Does the service create economic barriers to access? Many people favoring fee-based services make the mistake of assuming that because the service will supply information or formats not previously available, that the service is not discriminatory against those who cannot pay for it. This position is a naive one which fails to assess the role of technological progress (not a necessarily laudatory term for me, but one which denotes complexification, specialization, rapidification, and rising expectations) in human culture. When the public library supplies new info sources to anyone it is setting a new standard of the possible in the public sphere. By enlarging the circle of what a tax-supported service makes available, but only to those who pay, you are logically denying that same access to those who do not pay. In essence, fees are being used as a rationing device. This is how economic barriers are created. You change the ecology of the infosphere by offering a fee-based service. Fee-based services enlarge the potential commons of knowledge and then create a barrier to the new realm they have created. The horizon recedes into the distance, but a fence is in the way. The turnstile keeps out the very people the library should be most concerned with serving in its effort to promote equality in the enlarging infosphere. Information is inherently different from other public goods in that it is essential for informed consent (the basis of our democracy), and it is not necessarily scarce since it is nearly infinitely duplicable (unlike material goods) with little investment, and (despite efforts by some to meter each use of an information entity) depends for its initial existence merely on adequate payment in money, glory, and/or the pleasure of self-expression, as determined by its creators and distributors. The economics of information do not depend primarily on natural restraints, but on man-made ones. One can charge a lot for information delivered to a small number of people, or one can charge very little for the same information delivered to a large number of people. (The same is somewhat true for certain material goods, like, say Cinzano, but the truth is of a different order for sheer information. And to the extent that it's true for Cinzano, it is the information attached to it that you are paying for not the sauce.) The public library has been able to charge little by alienating the payment from the use, and by amortizing it over many users, for whom the benefits may be secondary and tertiary. The cost of much information is determined largely by the desire for it and the barriers to it manufactured by its owners, not its material scarcity. What has made the library possible was the difference between cost and value. You can use good books over and over and they rarely or slowly are used up. The cost was fixed, but the value could approach infinity. Pay-per-view and fee-based services are totally incommensurable with the historical library economy and the natural ecology of information. Cost is no longer fixed, and value is nearly limited to the utility for a single user.

Ecologists of information--librarians--must fight against the degradation of the commons of knowledge in the face of metered info-flow. When we talk about charging to use public goods like roads or parks, we are talking about something perhaps equally undesirable, but very different from charging for information supplied by the library. You cannot Xerox Yosemite or Route 66. We know we have to conserve them and share them becasuse we can't reproduce them at will. AND the fact that an intellectual property owner (or possessor) can "Xerox the library" and charge for it bit by bit, makes it an endangered ecosystem. The library depends and must continue to depend on shared, not pay-per-view, knowledge or else it will die.

Rationing through fees is unacceptable in the public sphere precisely because it is unavoidable in the private sector. An essential purpose of the public library is to help rectify the advantage those with more money and wherewithal have in the private sector.

Fees for information (not necessarily tangibles) not only undermine this mission, they are at direct odds with it [There is more to be said, but not now!]. I attach below another statement.

Melissa Riley ####################################################################\

As a librarian at SFPL, a member of the SFPL Librarians' Guild, the Coordinator of the California Library Association Intellectual Freedom Round Table, and a member of the CLA Intellectual Freedom Committee, all of which oppose fee-based information services in public libraries, I am forwarding this open letter from my professional union as a contribution to this list. ############################################

An Open Letter to the San Francisco Public Library Commission 7/19/95

The San Francisco Public Library System is dedicated to free and equal access to information, knowledge, independent learning, and the joys of reading for our diverse community.

InfoExpress violates this mission by providing a service both costly and unequal.

InfoExpress denies access to information to those who cannot pay. The information denied to the library user is the content of 1,500 commercial databases, the expertise of librarians, and the searching capabilities of those databases.

InfoExpress denies expedited, direct delivery of documents to those who do not pay. When time is of the essence, expedited delivery will give a competitive economic, political, educational, or cultural edge to those who are able to pay.

InfoExpress does not cover all costs and will constitute a corporate subsidy.

The library should be a creator of equality. InfoExpress creates inequality. The library should share its resources equitably and freely with all and should not use economic barriers as a rationing device

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InfoExpress will adversely affect collection development by favoring the pay-per-view mode of information delivery.

The enclosed information explains why our profession is opposed to fee-based services in publicly-supported libraries. We strongly urge you to vote against the implementation of InfoExpress at your August 1 meeting.

Respectfully,

The Librarians' Guild of SFPL SEIU 790 ######################################################

Enclosed were the ALA "Economic Barriers to Information Access, an Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights," passed unanimously by the ALA Council, June 30, 1993; and ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee Draft 1.4 of the ALA "Access to Electronic Information, Services, and Networks, an Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights," June 25, 1995. An updated version, incorporating suggestions made by ALA divisions, will be written by the IFC at ALA Midwinter and sent to Council. Both are available from the Office of Intellectual Freedom of ALA, 1-800 545-2433 ext. 4233. The WWW page has the Economic Barriers Interpretation, and, currently, an earlier version (1.1) of the Electronic Interpretation. Version 1.4 should be mounted within a week or so.

Also enclosed was an editorial (3/15/93) by John Berry, Editor in Chief of Library Journal, "Don't Sell the Library of Congress," opposing fee-based services at the Library of Congress. {LC dropped their proposal for a fee-based service under strong opposition from the librarians, publishers, and the information industry.

The final enclosure was a flyer urging people to attend the August 1 SFPL Commission meeting (at 5075 Third Street at 5:30) and featuring an Independence Day editorial from the SF Independent, "Keep Libraries Free," promoting the extension of the free and equal access available in the library to the online resources accessible through the library. Melissa Riley 510 524-2155 fax 524-5938 ```

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