SCI-HUB d/b/a WWW.SCI-HUB.ORG, THE LIBRARY GENESIS PROJECT d/b/a LIBGEN.ORG, ALEXANDRA ELBAKYAN, JOHN DOES 1-99,
Defendants.
Plaintiffs Elsevier Inc, Elsevier B.V., and Elsevier Ltd. (collectively “Elsevier”),
by their attorneys DeVore & DeMarco LLP, for their complaint against www.scihub.org,
www.libgen.org, Alexandra Elbakyan, and John Does 1-99 (collectively the “Defendants”),
allege as follows:
NATURE OF THE ACTION
1. This is a civil action seeking damages and injunctive relief for: (1) copyright infringement under the copyright laws of the United States (17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq.); and (2) violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18.U.S.C. § 1030, based upon Defendants’ unlawful access to, use, reproduction, and distribution of Elsevier’s copyrighted works. Defendants’ actions in this regard have caused and continue to cause irreparable injury to Elsevier and its publishing partners (including scholarly societies) for which it publishes certain journals.
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PARTIES
2. Plaintiff Elsevier Inc. is a corporation organized under the laws of Delaware, with its principal place of business at 360 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10010.
3. Plaintiff Elsevier B.V. is a corporation organized under the laws of the Netherlands, with its principal place of business at Radarweg 29, Amsterdam, 1043 NX, Netherlands.
4. Plaintiff Elsevier Ltd. is a corporation organized under the laws of the United Kingdom, with its principal place of business at 125 London Wall, EC2Y 5AS United Kingdom.
5. Upon information and belief, Defendant Sci-Hub is an individual or organization engaged in the operation of the website accessible at the URL “www.sci-hub.org,” and related subdomains, including but not limited to the subdomain “www.sciencedirect.com.sci-hub.org,”
www.elsevier.com.sci-hub.org,” “store.elsevier.com.sci-hub.org,” and various subdomains
incorporating the company and product names of other major global publishers (collectively with www.sci-hub.org the “Sci-Hub Website”). The sci-hub.org domain name is registered by
“Fundacion Private Whois,” located in Panama City, Panama, to an unknown registrant. As of
the date of this filing, the Sci-Hub Website is assigned the IP address 31.184.194.81. This IP address is part of a range of IP addresses assigned to Petersburg Internet Network Ltd., a webhosting company located in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
6. Upon information and belief, Defendant Library Genesis Project is an organization which operates an online repository of copyrighted materials accessible through the website located at the URL “libgen.org” as well as a number of other “mirror” websites
(collectively the “Libgen Domains”). The libgen.org domain is registered by “Whois Privacy
Corp.,” located at Ocean Centre, Montagu Foreshore, East Bay Street, Nassau, New Providence,
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Bahamas, to an unknown registrant. As of the date of this filing, libgen.org is assigned the IP address 93.174.95.71. This IP address is part of a range of IP addresses assigned to Ecatel Ltd., a web-hosting company located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
7. The Libgen Domains include “elibgen.org,” “libgen.info,” “lib.estrorecollege.org,” and “bookfi.org.”
8. Upon information and belief, Defendant Alexandra Elbakyan is the principal owner and/or operator of Sci-Hub. Upon information and belief, Elbakyan is a resident of Almaty, Kazakhstan.
9. Elsevier is unaware of the true names and capacities of the individuals named as Does 1-99 in this Complaint (together with Alexandra Elbakyan, the “Individual Defendants”),
and their residence and citizenship is also unknown. Elsevier will amend its Complaint to allege the names, capacities, residence and citizenship of the Doe Defendants when their identities are learned.
10. Upon information and belief, the Individual Defendants are the owners and operators of numerous of websites, including Sci-Hub and the websites located at the various
Libgen Domains, and a number of e-mail addresses and accounts at issue in this case.
11. The Individual Defendants have participated, exercised control over, and benefited from the infringing conduct described herein, which has resulted in substantial harm to
the Plaintiffs.
JURISDICTION AND VENUE
12. This is a civil action arising from the Defendants’ violations of the copyright laws of the United States (17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq.) and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”),
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18.U.S.C. § 1030. Therefore, the Court has subject matter jurisdiction over this action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
13. Upon information and belief, the Individual Defendants own and operate computers and Internet websites and engage in conduct that injures Plaintiff in this district, while
also utilizing instrumentalities located in the Southern District of New York to carry out the acts complained of herein.
14. Defendants have affirmatively directed actions at the Southern District of New York by utilizing computer servers located in the District without authorization and by
unlawfully obtaining access credentials belonging to individuals and entities located in the
District, in order to unlawfully access, copy, and distribute Elsevier's copyrighted materials
which are stored on Elsevier’s ScienceDirect platform.
15.
Defendants have committed the acts complained of herein through unauthorized
access to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted materials which are stored and maintained on computer servers
located in the Southern District of New York.
16.
Defendants have undertaken the acts complained of herein with knowledge that
such acts would cause harm to Plaintiffs and their customers in both the Southern District of
New York and elsewhere. Defendants have caused the Plaintiff injury while deriving revenue
from interstate or international commerce by committing the acts complained of herein.
Therefore, this Court has personal jurisdiction over Defendants.
17.
Venue in this District is proper under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b) because a substantial
part of the events giving rise to Plaintiffs’ claims occurred in this District and because the
property that is the subject of Plaintiffs’ claims is situated in this District.
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FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
Elsevier’s Copyrights in Publications on ScienceDirect
18.
Elsevier is a world leading provider of professional information solutions in the
Science, Medical, and Health sectors. Elsevier publishes, markets, sells, and licenses academic
textbooks, journals, and examinations in the fields of science, medicine, and health. The
majority of Elsevier’s institutional customers are universities, governmental entities, educational
institutions, and hospitals that purchase physical and electronic copies of Elsevier’s products and
access to Elsevier’s digital libraries. Elsevier distributes its scientific journal articles and book
chapters electronically via its proprietary subscription database “ScienceDirect”
(www.sciencedirect.com). In most cases, Elsevier holds the copyright and/or exclusive
distribution rights to the works available through ScienceDirect. In addition, Elsevier holds
trademark rights in “Elsevier,” “ScienceDirect,” and several other related trade names.
19.
The ScienceDirect database is home to almost one-quarter of the world's peer-
reviewed, full-text scientific, technical and medical content. The ScienceDirect service features
sophisticated search and retrieval tools for students and professionals which facilitates access to
over 10 million copyrighted publications. More than 15 million researchers, health care
professionals, teachers, students, and information professionals around the globe rely on
ScienceDirect as a trusted source of nearly 2,500 journals and more than 26,000 book titles.
20.
Authorized users are provided access to the ScienceDirect platform by way of
non-exclusive, non-transferable subscriptions between Elsevier and its institutional customers.
According to the terms and conditions of these subscriptions, authorized users of ScienceDirect
must be users affiliated with the subscriber (e.g., full-time and part-time students, faculty, staff
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and researchers of subscriber universities and individuals using computer terminals within the
library facilities at the subscriber for personal research, education or other non-corporate use.)
21.
A substantial portion of American research universities maintain active
subscriptions to ScienceDirect. These subscriptions, under license, allow the universities to
provide their faculty and students access to the copyrighted works within the ScienceDirect
database.
22.
Elsevier stores and maintains the copyrighted material available in ScienceDirect
on servers owned and operated by a third party whose servers are located in the Southern District
of New York and elsewhere. In order to optimize performance, these third-party servers
collectively operate as a distributed network which serves cached copies of Elsevier’s
copyrighted materials by way of particular servers that are geographically close to the user. For
example, a user that accesses ScienceDirect from a University located in the Southern District of
New York will likely be served that content from a server physically located in the District.
Authentication of Authorized University ScienceDirect Users
23.
Elsevier maintains the integrity and security of the copyrighted works accessible
on ScienceDirect by allowing only authenticated users access to the platform. Elsevier
authenticates educational users who access ScienceDirect through their affiliated university’s
subscription by verifying that they are able to access ScienceDirect from a computer system or
network previously identified as belonging to a subscribing university.
24.
Elsevier does not track individual educational users’ access to ScienceDirect.
Instead, Elsevier verifies only that the user has authenticated access to a subscribing university.
25.
Once an educational user authenticates his computer with ScienceDirect on a
university network, that computer is permitted access to ScienceDirect for a limited amount of
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time without re-authenticating. For example, a student could access ScienceDirect from their
laptop while sitting in a university library, then continue to access ScienceDirect using that
laptop from their dorm room later that day. After a specified period of time has passed, however,
a user will have to re-authenticate his or her computer’s access to ScienceDirect by connecting to
the platform through a university network.
26.
As a matter of practice, educational users access university networks, and thereby
authenticate their computers with ScienceDirect, primarily through one of two methods. First,
the user may be physically connected to a university network, for example by taking their
computer to the university’s library. Second, the user may connect remotely to the university’s
network using a proxy connection. Universities offer proxy connections to their students and
faculty so that those users may access university computing resources – including access to
research databases such as ScienceDirect – from remote locations which are unaffiliated with the
university. This practice facilitates the use of ScienceDirect by students and faculty while they
are at home, travelling, or otherwise off-campus.
Defendants’ Unauthorized Access to University Proxy Networks to Facilitate Copyright
Infringement
27.
Upon information and belief, Defendants are reproducing and distributing
unauthorized copies of Elsevier’s copyrighted materials, unlawfully obtained from
ScienceDirect, through Sci-Hub and through various websites affiliated with the Library Genesis
Project. Specifically, Defendants utilize their websites located at sci-hub.org and at the Libgen
Domains to operate an international network of piracy and copyright infringement by
circumventing legal and authorized means of access to the ScienceDirect database. Defendants’
piracy is supported by the persistent intrusion and unauthorized access to the computer networks
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of Elsevier and its institutional subscribers, including universities located in the Southern District
of New York.
28.
Upon information and belief, Defendants have unlawfully obtained and continue
to unlawfully obtain student or faculty access credentials which permit proxy connections to
universities which subscribe to ScienceDirect, and use these credentials to gain unauthorized
access to ScienceDirect.
29.
Upon information and belief, Defendants have used and continue to use such
access credentials to authenticate access to ScienceDirect and, subsequently, to obtain
copyrighted scientific journal articles therefrom without valid authorization.
30.
The Sci-Hub website requires user interaction in order to facilitate its illegal
copyright infringement scheme. Specifically, before a Sci-Hub user can obtain access to
copyrighted scholarly journals, articles, and books that are maintained by ScienceDirect, he must
first perform a search on the Sci-Hub page. A Sci-Hub user may search for content using either
(a) a general keyword-based search, or (b) a journal, article or book identifier (such as a Digital
Object Identifier, PubMed Identifier, or the source URL).
31.
When a user performs a keyword search on Sci-Hub, the website returns a proxied
version of search results from the Google Scholar search database. 1 When a user selects one of
the search results, if the requested content is not available from the Library Genesis Project, SciHub unlawfully retrieves the content from ScienceDirect using the access previously obtained.
Sci-Hub then provides a copy of that article to the requesting user, typically in PDF format. If,
however, the requested content can be found in the Library Genesis Project repository, upon
1
Google Scholar provides its users the capability to search for scholarly literature, but does not provide the
full text of copyrighted scientific journal articles accessible through paid subscription services such as
ScienceDirect. Instead, Google Scholar provides bibliographic information concerning such articles along with a
link to the platform through which the article may be purchased or accessed by a subscriber.
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information and belief, Sci-Hub obtains the content from the Library Genesis Project repository
and provides that content to the user.
32.
When a user searches on Sci-Hub for an article available on ScienceDirect using a
journal or article identifier, the user is redirected to a proxied version of the ScienceDirect page
where the user can download the requested article at no cost. Upon information and belief, SciHub facilitates this infringing conduct by using unlawfully-obtained access credentials to
university proxy servers to establish remote access to ScienceDirect through those proxy servers.
If, however, the requested content can be found in the Library Genesis Project repository, upon
information and belief, Sci-Hub obtains the content from it and provides it to the user.
33.
Upon information and belief, Sci-Hub engages in no other activity other than the
illegal reproduction and distribution of digital copies of Elsevier’s copyrighted works and the
copyrighted works of other publishers, and the encouragement, inducement, and material
contribution to the infringement of the copyrights of those works by third parties – i.e., the users
of the Sci-Hub website.
34.
Upon information and belief, in addition to the blatant and rampant infringement
of Elsevier’s copyrights as described above, the Defendants have also used the Sci-Hub website
to earn revenue from the piracy of copyrighted materials from ScienceDirect. Sci-Hub has at
various times accepted funds through a variety of payment processors, including PayPal,
Yandex, WebMoney, QiQi, and Bitcoin.
Sci-Hub’s Use of the Library Genesis Project as a Repository for Unlawfully-Obtained
Scientific Journal Articles and Books
35.
Upon information and belief, when Sci-Hub pirates and downloads an article from
ScienceDirect in response to a user request, in addition to providing a copy of that article to that
user, Sci-Hub also provides a duplicate copy to the Library Genesis Project, which stores the
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article in a database accessible through the Internet. Upon information and belief, the Library
Genesis Project is designed to be a permanent repository of this and other illegally obtained
content.
36.
Upon information and belief, in the event that a Sci-Hub user requests an article
which has already been provided to the Library Genesis Project, Sci-Hub may provide that user
access to a copy provided by the Library Genesis Project rather than re-download an additional
copy of the article from ScienceDirect. As a result, Defendants Sci-Hub and Library Genesis
Project act in concert to engage in a scheme designed to facilitate the unauthorized access to and
wholesale distribution of Elsevier’s copyrighted works legitimately available on the
ScienceDirect platform.
The Library Genesis Project’s Unlawful Distribution of Plaintiff’s Copyrighted Works
37.
Access to the Library Genesis Project’s repository is facilitated by the website
“libgen.org,” which provides its users the ability to search, download content from, and upload
content to, the repository. The main page of libgen.org allows its users to perform searches in
various categories, including “LibGen (Sci-Tech),” and “Scientific articles.” In addition to
searching by keyword, users may also search for specific content by various other fields,
including title, author, periodical, publisher, or ISBN or DOI number.
38.
The libgen.org website indicates that the Library Genesis Project repository
contains approximately 1 million “Sci-Tech” documents and 40 million scientific articles. Upon
information and belief, the large majority of these works is subject to copyright protection and is
being distributed through the Library Genesis Project without the permission of the applicable
rights-holder. Upon information and belief, the Library Genesis Project serves primarily, if not
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exclusively, as a scheme to violate the intellectual property rights of the owners of millions of
copyrighted works.
39.
Upon information and belief, Elsevier owns the copyrights in a substantial
number of copyrighted materials made available for distribution through the Library Genesis
Project. Elsevier has not authorized the Library Genesis Project or any of the Defendants to
copy, display, or distribute through any of the complained of websites any of the content stored
on ScienceDirect to which it holds the copyright. Among the works infringed by the Library
Genesis Project are the “Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology,” and the article “The
Varus Ankle and Instability” (published in Elsevier’s journal “Foot and Ankle Clinics of North
America”), each of which is protected by Elsevier’s federally-registered copyrights.
40.
In addition to the Library Genesis Project website accessible at libgen.org, users
may access the Library Genesis Project repository through a number of “mirror” sites accessible
through other URLs. These mirror sites are similar, if not identical, in functionality to
libgen.org. Specifically, the mirror sites allow their users to search and download materials from
the Library Genesis Project repository.
FIRST CLAIM FOR RELIEF
(Direct Infringement of Copyright)
41.
Elsevier incorporates by reference the allegations contained in paragraphs 1-40
42.
Elsevier’s copyright rights and exclusive distribution rights to the works available
above.
on ScienceDirect (the “Works”) are valid and enforceable.
43.
Defendants have infringed on Elsevier’s copyright rights to these Works by
knowingly and intentionally reproducing and distributing these Works without authorization.
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44.
The acts of infringement described herein have been willful, intentional, and
purposeful, in disregard of and indifferent to Plaintiffs’ rights.
45.
Without authorization from Elsevier, or right under law, Defendants are directly
liable for infringing Elsevier’s copyrighted Works pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §§ 106(1) and/or (3).
46.
As a direct result of Defendants’ actions, Elsevier has suffered and continues to
suffer irreparable harm for which Elsevier has no adequate remedy at law, and which will
continue unless Defendants’ actions are enjoined.
47.
Elsevier seeks injunctive relief and costs and damages in an amount to be proven
at trial.
SECOND CLAIM FOR RELIEF
(Secondary Infringement of Copyright)
48.
Elsevier incorporates by reference the allegations contained in paragraphs 1-40
49.
Elsevier’s copyright rights and exclusive distribution rights to the works available
above.
on ScienceDirect (the “Works”) are valid and enforceable.
50.
Defendants have infringed on Elsevier’s copyright rights to these Works by
knowingly and intentionally reproducing and distributing these Works without license or other
authorization.
51.
Upon information and belief, Defendants intentionally induced, encouraged, and
materially contributed to the reproduction and distribution of these Works by third party users of
websites operated by Defendants.
52.
The acts of infringement described herein have been willful, intentional, and
purposeful, in disregard of and indifferent to Elsevier’s rights.
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53.
Without authorization from Elsevier, or right under law, Defendants are directly
liable for third parties’ infringement of Elsevier’s copyrighted Works pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §§
106(1) and/or (3).
54.
Upon information and belief, Defendants profited from third parties’ direct
infringement of Elsevier’s Works.
55.
Defendants had the right and the ability to supervise and control their websites
and the third party infringing activities described herein.
56.
As a direct result of Defendants’ actions, Elsevier has suffered and continues to
suffer irreparable harm for which Elsevier has no adequate remedy at law, and which will
continue unless Defendants’ actions are enjoined.
57.
Elsevier seeks injunctive relief and costs and damages in an amount to be proven
at trial.
THIRD CLAIM FOR RELIEF
(Violation of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act)
58.
Elsevier incorporates by reference the allegations contained in paragraphs 1-40
59.
Elsevier’s computers and servers, the third-party computers and servers which
above.
store and maintain Elsevier’s copyrighted works for ScienceDirect, and Elsevier’s customers’
computers and servers which facilitate access to Elsevier’s copyrighted works on ScienceDirect,
are all “protected computers” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”).
60.
Defendants (a) knowingly and intentionally accessed such protected computers
without authorization and thereby obtained information from the protected computers in a
transaction involving an interstate or foreign communication (18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C)); and
(b) knowingly and with an intent to defraud accessed such protected computers without
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authorization and obtained information from such computers, which Defendants used to further
the fraud and obtain something of value (18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(4)).
61.
Defendants’ conduct has caused, and continues to cause, significant and
irreparable damages and loss to Elsevier.
62.
Defendants’ conduct has caused a loss to Elsevier during a one-year period
aggregating at least $5,000.
63.
As a direct result of Defendants’ actions, Elsevier has suffered and continues to
suffer irreparable harm for which Elsevier has no adequate remedy at law, and which will
continue unless Defendants’ actions are enjoined.
64.
Elsevier seeks injunctive relief, as well as costs and damages in an amount to be
proven at trial.
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, Elsevier respectfully requests that the Court:
A. Enter preliminary and permanent injunctions, enjoining and prohibiting Defendants,
their officers, directors, principals, agents, servants, employees, successors and
assigns, and all persons and entities in active concert or participation with them, from
engaging in any of the activity complained of herein or from causing any of the injury
complained of herein and from assisting, aiding, or abetting any other person or
business entity in engaging in or performing any of the activity complained of herein
or from causing any of the injury complained of herein;
B. Enter an order that, upon Elsevier’s request, those in privity with Defendants and
those with notice of the injunction, including any Internet search engines, Web
Hosting and Internet Service Providers, domain-name registrars, and domain name
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registries or their administrators that are provided with notice of the injunction, cease
facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Defendants
engage in any of the activity complained of herein;
C. Enter an order that, upon Elsevier’s request, those organizations which have
registered Defendants’ domain names on behalf of Defendants shall disclose
immediately to Plaintiffs all information in their possession concerning the identity of
the operator or registrant of such domain names and of any bank accounts or financial
accounts owned or used by such operator or registrant;
D. Enter an order that, upon Elsevier’s request, the TLD Registries for the Defendants’
websites, or their administrators, shall place the domain names on
registryHold/serverHold as well as serverUpdate, ServerDelete, and serverTransfer
prohibited statuses, for the remainder of the registration period for any such website.
E. Enter an order canceling or deleting, or, at Elsevier’s election, transferring the domain
name registrations used by Defendants to engage in the activity complained of herein
to Elsevier’s control so that they may no longer be used for illegal purposes;
F. Enter an order awarding Elsevier its actual damages incurred as a result of
Defendants’ infringement of Elsevier’s copyright rights in the Works and all profits
Defendant realized as a result of its acts of infringement, in amounts to be determined
at trial; or in the alternative, awarding Elsevier, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 504, statutory
damages for the acts of infringement committed by Defendants, enhanced to reflect
the willful nature of the Defendants’ infringement;
G. Enter an order disgorging Defendants’ profits;
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Adema
Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the underground movement of (pirated) theory text sharing
2009
# Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the ‘underground movement’ of
(pirated) theory text sharing
_“But as I say, let’s play a game of science fiction and imagine for a moment:
what would it be like if it were possible to have an academic equivalent to
the peer-to-peer file sharing practices associated with Napster, eMule, and
BitTorrent, something dealing with written texts rather than music? What would
the consequences be for the way in which scholarly research is conceived,
communicated, acquired, exchanged, practiced, and understood?”_
Gary Hall – [Digitize this
book!](http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/H/hall_digitize.html) (2008)
Ubu
web was founded in 1996 by poet [Kenneth
Goldsmith](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith "Kenneth Goldsmith")
and has developed from ‘a repository for visual, concrete and (later) sound
poetry, to a site that ‘embraced all forms of the avant-garde and beyond. Its
parameters continue to expand in all directions.’ As
[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UbuWeb) states, Ubu is non-commercial
and operates on a gift economy. All the same - by forming an amazing resource
and repository for the avant-garde movement, and by offering and hosting these
works on its platform, Ubu is violating copyright laws. As they state however:
‘ _should something return to print, we will remove it from our site
immediately. Also, should an artist find their material posted on UbuWeb
without permission and wants it removed, please let us know. However, most of
the time, we find artists are thrilled to find their work cared for and
displayed in a sympathetic context. As always, we welcome more work from
existing artists on site_.’
Where in the more affluent and popular media realms of block buster movies and
pop music the [Piratebay](http://thepiratebay.org/) and other download sites
(or p2p networks) like [Mininova](http://www.mininova.org/) are being sued and
charged with copyright infringement, the major powers to be seem to turn a
blind eye when it comes to Ubu and many other resource sites online that offer
digital versions of hard-to-get-by materials ranging from books to
documentaries.
This is and has not always been the case: in 2002 [Sebastian
Lütgert](http://www.wizards-of-
os.org/archiv/wos_3/sprecher/l_p/sebastian_luetgert.html) from Berlin/New York
was sued by the "Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur"
for putting online two downloadable texts from Theodor W. Adorno on his
website [textz.com](http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/textz-
com/biography/), an underground archive for Literature. According to
[this](http://de.indymedia.org/2004/03/76975.shtml) Indymedia interview with
Lütgert, textz.com was referred to as ‘the Napster for books’ offering about
700 titles, focusing on, as Lütgert states _‘Theorie, Romane, Science-Fiction,
Situationisten, Kino, Franzosen, Douglas Adams, Kritische Theorie, Netzkritik
usw’._
The interview becomes even more interesting when Lütgert remarks that one can
still easily download both Adorno texts without much ado if one wants to. This
leads to the bigger question of the real reasons underlying the charge against
textz.com; why was textz.com sued? As Lütgert says in the interview: “ _Das
kann man sowieso_ [when referring to the still available Adorno texts] _._
_Aber es gibt schon lange einen klaren Unterschied zwischen offener
Verfügbarkeit und dem Untergrund. Man kann die freie Verbreitung von Inhalten
nicht unterbinden, aber man scheint verhindern zu wollen dass dies allzu offen
und selbstverständlich geschieht. Das ist es was sie stört.”
_
__
But how can something be truly underground in an online environment whilst
still trying to spread or disseminate texts as widely as possible? This seems
to be the paradox of many - not quite legal and/or copyright protected -
resource sharing and collecting communities and platforms nowadays. However,
multiple scenario’s are available to evade this dilemma: by being frankly open
about the ‘status’ of the content on offer, as Ubu does, or by using little
‘tricks’ like an easy website registration, classifying oneself as a reading
group, or by relieving oneself from responsibility by stating that one is only
aggregating sources from elsewhere (linking) and not hosting the content on
its own website or blog. One can also state the offered texts or multimedia
files form a special issue or collection of resources, emphasizing their
educational and not-for-profit value.
Most of the ‘underground’ text and content sharing communities seem to follow
the concept of (the inevitability of) ‘[information wants to be
free](https://openreflections.wordpress.com/tag/information-wants-to-be-
free/)’, especially on the Internet. As Lütgert States: “ _Und vor allem sind
die über Walter Benjamin nicht im Bilde, der das gleiche Problem der
Reproduzierbarkeit von Werken aller Art schon zu Beginn des letzten
Jahrhunderts vor sich hatte und erkannt hat: die Massen haben das Recht, sich
das alles wieder anzueignen. Sie haben das Recht zu kopieren, und das Recht,
kopiert zu werden. Jedenfalls ist das eine ganz schön ungemütliche Situation,
dass dessen Nachlass jetzt von solch einem Bürokraten verwaltet wird._ _A:
Glaubst Du es ist überhaupt legitim intellektuellen Inhalt zu "besitzen"? Oder
__Eigentümer davon zu sein?_ _S: Es ist *unmöglich*. "Geistiges" Irgendwas
verbreitet sich immer weiter. Reemtsmas Vorfahren wären nie von den Bäumen
runtergekommen oder aus dem Morast rausgekrochen, wenn sich "geistiges"
Irgendwas nicht verbreitet hätte.”_
What seems to be increasingly obvious, as the interview also states, is that
one can find virtually all Ebooks and texts one needs via p2p networks and
other file sharing community’s (the true
[Darknet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_\(file_sharing\)) in a way) –
more and more people are offering (and asking for!) selections of texts and
books (including the ones by Adorno) on openly available websites and blogs,
or they are scanning them and offering them for (educational) use on their
domains. Although the Internet is mostly known for the pirating and
dissemination of pirated movies and music, copyright protected textual content
has (of course) always been spread too. But with the rise of ‘born digital’
text content, and with the help of massive digitization efforts like Google
Books (and accompanying Google Books [download
tools](http://www.codeplex.com/GoogleBookDownloader)) accompanied by the
appearance of better (and cheaper) scanning equipment, the movement of
‘openly’ spreading (pirated) texts (whether or not focusing on education and
‘fair use’) seems to be growing fast.
The direct harm (to both the producers and their publishers) of the free
online availability of (in copyright) texts is also maybe less clear than for
instance with music and films. Many feel texts and books will still be
preferred to be read in print, making the online and free availability of text
nothing more than a marketing tool for the sales of the printed version. Once
discovered, those truly interested will find and buy the print book. Also more
than with music and film, it is felt essential to share information, as a
cultural good and right, to prevent censorship and to improve society.
This is one of the reasons the [Open
Access](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_\(publishing\)) movement for
scientific research has been initiated. But where the amount of people and
institutions supportive of this movement is gradually growing (especially
where it concerns articles and journals in the Sciences), the spread
concerning Open Access (or even digital availability) of monographs in the
Humanities and Social Sciences (of which the majority of the resources on
offer in the underground text sharing communities consists) has only just
started.
This has lead to a situation in which some have decided that change is not
coming fast enough. Instead of waiting for this utopian Open Access future to
come gradually about, they are actively spreading, copying, scanning and
pirating scholarly texts/monographs online. Although many times accompanied by
lengthy disclaimers about why they are violating copyright (to make the
content more widely accessible for one), many state they will take down the
content if asked. Following the
[copyleft](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft) movement, what has in a way
thus arisen is a more ‘progressive’ or radical branch of the Open Access
movement. The people who spread these texts deem it inevitable they will be
online eventually, they are just speeding up the process. As Lütgert states: ‘
_The desire of an increasingly larger section of the population to 100-percent
of information is irreversible. The only way there can be slowed down in the
worst case, but not be stopped._
Still we have not yet answered the question of why publishers (and their
pirated authors) are not more upset about these kinds of websites and
platforms. It is not a simple question of them not being aware that these kind
of textual disseminations are occurring. As mentioned before, the harm to
producers (scholars) and their publishers (in Humanities and Social Sciences
mainly Not-For-Profit University Presses) is less clear. First of all, their
main customers are libraries (compare this to the software business model:
free for the consumer, companies pay), who are still buying the legal content
and mostly follow the policy of buying either print or both print and ebook,
so there are no lost sales there for the publishers. Next to that it is not
certain that the piracy is harming sales. Unlike in literary publishing, the
authors (academics) are already paid and do not loose money (very little maybe
in royalties) from the online availability. Perhaps some publishers also see
the Open Access movement as something inevitably growing and they thus don’t
see the urge to step up or organize a collaborative effort against scholarly
text piracy (where most of the presses also lack the scale to initiate this).
Whereas there has been some more upsurge and worries about _[textbook
piracy](http://bookseller-association.blogspot.com/2008/07/textbook-
piracy.html)_ (since this is of course the area where individual consumers –
students – do directly buy the material) and websites like
[Scribd](http://www.scribd.com/), this mostly has to do with the fact that
these kind of platforms also host non-scholarly content and actively promote
the uploading of texts (where many of the text ‘sharing’ platforms merely
offer downloading facilities). In the case of Scribd the size of the platform
(or the amount of content available on the platform) also has caused concerns
and much [media coverage](http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/04/scribd-youtube-
for-pirated-ebooks-but.html).
All of this gives a lot of potential power to text sharing communities, and I
guess they know this. Only authors might be directly upset (especially famous
ones gathering a lot of royalties on their work) or in the case of Lütgert,
their beneficiaries, who still do see a lot of money coming directly from
individual customers.
Still, it is not only the lack of fear of possible retaliations that is
feeding the upsurge of text sharing communities. There is a strong ideological
commitment to the inherent good of these developments, and a moral and
political strive towards institutional and societal change when it comes to
knowledge production and dissemination.
As Adrian Johns states in his
[article](http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/345/348)
_Piracy as a business force_ , ‘today’s pirate philosophy is a moral
philosophy through and through’. As Jonas Andersson
[states](http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/346/359), the
idea of piracy has mostly lost its negative connotations in these communities
and is seen as a positive development, where these movements ‘have begun to
appear less as a reactive force (i.e. ‘breaking the rules’) and more as a
proactive one (‘setting the rules’). Rather than complain about the
conservatism of established forms of distribution they simply create new,
alternative ones.’ Although Andersson states this kind of activism is mostly
_occasional_ , it can be seen expressed clearly in the texts accompanying the
text sharing sites and blogs. However, copyright is perhaps so much _an issue_
on most of these sites (where it is on some of them), as it is something that
seems to be simply ignored for the larger good of aggregating and sharing
resources on the web. As is stated clearly for instance in an
[interview](http://blog.sfmoma.org/2009/08/four-dialogues-2-on-aaaarg/) with
Sean Dockray, who maintains AAAARG:
_" The project wasn’t about criticizing institutions, copyright, authority,
and so on. It was simply about sharing knowledge. This wasn’t as general as it
sounds; I mean literally the sharing of knowledge between various individuals
and groups that I was in correspondence with at the time but who weren’t
necessarily in correspondence with each other."_
Back to Lütgert. The files from textz.com have been saved and are still
[accessible](http://web.archive.org/web/20031208043421/textz.gnutenberg.net/index.php3?enhanced_version=http://textz.com/index.php3)
via [The Internet Archive Wayback
Machine](http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html). In the case of
textz.com, these files contain ’typed out text’, so no scanned contents or
PDF’s. Textz.com (or better said its shadow or mirror) offers an amazing
collection of texts, including artists statements/manifestos and screenplays
from for instance David Lynch.
The text sharing community has evolved and now knows many players. Two other
large members in this kind of ‘pirate theory base network’ (although – and I
have to make that clear! – they offer many (and even mostly) legal and out of
copyright texts), still active today, are
[Monoskop/Burundi](http://burundi.sk/monoskop/log/) and
[AAAARG.ORG](http://a.aaaarg.org/). These kinds of platforms all seem to
disseminate (often even on a titular level) similar content, focusing mostly
on Continental Philosophy and Critical Theory, Cultural Studies and Literary
Theory, The Frankfurter Schule, Sociology/Social Theory, Psychology,
Anthropology and Ethnography, Media Art and Studies, Music Theory, and
critical and avant-garde writers like Kafka, Beckett, Burroughs, Joyce,
Baudrillard, etc.etc.
[Monoskop](http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/index.php/Main_Page) is, as they
state, a collaborative wiki research on the social history of media art or a
‘living archive of writings on art, culture and media technology’. At the
sitemap of their log, or under the categories section, you can browse their
resources on genre: book, journal, e-zine, report, pamphlet etc. As I found
[here](http://www.slovakia.culturalprofiles.net/?id=7958), Burundi originated
in 2003 as a (Slovakian) media lab working between the arts, science and
technologies, which spread out to a European city based cultural network; They
even functioned as a press, publishing the Anthology of New Media Literature
(in Slovak) in 2006, and they hosted media events and curated festivals. It
dissolved in June 2005 although the
[Monoskop](http://www.slovakia.culturalprofiles.net/?id=7964) research wiki on
media art, has continued to run since the dissolving of Burundi.
As
is stated on their website, AAAARG is a conversation platform, or
alternatively, a school, reading group or journal, maintained by Los Angeles
artist[ Sean Dockray](http://www.design.ucla.edu/people/faculty.php?ID=64
"Sean Dockray"). In the true spirit of Critical Theory, its aim is to ‘develop
critical discourse outside of an institutional framework’. Or even more
beautiful said, it operates in the spaces in between: ‘ _But rather than
thinking of it like a new building, imagine scaffolding that attaches onto
existing buildings and creates new architectures between them_.’ To be able to
access the texts and resources that are being ‘discussed’ at AAAARG, you need
to register, after which you will be able to browse the
[library](http://a.aaaarg.org/library). From this library, you can download
resources, but you can also upload content. You can subscribe to their
[feed](http://aaaarg.org/feed) (RSS/XML) and [like
Monoskop](http://twitter.com/monoskop), AAAARG.org also maintains a [Twitter
account](http://twitter.com/aaaarg) on which updates are posted. The most
interesting part though is the ‘extra’ functions the platform offers: after
you have made an account, you can make your own collections, aggregations or
issues out of the texts in the library or the texts you add. This offers an
alternative (thematically ordered) way into the texts archived on the site.
You also have the possibility to make comments or start a discussion on the
texts. See for instance their elaborate [discussion
lists](http://a.aaaarg.org/discussions). The AAAARG community thus serves both
as a sharing and feedback community and in this way operates in a true p2p
fashion, in a way like p2p seemed originally intended. The difference being
that AAAARG is not based on a distributed network of computers, but is based
on one platform, to which registered users are able to upload a file (which is
not the case on Monoskop for instance – only downloading here).
Via[
mercurunionhall](http://mercerunionhall.blogspot.com/2009/06/aaaargorg.html),
I found the image underneath which depicts AAAARG.ORG's article index
organized as a visual map, showing the connections between the different
texts. This map was created and posted by AAAARG user john, according to
mercurunionhall.
Where AAAArg.org focuses again on the text itself - typed out versions of
books - Monoskop works with more modern versions of textual distribution:
scanned versions or full ebooks/pdf’s with all the possibilities they offer,
taking a lot of content from Google books or (Open Access) publishers’
websites. Monoskop also links back to the publishers’ websites or Google
Books, for information about the books or texts (which again proves that the
publishers should know about their activities). To download the text however,
Monoskop links to [Sharebee](http://www.sharebee.com/), keeping the actual
text and the real downloading activity away from its platform.
Another part of the text sharing content consists of platforms offering
documentaries and lectures (so multi-media content) online. One example of the
last is the [Discourse Notebook Archive](http://www.discoursenotebook.com/),
which describes itself as an effort which has as its main goal ‘to make
available lectures in contemporary continental philosophy’ and is maintained
by Todd Kesselman, a PhD Student at The New School for Social Research. Here
you can find lectures from Badiou, Kristeva and Zizek (both audio and video)
and lectures aggregated from the European Graduate School. Kesselman also
links to resources on the web dealing with contemporary continental
philosophy.
Society of Control is a website maintained by [Stephan
Dillemuth](http://www.kopenhagen.dk/fileadmin/oldsite/interviews/solmennesker.htm),
an artist living and working in Munich, Germany, offering amongst others an
overview of his work and scientific research. According to
[this](http://www2.khib.no/~hovedfag/akademiet_05/tekster/interview.html)
interview conducted by Kristian Ø Dahl and Marit Flåtter his work is a
response to the increased influence of the neo-liberal world order on
education, creating a culture industry that is more than often driven by
commercial interests. He asks the question ‘How can dissidence grow in the
blind spots of the ‘society of control’ and articulate itself?’ His website,
the [Society of Control](http://www.societyofcontrol.com/disclaimer1.htm) is,
as he states, ‘an independent organization whose profits are entirely devoted
to research into truth and meaning.’
Society of Control has a [library
section](http://www.societyofcontrol.com/library/) which contains works from
some of the biggest thinkers of the twentieth century: Baudrillard, Adorno,
Debord, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Habermas, Sloterdijk und so weiter, and so much
more, a lot in German, and all ‘typed out’ texts. The library section offers a
direct search function, a category function and a a-z browse function.
Dillemuth states that he offers this material under fair use, focusing on not
for profit, freedom of information and the maintenance of freedom of speech
and information and making information accessible to all:
_“The Societyofcontrol website site contains information gathered from many
different sources. We see the internet as public domain necessary for the free
flow and exchange of information. However, some of these materials contained
in this site maybe claimed to be copyrighted by various unknown persons. They
will be removed at the copyright holder 's request within a reasonable period
of time upon receipt of such a request at the email address below. It is not
the intent of the Societyofcontrol to have violated or infringed upon any
copyrights.”_
Important in this respect is
that he put the responsibility of reading/using/downloading the texts on his
site with the viewers, and not with himself: _“Anyone reading or looking at
copyright material from this site does so at his/her own peril, we disclaim
any participation or liability in such actions.”_
Fark Yaraları = [Scars of Différance](http://farkyaralari.blogspot.com/) and
[Multitude of blogs](http://multitudeofblogs.blogspot.com/) are maintained by
the same author, Renc-u-ana, a philosophy and sociology student from Istanbul.
The first is his personal blog (with also many links to downloadable texts),
focusing on ‘creating an e-library for a Heideggerian philosophy and
Bourdieuan sociology’ on which he writes ‘market-created inequalities must be
overthrown in order to close knowledge gap.’ The second site has a clear
aggregating function with the aim ‘to give united feedback for e-book
publishing sites so that tracing and finding may become easier.’ And a call
for similar blogs or websites offering free ebook content. The blog is
accompanied by a nice picture of a woman warning to keep quiet, very
paradoxically appropriate to the context. Here again, a statement from the
host on possible copyright infringement _: ‘None of the PDFs are my own
productions. I 've collected them from web (e-mule, avax, libreremo, socialist
bros, cross-x, gigapedia..) What I did was thematizing._’ The same goes for
[pdflibrary](http://pdflibrary.wordpress.com/) (which seems to be from the
same author), offering texts from Derrida, Benjamin, Deleuze and the likes:
_‘_ _None of the PDFs you find here are productions of this blog. They are
collected from different places in the web (e-mule, avax, libreremo, all
socialist bros, cross-x, …). The only work done here is thematizing and
tagging.’_
[](http://multitudeofblogs.blogspot.com/)Our
student from Istanbul lists many text sharing sites on Multitude of blogs,
including [Inishark](http://danetch.blogspot.com/) (amongst others Badiou,
Zizek and Derrida), [Revelation](http://revelation-online.blogspot.com/2009/02
/keeping-ten-commandments.html) (a lot of history and bible study), [Museum of
accidents](http://museumofaccidents.blogspot.com/) (many resources relating to
again, critical theory, political theory and continental philhosophy) and
[Makeworlds](http://makeworlds.net/) (initiated from the [make world
festival](http://www.makeworlds.org/1/index.html) 2001).
[Mariborchan](http://mariborchan.wordpress.com/) is mainly a Zizek resource
site (also Badiou and Lacan) and offers next to ebooks also video and audio
(lectures and documentaries) and text files, all via links to file sharing
platforms.
What is clear is that the text sharing network described above (I am sure
there are many more related to other fields and subjects) is also formed and
maintained by the fact that the blogs and resource sites link to each other in
their blog rolls, which is what in the end makes up the network of text
sharing, only enhanced by RSS feeds and Twitter accounts, holding together
direct communication streams with the rest of the community. That there has
not been one major platform or aggregation site linking them together and
uploading all the texts is logical if we take into account the text sharing
history described before and this can thus be seen as a clear tactic: it is
fear, fear for what happened to textz.com and fear for the issue of scale and
fear of no longer operating at the borders, on the outside or at the fringes.
Because a larger scale means they might really get noticed. The idea of
secrecy and exclusivity which makes for the idea of the underground is very
practically combined with the idea that in this way the texts are available in
a multitude of places and can thus not be withdrawn or disappear so easily.
This is the paradox of the underground: staying small means not being noticed
(widely), but will mean being able to exist for probably an extended period of
time. Becoming (too) big will mean reaching more people and spreading the
texts further into society, however it will also probably mean being noticed
as a treat, as a ‘network of text-piracy’. The true strategy is to retain this
balance of openly dispersed subversivity.
Update 25 November 2005: Another interesting resource site came to my
attention recently: [Bedeutung](http://http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php),
a philosophical and artistic initiative consisting of three projects:
[Bedeutung
Magazine](http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=3),
[Bedeutung
Collective](http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67&Itemid=4)
and [Bedeutung Blog](http://bedeutung.wordpress.com/), hosts a
[library](http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=85&Itemid=45)
section which links to freely downloadable online e-books, articles, audio
recordings and videos.
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### _Related_
### 17 comments on " Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the
‘underground movement’ of (pirated) theory text sharing"
1. Pingback: [Humanism at the fringe « Snarkmarket](http://snarkmarket.com/2009/3428)
2. Pingback: [Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the 'underground movement' of (pirated) theory text sharing « Mariborchan](http://mariborchan.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/scanners-collectors-and-aggregators-on-the-underground-movement-of-pirated-theory-text-sharing/)
hi there, I'm the owner of the Scars of Différance blog, I'm grateful for your
reading which nurtures self-reflexivity.
text-sharers phylum is a Tardean phenomena, it works through imitation and
differences differentiate styles and archives. my question was inherited from
aby warburg who is perhaps the first kantian librarian (not books, but the
nomenclatura of books must be thought!), I shape up a library where books
speak to each other, each time fragmentary.
you are right about the "fear", that's why I don't reupload books that are
deleted from mediafire. blog is one of the ways, for ex there are e-mail
groups where chain-sharings happen and there are forums where people ask each
other from different parts of the world, to scan a book that can't be found in
their library/country. I understand publishers' qualms (I also work in a
turkish publishing house and make translations). but they miss a point, it was
the very movement which made book a medium that de-posits "book" (in the
Blanchotian sense): these blogs do indeed a very important service, they save
books from the databanks. I'm not going to make a easy rider argument and
decry technology.what I mean is this: these books are the very bricks which
make up resistance -they are not compost-, it is a sharing "partage" and these
fragmentary impartations (the act in which 'we' emancipate books from the
proper names they bear: author, editor, publisher, queen,…) make words blare.
our work: to disenfranchise.
to get larger, to expand: these are too ambitious terms, one must learn to
stay small, remain finite. a blog can not supplant the non-place of the
friendships we make up around books.
the epigraph at the top of my blog reads: "what/who exorbitates mutates into
its opposite" from a Turkish poet Cahit Zarifoğlu. and this logic is what
generates the slithering of the word. we must save books from its own ends.
Thanks for the link, good article, agree with the contents, especially like
the part 'Could, for instance, the considerable resources that might be
allocated to protecting, policing and, ultimately, sanctioning online file-
sharing not be used for rendering it less financially damaging for the
creative sector?'
I like this kind of pragmatic reasoning, and I know more people do.
By the way, checked Bedeutung, great journal, and love your
[library](http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86&Itemid=46)
section! Will add it to the main article.
10. Pingback: [Mariborchan » Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the 'underground movement' of (pirated) theory text sharing](http://mariborchan.com/scanners-collectors-and-aggregators-on-the-underground-movement-of-pirated-theory-text-sharing/)
This is Nick, the author of the JJPS project; thanks for the tweet! I actually
came across this blog post while doing background research for the project and
looking for discussions about AAAARG; found out about a lot of projects that I
didn't already know about. One thing that I haven't been able to articulate
very well is that I think there's an interesting relationship between, say,
Kenneth Goldsmith's own poetry and his founding of Ubu Web; a collation and
reconfiguration of the detritus of culture (forgotten works of the avant-
gardes locked up behind pay walls of their own, or daily minutiae destined to
be forgotten), which is something that I was trying to do, in a more
circumscribed space, in JJPS Radio. But the question of distribution of
digital works is something I find fascinating, as there are all sorts of
avenues that we could be investigating but we are not. The issue, as it often
is, is one of technical ability, and that's why one of the future directions
of JJPS is to make some of the techniques I used easier to use. Those who want
to can always look into the code, which is of course freely available, but
that cannot and should not be a prerequisite.
Hi Nick, thanks for your comment. I love the JJPS and it would be great if the
technology you mention would be easily re-usable. What I find fascinating is
how you use another medium (radio) to translate/re-mediate and in a way also
unlock textual material. I see you also have an Open Access and a Cut-up hour.
I am very much interested in using different media to communicate scholarly
research and even more in remixing and re-mediating textual scholarship. I
think your project(s) is a very valuable exploration of these themes while at
the same time being a (performative) critique of the current system. I am in
awe.
14. Pingback: [Text-sharing "in the paradise of too many books" – SLOTHROP](http://slothrop.com/2012/11/16/text-sharing-in-the-paradise-of-too-many-books/)
Interesting topic, but also odd in some respects. Not translating the German
quotes is very unthoughtful and maybe even arrogant. If you are interested in
open access accessibility needs to be your top priority. I can read German,
but many of my friends (and most of the world) can't. It take a little effort
to just fix this, but you can do it.
Mattern
Library as Infrastructure
2014
# Library as Infrastructure
Reading room, social service center, innovation lab. How far can we stretch
the public library?
Shannon Mattern
June 2014
__Add to List
#### Share
* __
* __
* __
[](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06
/mattern-library-infrastructure-1x.jpg)Left: Rijksmuseum Library, Amsterdam.
[Photo by[Ton Nolles](https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonnolles/9428619486/)]
Right: Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. [Photo by Google/Connie
Zhou]
Melvil Dewey was a one-man Silicon Valley born a century before Steve Jobs. He
was the quintessential Industrial Age entrepreneur, but unlike the Carnegies
and Rockefellers, with their industries of heavy materiality and heavy labor,
Dewey sold ideas. His ambition revealed itself early: in 1876, shortly after
graduating from Amherst College, he copyrighted his library classification
scheme. That same year, he helped found the American Library Association,
served as founding editor of _Library_ _Journal_ , and launched the American
Metric Bureau, which campaigned for adoption of the metric system. He was 24
years old. He had already established the Library Bureau, a company that sold
(and helped standardize) library supplies, furniture, media display and
storage devices, and equipment for managing the circulation of collection
materials. Its catalog (which would later include another Dewey invention,
[the hanging vertical
file](http://books.google.com/books?id=_YuWb0uptwAC&pg=PA112&dq=vertical+file+%22library+bureau%22+date:1900-1900&lr=&as_brr=0#v=onepage&q=vertical%20file%20%22library%20bureau%22%20date%3A1900-1900&f=false))
represented the library as a “machine” of uplift and enlightenment that
enabled proto-Taylorist approaches to public education and the provision of
social services. As chief librarian at Columbia College, Dewey established the
first library school — called, notably, the School of Library _Economy_ —
whose first class was 85% female; then he brought the school to Albany, where
he directed the New York State Library. In his spare time, he founded the Lake
Placid Club and helped win the bid for the 1932 Winter Olympics.
Dewey was thus simultaneously in the furniture business, the office-supply
business, the consulting business, the publishing business, the education
business, the human resources business, and what we might today call the
“knowledge solutions” business. Not only did he recognize the potential for
monetizing and cross-promoting his work across these fields; he also saw that
each field would be the better for it. His career (which was not without its
[significant
controversies](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A06E0D7163DE733A25755C1A9649C946497D6CF))
embodied a belief that classification systems and labeling standards and
furniture designs and people work best when they work towards the same end —
in other words, that intellectual and material systems and labor practices are
mutually constructed and mutually reinforcing.
Today’s libraries, Apple-era versions of the Dewey/Carnegie institution,
continue to materialize, at multiple scales, their underlying bureaucratic and
epistemic structures — from the design of their web interfaces to the
architecture of their buildings to the networking of their technical
infrastructures. This has been true of knowledge institutions throughout
history, and it will be true of our future institutions, too. I propose that
thinking about the library as a network of integrated, mutually reinforcing,
evolving _infrastructures_ — in particular, architectural, technological,
social, epistemological and ethical infrastructures — can help us better
identify what roles we want our libraries to serve, and what we can reasonably
expect of them. What ideas, values and social responsibilities can we scaffold
within the library’s material systems — its walls and wires, shelves and
servers?
[](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-
infrastructure-2x.jpg) Dictionary stands from the [Library Bureau’s 1890
catalog](http://books.google.com/books?id=rwdwAAAAIAAJ&dq=library+bureau+catalog+1890&source=gbs_navlinks_s).
## Library as Platform
For millennia libraries have acquired resources, organized them, preserved
them and made them accessible (or not) to patrons. But the [forms of those
resources](http://www.spl.org/prebuilt/cen_conceptbook/page16.htm) have
changed — from scrolls and codices; to LPs and LaserDiscs; to e-books,
electronic databases and open data sets. Libraries have had at least to
comprehend, if not become a key node within, evolving systems of media
production and distribution. Consider the medieval scriptoria where
manuscripts were produced; the evolution of the publishing industry and book
trade after Gutenberg; the rise of information technology and its webs of
wires, protocols and regulations. 1 At every stage, the contexts — spatial,
political, economic, cultural — in which libraries function have shifted; so
they are continuously [reinventing
themselves](http://www.spl.org/prebuilt/cen_conceptbook/page18.htm) and the
means by which they provide those vital information services.
Libraries have also assumed a host of ever-changing social and symbolic
functions. They have been expected to symbolize the eminence of a ruler or
state, to integrally link “knowledge” and “power” — and, more recently, to
serve as “community centers,” “public squares” or “think tanks.” Even those
seemingly modern metaphors have deep histories. The ancient Library of
Alexandria was a prototypical think tank, 2 and the early Carnegie buildings
of the 1880s were community centers with swimming pools and public baths,
bowling alleys, billiard rooms, even rifle ranges, as well as book stacks. 3
As the Carnegie funding program expanded internationally — to more than 2,500
libraries worldwide — secretary James Bertram standardized the design in his
1911 pamphlet “Notes on the Erection of Library Buildings,” which offered
grantees a choice of six models, believed to be the work of architect Edward
Tilton. Notably, they all included a lecture room.
In short, the library has always been a place where informational and social
infrastructures intersect within a physical infrastructure that (ideally)
supports that program.
Now we are seeing the rise of a new metaphor: the library as “platform” — a
buzzy word that refers to a base upon which developers create new
applications, technologies and processes. In an [influential 2012 article in
_Library Journal_](http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/future-of-libraries
/by-david-weinberger/), David Weinberger proposed that we think of libraries
as “open platforms” — not only for the creation of software, but also for the
development of knowledge and community. 4 Weinberger argued that libraries
should open up their entire collections, all their metadata, and any
technologies they’ve created, and allow anyone to build new products and
services on top of that foundation. The platform model, he wrote, “focuses our
attention away from the provisioning of resources to the foment” — the “messy,
rich networks of people and ideas” — that “those resources engender.” Thus the
ancient Library of Alexandria, part of a larger museum with botanical gardens,
laboratories, living quarters and dining halls, was a _platform_ not only for
the translation and copying of myriad texts and the compilation of a
magnificent collection, but also for the launch of works by Euclid,
Archimedes, Eratosthenes and their peers.
[![Domnique Perrault, La bibliothèque nationale de France, literally elevated
on a platform. \[Photo by Jean-Pierre
Dalbera\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Domnique
Perrault, La bibliothèque nationale de France, literally elevated on a
platform. \[Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbera\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-3x-
1020x679.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-3x.jpg) Domnique Perrault, La bibliothèque nationale de
France, literally elevated on a platform. [Photo by [Jean-Pierre
Dalbera](https://www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/4944528385/)]
Yet the platform metaphor has limitations. For one thing, it smacks of Silicon
Valley entrepreneurial epistemology, which prioritizes “monetizable”
“knowledge solutions.” Further, its association with new media tends to
bracket out the similarly generative capacities of low-tech, and even _non_
-technical, library resources. One key misperception of those who proclaim the
library’s obsolescence is that its function as a knowledge institution can be
reduced to its technical services and information offerings. Knowledge is
never solely a product of technology and the information it delivers.
Another problem with the platform model is the image it evokes: a flat, two-
dimensional stage on which resources are laid out for users to _do stuff
with_. The platform doesn’t have any implied depth, so we’re not inclined to
look underneath or behind it, or to question its structure. Weinberger
encourages us to “think of the library not as a portal we go through on
occasion but as infrastructure that is as ubiquitous and persistent as the
streets and sidewalks of a town.” It’s like a “canopy,” he says — or like a
“cloud.” But these metaphors are more poetic than critical; they obfuscate all
the wires, pulleys, lights and scaffolding that you inevitably find underneath
and above that stage — and the casting, staging and direction that determine
what happens _on_ the stage, and that allow it to function _as_ a stage.
Libraries are infrastructures not only because they are ubiquitous and
persistent, but also, and primarily, because they are made of interconnected
networks that undergird all that foment, that create what Pierre Bourdieu
would call “[structuring
structures](http://books.google.com/books?id=WvhSEMrNWHAC&lpg=PA72&ots=puRmifuGmb&dq=bourdieu%20%22structuring%20structures%22&pg=PA72#v=onepage)”
that support Weinberger’s “messy, rich networks of people and ideas.”
It can be instructive for our libraries’ publics — and critical for our
libraries’ leaders — to assess those structuring structures. In this age of
e-books, smartphones, firewalls, proprietary media platforms and digital
rights management; of atrophying mega-bookstores and resurgent independent
bookshops and a metastasizing Amazon; of Google Books and Google Search and
Google Glass; of economic disparity and the continuing privatization of public
space and services — which is simultaneously an age of democratized media
production and vibrant DIY and activist cultures — libraries play a critical
role as mediators, at the hub of all the hubbub. Thus we need to understand
how our libraries function _as_ , and as _part of_ , infrastructural ecologies
— as sites where spatial, technological, intellectual and social
infrastructures shape and inform one another. And we must consider how those
infrastructures can embody the epistemological, political, economic and
cultural values that we _want_ to define our communities. 5
[![Hammond, Beeby and Babka, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public
Library. \[Photo by Robert Dawson, from Public Library: An American
Commons\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Hammond,
Beeby and Babka, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library.
\[Photo by Robert Dawson, from Public Library: An American
Commons\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-4x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-4x.jpg) Hammond, Beeby
and Babka, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library. [Photo by
Robert Dawson, from _[Public Library: An American
Commons](https://placesjournal.org/article/public-library-an-american-
commons/)_ ]
## Library as Social Infrastructure
Public libraries are often seen as “opportunity institutions,” opening doors
to, and for, the disenfranchised. 6 People turn to libraries to access the
internet, take a GED class, get help with a resumé or job search, and seek
referrals to other community resources. A [recent
report](http://nycfuture.org/research/publications/branches-of-opportunity) by
the Center for an Urban Future highlighted the benefits to immigrants,
seniors, individuals searching for work, public school students and aspiring
entrepreneurs: “No other institution, public or private, does a better job of
reaching people who have been left behind in today’s economy, have failed to
reach their potential in the city’s public school system or who simply need
help navigating an increasingly complex world.” 7
The new Department of Outreach Services at the Brooklyn Public Library, for
instance, partners with other organizations to bring library resources to
seniors, school children and prison populations. The Queens Public Library
employs case managers who help patrons identify public benefits for which
they’re eligible. “These are all things that someone could dub as social
services,” said Queens Library president Thomas Galante, “but they’re not. … A
public library today has information to improve people’s lives. We are an
enabler; we are a connector.” 8
Partly because of their skill in reaching populations that others miss,
libraries have recently reported record circulation and visitation, despite
severe budget cuts, decreased hours and the [threatened closure or
sale](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/civic-group-city-bail-cash-strapped-
brooklyn-public-library-system-mired-300-million-repair-article-1.1748855) of
“underperforming” branches. 9 Meanwhile the Pew Research Center has released a
[series of studies](http://libraries.pewinternet.org/) about the materials and
services Americans want their libraries to provide. [Among the
findings](http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/12/11/libraries-in-
communities/): 90 percent of respondents say the closure of their local public
library would have an impact on their community, and 63 percent describe that
impact as “major.”
[![Toyo Ito, Sendai Mediatheque. \[Photo by Forgemind
Archimedia\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Toyo
Ito, Sendai Mediatheque. \[Photo by Forgemind
Archimedia\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-5x-1020x757.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-5x.jpg)Toyo Ito, Sendai
Mediatheque. [Photo by [Forgemind
Archimedia](https://www.flickr.com/photos/eager/11996856324/)]
Libraries also bring communities together in times of calamity or disaster.
Toyo Ito, architect of the acclaimed [Sendai
Mediatheque](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendai_Mediatheque), recalled that
after the 2011 earthquake in Japan, local officials reopened the library
quickly even though it had sustained minor damage, “because it functions as a
kind of cultural refuge in the city.” He continued, “Most people who use the
building are not going there just to read a book or watch a film; many of them
probably do not have any definite purpose at all. They go just to be part of
the community in the building.” 10
We need to attend more closely to such “social infrastructures,” the
“facilities and conditions that allow connection between people,” says
sociologist Eric Klinenberg. In [a recent
interview](http://urbanomnibus.net/2013/10/toward-a-stronger-social-
infrastructure-a-conversation-with-eric-klinenberg/), he argued that urban
resilience can be measured not only by the condition of transit systems and
basic utilities and communication networks, but also by the condition of
parks, libraries and community organizations: “open, accessible, and welcoming
public places where residents can congregate and provide social support during
times of need but also every day.” 11 In his book _Heat Wave_ , Klinenberg
noted that a vital public culture in Chicago neighborhoods drew people out of
sweltering apartments during the 1995 heat wave, and into cooler public
spaces, thus saving lives.
The need for physical spaces that promote a vibrant social infrastructure
presents many design opportunities, and some libraries are devising innovative
solutions. Brooklyn and other cultural institutions have
[partnered](http://www.informationforfamilies.org/Theres_No_Place_Like_Home/Jobs_68.html)
with the [Uni](http://www.theuniproject.org/find-the-uni/), a modular,
portable library that [I wrote about earlier in this
journal](https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-the-
urban-margins/). And modular solutions — kits of parts — are under
consideration in a design study sponsored by the Center for an Urban Future
and the Architectural League of New York, which aims to [reimagine New York
City’s library branches](http://urbanomnibus.net/2014/06/request-for-
qualifications-re-envisioning-branch-libraries/) so that they can more
efficiently and effectively serve their communities. CUF also plans to
publish, at the end of June, an audit of, and a proposal for, New York’s three
library systems. 12 _New York Times_ architecture critic Michael Kimmelman,
reflecting on the roles played by New York libraries [during recent
hurricanes](http://www.npr.org/2013/08/12/210541233/for-disasters-pack-a
-first-aid-kit-bottled-water-and-a-library-card), goes so far as to
[suggest](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/arts/design/next-time-libraries-
could-be-our-shelters-from-the-storm.html) that the city’s branch libraries,
which have “become our de facto community centers,” “could be designed in the
future with electrical systems out of harm’s way and set up with backup
generators and solar panels, even kitchens and wireless mesh networks.” 13
[![Bobst Library, New York University, after Hurricane Sandy. \[Photos by
bettyx1138\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Bobst
Library, New York University, after Hurricane Sandy. \[Photos by
bettyx1138\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-6x-1020x551.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-6x.jpg) Bobst Library,
New York University, after Hurricane Sandy. [Photos by
[bettyx1138](https://www.flickr.com/photos/bettyx1138/8151244029/)]
But is it too much to expect our libraries to serve as soup kitchens and
recovery centers when they have so many other responsibilities? The library’s
broad mandate means that it often picks up the slack when other institutions
fall short. “It never ceases to amaze me just what libraries are looked upon
to provide,” says Ruth Faklis, director of the Prairie Trail Public Library
District in suburban Chicago:
> This includes, but is not limited to, [serving as] keepers of the homeless …
while simultaneously offering latch-key children a safe and activity-filled
haven. We have been asked to be voter-registration sites, warming stations,
notaries, technology-terrorism watchdogs, senior social-gathering centers,
election sites, substitute sitters during teacher strikes, and the latest —
postmasters. These requests of society are ever evolving. Funding is not
generally attached to these magnanimous suggestions, and when it is, it does
not cover actual costs of the additional burden, thus stretching the library’s
budget even further. I know of no other government entity that is asked to
take on additional responsibilities not necessarily aligned with its mission.
13
In a Metafilter discussion about funding cuts in California, one librarian
offered this poignant lament:
> Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive. … Forget trying to
be the “people’s university” and create a body of well informed citizens.
Instead I helped people navigate through the degrading hoops of modern online
society, fighting for scraps from the plate, and then kicking back afterwards
by pretending to have a farm on Facebook.
[ Read the whole story](http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-
Dreamin#4183210). It’s quite a punch to the stomach. Given the effort
librarians expend in promoting basic literacies, how much more can this social
infrastructure support? Should we welcome the “design challenge” to engineer
technical and architectural infrastructures to accommodate an ever-
diversifying program — or should we consider that we might have stretched this
program to its limit, and that no physical infrastructure can effectively
scaffold such a motley collection of social services?
Again, we need to look to the infrastructural ecology — the larger network of
public services and knowledge institutions of which each library is a part.
How might towns, cities and regions assess what their various public (and
private) institutions are uniquely qualified and sufficiently resourced to do,
and then deploy those resources most effectively? Should we regard the library
as the territory of the civic _mind_ and ask other social services to attend
to the civic _body_? The assignment of social responsibility isn’t so black
and white — nor are the boundaries between mind and body, cognition and affect
— but libraries do need to collaborate with other institutions to determine
how they leverage the resources of the infrastructural ecology to serve their
publics, with each institution and organization contributing what it’s best
equipped to contribute — and each operating with a clear sense of its mission
and obligation.
Libraries have a natural affinity with cultural institutions. Just this
spring, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio [appointed Tom
Finkelpearl](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/arts/design/mayor-de-blasio-
names-tom-finkelpearl-of-the-queens-museum.html?_r=1) as the city’s new
Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. A former president of the Queens Museum,
Finkelpearl oversaw the first phase of a renovation by Grimshaw Architects,
which, in its next phase, will incorporate a Queens Public Library branch — an
effective pairing, given the commitment of both institutions to education and
local culture. Similarly, Lincoln Center houses the New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts. As commissioner, Finkelpearl could broaden support
for mixed-use development that strengthens infrastructural ecologies. The
[CUF/Architectural League project](http://urbanomnibus.net/2014/06/request-
for-qualifications-re-envisioning-branch-libraries/) is also considering how
collaborative partnerships can inform library program and design.
[![Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Ballard Library and Neighborhood Service Center,
Seattle. \[Photo by Jules
Antonio\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Bohlin
Cywinski Jackson, Ballard Library and Neighborhood Service Center, Seattle.
\[Photo by Jules Antonio\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-7x-
1020x724.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-7x.jpg)Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Ballard Library and
Neighborhood Service Center, Seattle. [Photo by [Jules
Antonio](https://www.flickr.com/photos/julesantonio/8152446538/)]
I’ve recently returned from Seattle, where I revisited [OMA’s Central
Library](https://placesjournal.org/article/seattle-central-library-civic-
architecture-in-the-age-of-media/) on its 10th anniversary and toured several
new branch libraries. 15 Under the 1998 bond measure “Libraries for All,”
citizens voted to tax themselves to support construction of the Central
Library and four new branches, and to upgrade _every_ branch in the system.
The [vibrant, sweeping Ballard branch](http://www.archdaily.com/100821
/ballard-library-and-neighborhood-service-center-bohlin-cywinski-jackson/)
(2005), by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, includes a separate entrance for the
Ballard Neighborhood Service Center, a “[little city
hall](http://www.seattle.gov/neighborhood-service-centers)“ where residents
can find information about public services, get pet licenses, pay utility
bills, and apply for passports and city jobs. While the librarians undoubtedly
field questions about such services, they’re also able to refer patrons next
door, where city employees are better equipped to meet their needs — thus
affording the library staff more time to answer reference questions and host
writing groups and children’s story hours.
Seattle’s City Librarian, Marcellus Turner, is big on partnerships —with
cultural institutions, like local theaters, as well as commercial
collaborators, like the Seahawks football team. 16 After taking the helm in
2011, he identified [five service priorities](http://www.spl.org/about-the-
library/mission-statement) — youth and early learning, technology and access,
community engagement, Seattle culture and history, and re-imagined spaces —
and tasked working groups with developing proposals for how the library can
better address those needs. Each group must consider marketing, funding, staff
deployment and partnership opportunities that “leverage what we have with what
[the partners] have.” For instance, “Libraries that focus on early-childhood
education might employ educators, academicians, or teachers to help us with
research into early-childhood learning and teaching.” 17
The “design challenge” is to consider what physical infrastructures would be
needed to accommodate such partnerships. 18 Many libraries have continued
along a path laid by library innovators from Ptolemy to Carnegie, renovating
their buildings to incorporate public gathering, multi-use, and even
commercial spaces. In Seattle’s Ballard branch, a large meeting room hosts
regular author readings and a vibrant writing group that typically attracts 30
or more participants. In Salt Lake City, the [library
plaza](http://www.slcpl.lib.ut.us/shops) features an artist co-op, a radio
station, a community writing center, the Library Store, and a few cafes — all
private businesses whose ethos is consistent with the library’s. The New York
Public Library has [recently announced](http://www.nypl.org/press/press-
release/april-30-2014/new-york-public-library-opens-doors-coursera-students)
that some of its branches will serve as “learning hubs” for Coursera, the
provider of “massive open online courses.” And many libraries have classrooms
and labs where they offer regular technical training courses.
[![Moshe Safdie, Salt Lake City Public Library. \[Photo by Pedro
Szekely\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Moshe
Safdie, Salt Lake City Public Library. \[Photo by Pedro
Szekely\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-8x-1020x678.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-8x.jpg)Moshe Safdie,
Salt Lake City Public Library. [Photo by [Pedro
Szekely](https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosz/5139398125/)]
These entrepreneurial models reflect what seems to be an increasingly
widespread sentiment: that while libraries continue to serve a vital role as
“opportunity institutions” for the disenfranchised, this cannot be their
primary self-justification. They cannot duplicate the responsibilities of our
community centers and social service agencies. “Their narrative” — or what I’d
call an “epistemic framing,” by which I mean the way the library packages its
program as a knowledge institution, and the infrastructures that support it —
“must include everyone,” says the University of Michigan’s Kristin
Fontichiaro. 19 What programs and services are consistent with an institution
dedicated to lifelong learning? Should libraries be reconceived as hubs for
civic engagement, where communities can discuss local issues, create media,
and archive community history? 20 Should they incorporate media production
studios, maker-spaces and hacker labs, repositioning themselves in an evolving
ecology of information and educational infrastructures?
These new social functions — which may require new physical infrastructures to
support them — broaden the library’s narrative to include _everyone_ , not
only the “have-nots.” This is not to say that the library should abandon the
needy and focus on an elite patron group; rather, the library should
incorporate the “enfranchised” as a key public, both so that the institution
can reinforce its mission as a social infrastructure for an inclusive public,
_and_ so that privileged, educated users can bring their knowledge and talents
_to_ the library and offer them up as social-infrastructural resources.
Many among this well-resourced population — those who have jobs and home
internet access and can navigate the government bureaucracy with relative ease
— already see themselves as part of the library’s public. They regard the
library as a space of openness, egalitarianism and freedom (in multiple senses
of the term), within a proprietary, commercial, segregated and surveilled
landscape. They understand that no matter how well-connected they are, [they
actually _don’t_ have the world at their
fingertips](https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-
the-urban-margins/) — that “material protected by stringent copyright and held
in proprietary databases is often inaccessible outside libraries” and that,
“as digital rights management becomes ever more complicated, we … rely even
more on our libraries to help us navigate an increasingly fractured and
litigious digital terrain.” 21 And they recognize that they cannot depend on
Google to organize the world’s information. As the librarian noted in [that
discussion](http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-Dreamin#4183210) on
Metafilter:
> The [American Library Association] has a proven history of commitment to
intellectual freedom. The public service that we’ve been replaced with has a
spotty history of “not being evil.” When we’re gone, you middle class, you
wealthy, you tech-savvy, who will fight for that with no profit motivation?
Even if you never step foot in our doors, and all of your media comes to a
brightly lit screen, we’re still working for you.
The library’s social infrastructure thus benefits even those who don’t have an
immediate need for its space or its services.
[![David Adjaye, Francis Gregory Neighborhood Library, Washington, D.C.
\[Photo by Edmund
Sumner\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![David
Adjaye, Francis Gregory Neighborhood Library, Washington, D.C. \[Photo by
Edmund Sumner\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-9x-1020x694.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-9x.jpg)David Adjaye,
Francis Gregory Neighborhood Library, Washington, D.C. [Photo by Edmund
Sumner]
Finally, we must acknowledge the library’s role as a civic landmark — a symbol
of what a community values highly enough to place on a prominent site, to
materialize in dignified architecture that communicates its openness to
everyone, and to support with sufficient public funding despite the fact that
it’ll never make a profit. A well-designed library — a contextually-designed
library — can reflect a community’s character back to itself, clarifying who
it is, in all its multiplicity, and what it stands for. 22 David Adjaye’s
[Bellevue](http://www.archdaily.com/258098/bellevue-library-adjaye-
associates/) and [Francis Gregory](http://www.archdaily.com/258109/francis-
gregory-library-adjaye-associates/) branch libraries, in historically
underserved neighborhoods of Washington D.C., have been lauded for performing
precisely this function. [As Sarah Williams Goldhagen
writes](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112443/revolution-your-community-
library):
> Adjaye is so attuned to the nuances of urban context that one might be hard
pressed to identify them as the work of one designer. Francis Gregory is steel
and glass, Bellevue is concrete and wood. Francis Gregory presents a single
monolithic volume, Bellevue an irregular accretion of concrete pavilions.
Context drives the aesthetic.
His designs “make of this humble municipal building an arena for social
interaction, …a distinctive civic icon that helps build a sense of common
identity.” This kind of social infrastructure serves a vital need for an
entire community.
[![Stacks at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, New York Public Library.
\[Published in a 1911 issue of Scientific
American\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Stacks
at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, New York Public Library. \[Published in
a 1911 issue of Scientific American\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-
10x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-10x.jpg)Stacks at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building,
New York Public Library. [Published in a 1911 issue of _Scientific American_ ]
## Library as Technological-Intellectual Infrastructure
Of course, we must not forget the library collection itself. The old-fashioned
bookstack was [at the center of the recent
debate](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323751104578151653883688578)
over the proposed renovation of the New York Public Library’s Schwartzman
Building on 42nd Street, which was
[cancelled](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/arts/design/public-library-
abandons-plan-to-revamp-42nd-street-building.html) last month after more than
a year of lawsuits and protests. This storage infrastructure, and the delivery
system it accommodates, have tremendous significance even in a digital age.
For scholars, the stacks represent near-instant access to any materials within
the extensive collection. Architectural historians defended the historical
significance of the stacks, and engineers argued that they are critical to the
structural integrity of the building.
The way a library’s collection is stored and made accessible shapes the
intellectual infrastructure of the institution. The Seattle Public Library
uses [translucent acrylic
bookcases](http://blog.spacesaver.com/StoragesolvedwithSpacesaver/bid/33285
/You-re-not-going-crazy-Library-book-stacks-ARE-cool) made by Spacesaver — and
even here this seemingly mundane, utilitarian consideration cultivates a
character, an ambience, that reflects the library’s identity and its
intellectual values. It might sound corny, but the luminescent glow permeating
the stacks acts as a beacon, a welcoming gesture. There are still many
contemporary libraries that privilege — perhaps even fetishize — the book and
the bookstack: take MVRDV’s [Book
Mountain](http://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/spijkenisse/) (2012), for a town in the
Netherlands; or TAX arquitectura’s [Biblioteca Jose
Vasconcelos](http://www.designboom.com/architecture/biblioteca-vasconcelos-by-
tax-arquitectura-alberto-kalach/) (2006) in Mexico City.
Stacks occupy a different, though also fetishized, space in Helmut Jahn’s
[Mansueto Library](http://www.archdaily.com/143532/joe-and-rika-mansueto-
library-murphy-jahn/) (2011) at the University of Chicago, which mixes diverse
infrastructures to accommodate media of varying materialities: a grand reading
room, a conservation department, a digitization department, and [a
subterranean warehouse of books retrieved by
robot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESCxYchCaWI&feature=youtu.be). (It’s
worth noting that Boston and other libraries contained [book
railways](http://libraryhistorybuff.blogspot.com/2010/12/book-retrieval-
systems.html) and conveyer belt retrieval systems — proto-robots — a century
ago.) Snøhetta’s [James B. Hunt Jr.
Library](http://www.ncsu.edu/huntlibrary/watch/) (2013) at North Carolina
State University also incorporates a robotic storage and retrieval system, so
that the library can store more books on site, as well as meet its goal of
providing seating for 20 percent of the student population. 23 Here the
patrons come before the collection.
[![Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Seattle Central Library, Spacesaver bookshelves. \[Photo
by
brewbooks\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Rem
Koolhaas/OMA, Seattle Central Library, Spacesaver bookshelves. \[Photo by
brewbooks\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-11x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-11x.jpg)Rem
Koolhaas/OMA, Seattle Central Library, Spacesaver bookshelves. [Photo by
[brewbooks](https://www.flickr.com/photos/brewbooks/4472712525/)]
[![MVRDV, Book Mountain, Spijkenisse, The Netherlands. \[Photo via
MVRDV\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![MVRDV,
Book Mountain, Spijkenisse, The Netherlands. \[Photo via
MVRDV\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-
infrastructure-12x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06
/mattern-library-infrastructure-12x.jpg)MVRDV, Book Mountain, Spijkenisse, The
Netherlands. [Photo via MVRDV]
[![TAX, Biblioteca Vasconcelos, Mexico City. \[Photo by
Clinker\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![TAX,
Biblioteca Vasconcelos, Mexico City. \[Photo by
Clinker\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-13x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-13x.jpg)TAX, Biblioteca
Vasconcelos, Mexico City. [Photo by
[Clinker](https://www.flickr.com/photos/photos_clinker/295038829/)]
[![Helmut Jahn, Mansueto Library, University of Chicago, reading room above
underground stacks. \[Photo by Eric Allix
Rogers\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Helmut
Jahn, Mansueto Library, University of Chicago, reading room above underground
stacks. \[Photo by Eric Allix Rogers\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-
14x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-14x.jpg)Helmut Jahn, Mansueto Library, University of
Chicago, reading room above underground stacks. [Photo by [Eric Allix
Rogers](https://www.flickr.com/photos/reallyboring/5766873063/)]
[![Mansueto Library stacks. \[Photo by Corey
Seeman\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Mansueto
Library stacks. \[Photo by Corey Seeman\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-
15x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-15x.jpg)Mansueto Library stacks. [Photo by [Corey
Seeman](https://www.flickr.com/photos/cseeman/14148827344/)]
Back in the early aughts, when I spent a summer touring libraries, the
institutions on the leading edge were integrating media production facilities,
recognizing that media “consumption” and “creation” lie on a gradient of
knowledge production. Today there’s a lot of talk about — [and action
around](http://www.infodocket.com/2013/12/16/results-of-makerspaces-in-
libraries-study-released/) — integrating hacker labs and maker-spaces. 24 As
Anne Balsamo explains, these sites offer opportunities — embodied, often
inter-generational learning experiences that are integral to the development
of a “technological imagination” — that are rarely offered in formal learning
institutions. 25
The Hunt Library has a maker-space, a GameLab, various other production labs
and studios, an immersion theater, and, rather eyebrow-raisingly, an Apple
Technology Showcase (named after library donors whose surname is Apple, with
an intentional pun on the electronics company). 26 One might think major
funding is needed for those kinds of programs, but the trend actually began in
2011 in tiny Fayetteville, New York (pop. 4,373), thought to be [the first
public library](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2011/11/15/first-public-
library-to-create-a-maker-space/) to have incorporated a maker-space. The
following year, the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh — which for years has
hosted film competitions, gaming tournaments, and media-making projects for
youth — [launched](http://www.libraryasincubatorproject.org/?p=6653), with
Google and Heinz Foundation support, [The
Labs](http://www.clpgh.org/teens/events/programs/thelabs/): weekly workshops
at three locations where teenagers can access equipment, software and mentors.
Around the same time, Chattanooga — a city blessed with a [super-high-speed
municipal fiber network](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
switch/wp/2013/09/17/how-chattanooga-beat-google-fiber-by-half-a-decade/) —
opened its lauded [4th Floor](http://chattlibrary.org/4th-floor), a
12,000-square foot “public laboratory and educational facility” that “supports
the production, connection, and sharing of knowledge by offering access to
tools and instruction.” Those tools include 3D printers, laser cutters and
vinyl cutters, and the instruction includes everything from tech classes, to
incubator projects for female tech entrepreneurs, to [business pitch
competitions](http://www.nooga.com/158480/hundreds-attend-will-this-float-
business-pitch-event/).
Last year, the Brooklyn Public Library, just a couple blocks from where I
live, opened its [Levy Info
Commons](http://www.bklynlibrary.org/locations/central/infocommons), which
includes space for laptop users and lots of desktop machines featuring
creative software suites; seven reserveable teleconference-ready meeting
rooms, including one that doubles as a recording studio; and a training lab,
which offers an array of digital media workshops led by a local arts and
design organization and also invites patrons to lead their own courses. A
typical month on their robust event calendar includes resume editing
workshops, a Creative Business Tech prototyping workshop, individual meetings
with business counselors, Teen Tech tutorials, computer classes for seniors,
workshops on podcasting and oral history and “adaptive gaming” for people with
disabilities, and even an audio-recording and editing workshop targeted to
poets, to help them disseminate their work in new formats. Also last year, the
Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., opened its
[Digital Commons](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/07
/the-digital-age-is-forcing-libraries-to-change-heres-what-that-looks-like/),
where patrons can use a print-on-demand bookmaking machine, a 3D printer, and
a co-working space known as the “Dream Lab,” or try out a variety of e-book
readers. The Chicago Public Library partnered with the Museum of Science and
Industry to open [a pop-up maker lab](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07
/3d-printing-for-all-inside-chicago-librarys-new-pop-up-maker-lab/) featuring
open-source design software, laser cutters, a milling machine, and (of course)
3D printers — not one, but _three_.
[![Chattanooga Public Library, 4th Floor. \[Photo by Larry
Miller\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Chattanooga
Public Library, 4th Floor. \[Photo by Larry
Miller\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-17x-1020x680.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-17x.jpg) Chattanooga
Public Library, 4th Floor. [Photo by [Larry
Miller](https://www.flickr.com/photos/drmillerlg/9228431656/sizes/l)]
[![Snøhetta, James B. Hunt, Jr. Library, North Carolina State University,
MakerBot in Apple Technology Showcase. \[Photo by Mal
Booth\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Snøhetta,
James B. Hunt, Jr. Library, North Carolina State University, MakerBot in Apple
Technology Showcase. \[Photo by Mal Booth\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-16x-
1020x680.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-16x.jpg)Snøhetta, James B. Hunt, Jr. Library, North
Carolina State University, MakerBot in Apple Technology Showcase. [Photo by
[Mal Booth](https://www.flickr.com/photos/malbooth/10401308096/sizes/l)]
[![Hunt Library, iPearl Immersion Theater. \[Photo by Payton
Chung\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Hunt
Library, iPearl Immersion Theater. \[Photo by Payton
Chung\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-
infrastructure-18x-1020x573.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-18x.jpg)Hunt Library,
iPearl Immersion Theater. [Photo by [Payton
Chung](https://www.flickr.com/photos/paytonc/8758630775/sizes/l)]
Some have proposed that libraries — following in the tradition of Alexandria’s
“think tank,” and compelled by a desire to “democratize entrepreneurship” —
make for ideal [co-working or incubator
spaces](http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/02/why-libraries-should-be-next-
great-startup-incubators/4733/), where patrons with diverse skill sets can
organize themselves into start-ups-for-the-people. 27 Others recommend that
librarians entrepreneurialize _themselves_ , rebranding themselves as
professional consultants in a complex information economy. Librarians, in this
view, are uniquely qualified digital literacy tutors; experts in “copyright
compliance, licensing, privacy, information use, and ethics”; gurus of
“aligning … programs with collections, space, and resources”; skilled creators
of “custom ontologies, vocabularies, taxonomies” and structured data; adept
practitioners of data mining. 28 Others recommend that libraries get into the
content production business. In the face of increasing pressure to rent and
license proprietary digital content with stringent use policies, why don’t
libraries do more to promote the creation of independent media or develop
their own free, open-source technologies? Not many libraries have the time and
resources to undertake such endeavors, but [NYPL
Labs](http://www.nypl.org/collections/labs) and Harvard’s [Library Test
Kitchen](http://www.librarytestkitchen.org/), have demonstrated what’s
possible when even back-of-house library spaces become sites of technological
praxis. Unfortunately, those innovative projects are typically hidden behind
the interface (as with so much library labor). Why not bring those operations
to the front of the building, as part of the public program?
Of course, with all these new activities come new spatial requirements.
Library buildings must incorporate a wide variety of furniture arrangements,
lighting designs, acoustical conditions, etc., to accommodate multiple sensory
registers, modes of working, postures and more. Librarians and designers are
now acknowledging — and designing _for_ , rather than designing _out_ —
activities that make noise and can occasionally be a bit messy. I did a study
several years ago on the evolution of library sounds and found widespread
recognition that knowledge-making doesn’t readily happen when “shhh!” is the
prevailing rule. 29
These new physical infrastructures create space for an epistemology embracing
the integration of knowledge consumption and production, of thinking and
making. Yet sometimes I have to wonder, given all the hoopla over “making”:
_are_ tools of computational fabrication really the holy grail of the
knowledge economy? What _knowledge_ is produced when I churn out, say, a
keychain on a MakerBot? I worry that the boosterism surrounding such projects
— and the much-deserved acclaim they’ve received for “rebranding” the library
— glosses over the neoliberal values that these technologies sometimes embody.
Neoliberalism channels the pursuit of individual freedom through property
rights and free markets 30 — and what better way to express yourself than by
3D-printing a bust of your own head at the library, or using the library’s CNC
router to launch your customizable cutting board business on Etsy? While
librarians have long been advocates of free and democratic access to
information, I trust — I hope — that they’re helping their patrons to
cultivate a [critical perspective](https://placesjournal.org/article
/tedification-versus-edification/) regarding [the politics of “technological
innovation”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology) — and the
potential instrumentalism of makerhood. Sure, Dewey was part of this
instrumentalist tradition, too. But our contemporary pursuit of “innovation”
promotes the idea that “making new stuff” = “producing knowledge,” which can
be a dangerous falsehood.
Library staff might want to take up the critique of “innovation,” too. Each
new Google product release, new mobile technology development, new e-reader
launch brings new opportunities for the library to innovate in response. And
while “keeping current” is a crucial goal, it’s important to place that
pursuit in a larger cultural, political-economic and institutional context.
Striving to stay technologically relevant can backfire when it means merely
responding to the profit-driven innovations of commercial media; we see these
mistakes — innovation for innovation’s sake — in the [ed-
tech](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_technology) arena quite often.
[![George Peabody Library, The John Hopkins University. \[Photo by Thomas
Guignard\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![George
Peabody Library, The John Hopkins University. \[Photo by Thomas
Guignard\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-19x-1020x680.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-19x.jpg)George Peabody
Library, The John Hopkins University. [Photo by [Thomas
Guignard](https://www.flickr.com/photos/timtom/5304555668/)]
## Reading across the Infrastructural Ecology
Libraries need to stay focused on their long-term cultural goals — which
should hold true regardless of what Google decides to do tomorrow — and on
their place within the larger infrastructural ecology. They also need to
consider how their various infrastructural identities map onto each other, or
don’t. Can an institution whose technical and physical infrastructure is
governed by the pursuit of innovation also fulfill its obligations as a social
infrastructure serving the disenfranchised? What ethics are embodied in the
single-minded pursuit of “the latest” technologies, or the equation of
learning with entrepreneurialism?
As Zadie Smith [argued
beautifully](http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jun/02/north-west-
london-blues/) in the _New York Review of Books_ , we risk losing the
library’s role as a “different kind of social reality (of the three
dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values
beyond the fiscal.” 31 Barbara Fister, a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus
College, offered an [equally eloquent
plea](http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/some-assumptions-
about-libraries#sthash.jwJlhrsD.dpbs) for the library as a space of exception:
> Libraries are not, or at least should not be, engines of productivity. If
anything, they should slow people down and seduce them with the unexpected,
the irrelevant, the odd and the unexplainable. Productivity is a destructive
way to justify the individual’s value in a system that is naturally communal,
not an individualistic or entrepreneurial zero-sum game to be won by the most
industrious. 32
Libraries, she argued, “will always be at a disadvantage” to Google and Amazon
because they value privacy; they refuse to exploit users’ private data to
improve the search experience. Yet libraries’ failure to compete in
_efficiency_ is what affords them the opportunity to offer a “different kind
of social reality.” I’d venture that there _is_ room for entrepreneurial
learning in the library, but there also has to be room for that alternate
reality where knowledge needn’t have monetary value, where learning isn’t
driven by a profit motive. We can accommodate both spaces for entrepreneurship
_and_ spaces of exception, provided the institution has a strong _epistemic
framing_ that encompasses both. This means that the library needs to know how
to read _itself_ as a social-technical-intellectual infrastructure.
It’s particularly important to cultivate these critical capacities — the
ability to “read” our libraries’ multiple infrastructures and the politics and
ethics they embody — when the concrete infrastructures look like San Antonio’s
[BiblioTech](http://bexarbibliotech.org/), a “bookless” library featuring
10,000 e-books, downloadable via the 3M Cloud App; 600 circulating “stripped
down” 3M e-readers; 200 “enhanced” tablets for kids; and, for use on-site, 48
computers, plus laptops and iPads. The library, which opened last fall, also
offers computer classes and meeting space, but it’s all locked within a
proprietary platformed world.
[![Bexar County BiblioTech, San Antonio, Texas. \[Photo by Bexar
BiblioTech\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Bexar
County BiblioTech, San Antonio, Texas. \[Photo by Bexar
BiblioTech\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-21x-1020x573.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-21x.jpg)Bexar County
BiblioTech, San Antonio, Texas. [Photo by Bexar BiblioTech]
[![Screenshot of the library’s fully digital collection. \[Photo by Bexar
BiblioTech\]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)![Screenshot
of the library’s fully digital collection. \[Photo by Bexar
BiblioTech\]](https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-
library-infrastructure-20x.jpg)](https://placesjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/mattern-library-infrastructure-20x.jpg)Screenshot of
the library’s fully digital collection. [Photo by Bexar BiblioTech]
In libraries like BiblioTech — and the [Digital Public Library of
America](http://dp.la/) — the collection itself is off-site. Do _patrons_
wonder where, exactly, all those books and periodicals and cloud-based
materials _live_? What’s under, or floating above, the “platform”? Do they
think about the algorithms that lead them to particular library materials, and
the conduits and protocols through which they access them? Do they consider
what it means to supplant bookstacks with server stacks — whose metal racks we
can’t kick, lights we can’t adjust, knobs we can’t fiddle with? Do they think
about the librarians negotiating access licenses and adding metadata to
“digital assets,” or the engineers maintaining the servers? With the
increasing recession of these technical infrastructures — and the human labor
that supports them — further off-site, [behind the
interface](https://placesjournal.org/article/interfacing-urban-intelligence/),
deeper inside the black box, how can we understand the ways in which those
structures structure our intellect and sociality?
We need to develop — both among library patrons and librarians themselves —
new critical capacities to understand the _distributed_ physical, technical
and social architectures that scaffold our institutions of knowledge and
program our values. And we must consider where those infrastructures intersect
— where they should be, and perhaps aren’t, mutually reinforcing one another.
When do our social obligations compromise our intellectual aspirations, or
vice versa? And when do those social or intellectual aspirations for the
library exceed — or fail to fully exploit — the capacities of our
architectural and technological infrastructures? Ultimately, we need to ensure
that we have a strong epistemological framework — a narrative that explains
how the library promotes learning and stewards knowledge — so that everything
hangs together, so there’s some institutional coherence. We need to sync the
library’s intersecting infrastructures so that they work together to support
our shared intellectual and ethical goals.
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###### Author's Note
I’d like to thank the students in my “Archives, Libraries and Databases”
seminar and my “Digital Archives” studio at The New School, who’ve given me
much food for thought over the years. Thanks, too, to my colleagues at the
[Architectural League of New York](http://archleague.org/) and the [Center for
an Urban Future](http://nycfuture.org/). I owe a debt of gratitude also to
Gabrielle Dean, her students, and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins, who gave me
an opportunity to share a preliminary draft of this work. They, along with my
colleagues Julie Foulkes and Aleksandra Wagner, offered feedback for which I’m
very grateful.
###### Notes
1. See Matthew Battles, _Library: An Unquiet History_ (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003); Lionel Casson, _Libraries in the Ancient World_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); Fred Lerner, _The Story of Libraries_ (New York: Continuum, 1999).
2. Casson explains that when Alexandria was a brand new city in the third century B.C., its founders enticed intellectuals to the city — in an attempt to establish it as a cultural center — with the famous Museum, “a figurative temple for the muses, a place for cultivating the arts they symbolized. It was an ancient version of a think-tank: the members, consisting of noted writers, poets, scientists, and scholars, were appointed by the Ptolemies for life and enjoyed a handsome salary, tax exemption … free lodging, and food. … It was for them that the Ptolemies founded the library of Alexandria” [33-34].
3. Donald Oehlerts, _Books and Blueprints: Building America’s Public Libraries_ (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991): 62.
4. David Weinberger, “[Library as Platform](http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/future-of-libraries/by-david-weinberger/),” _Library Journal_ (September 4, 2012).
5. For more on “infrastructural ecologies,” see Reyner Banham, _Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies_ (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009 [1971]); Alan Latham, Derek McCormack, Kim McNamara and Donald McNeil, _Key Concepts in Urban Geography_ (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009): 32; Ming Xu and Josh P. Newell, “[Infrastructure Ecology: A Conceptual Mode for Understanding Urban Sustainability](http://css.snre.umich.edu/publication/infrastructure-ecology-conceptual-model-understanding-urban-sustainability),” Sixth International Conference of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) Proceedings, Berkeley, CA, June 7-10, 2011; Anu Ramaswami, Christopher Weible, Deborah Main, Tanya Heikkila, Saba Siddiki, Andrew Duvail, Andrew Pattison and Meghan Bernard, “A Social-Ecological-Infrastructural Systems Framework for Interdisciplinary Study of Sustainable City Systems,” _Journal of Industrial Ecology_ 16:6 (December 2012): 801-13. Most references to infrastructural ecologies — and there are few — pertain to systems at the urban scale, but I believe a library is a sufficiently complicated institution, residing at nexus of myriad networks, that it constitutes an infrastructural ecology in its own right.
6. Center for an Urban Future, [“Opportunity Institutions” Conference](http://nycfuture.org/events/event/opportunity-institutions) (March 11, 2013). See also Jesse Hicks and Julie Dressner’s video “[Libraries Now: A Day in the Life of NYC’s Branches](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/05/libraries-now-new-york-video.html)” (May 16, 2014).
7. Center for an Urban Future, _[Branches of Opportunity](http://nycfuture.org/research/publications/branches-of-opportunity)_ (January 2013): 3.
8. Quoted in Katie Gilbert, “[What Is a Library?](http://narrative.ly/long-live-the-book/what-is-a-library/)” _Narratively_ (January 2, 2014).
9. Real estate sales are among the most controversial elements in the New York Public Library’s much-disputed Central Library Plan, which is premised on the sale of the library’s Mid-Manhattan branch and its Science, Industry and Business Library. See Scott Sherman, “[The Hidden History of New York City’s Central Library Plan](http://www.thenation.com/article/175966/hidden-history-new-york-citys-central-library-plan),” _The Nation_ (August 28, 2013).
10. Toyo Ito, “The Building After,” _Artforum_ (September 2013).
11. Eric Klinenberg, “[Toward a Stronger Social Infrastructure: A Conversation with Eric Klinenberg](http://urbanomnibus.net/2013/10/toward-a-stronger-social-infrastructure-a-conversation-with-eric-klinenberg/),” _Urban Omnibus_ (October 16, 2013).
12. I’m a member of the organizing team for this project, and I hope to write more about its outcomes in a future article for this journal.
13. Michael Kimmelman, “[Next Time, Libraries Could Be Our Shelters From the Storm](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/arts/design/next-time-libraries-could-be-our-shelters-from-the-storm.html),” _New York Times_ (October 2, 2013).
14. Ruth Faklis, in Joseph Janes, Ed., _Library 2020: Today’s Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow’s Library_ (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013): 96-7.
15. The Seattle Central Library was a focus of [my first book](http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-new-downtown-library), on public library design. See _The New Downtown Library: Designing With Communities_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
16. Personal communication with Marcellus Turner, March 21, 2014.
17. Marcellus Turner in _Library 2020_ : 92.
18. Ken Worpole addresses library partnerships, and their implications for design in his _Contemporary Library Architecture: A Planning and Design Guide_ (New York: Routledge, 2013). The book offers a comprehensive look the public roles that libraries serve, and how they inform library planning and design.
19. Kristin Fontichiaro in _Library 2020_ : 8.
20. See Bill Ptacek in _Library 2020_ : 119.
21. The quotations are from my earlier article for Places, “[Marginalia: Little Libraries in the Urban Margins](http://places.designobserver.com/feature/little-libraries-and-tactical-urbanism/33968/).” Within mass-digitization projects like Google Books, as Elisabeth Jones explains, “works that are still in copyright but out of print and works of indeterminate copyright status and/or ownership” will fall between the cracks (in _Library 2020_ : 17).
22. I dedicate a chapter in _The New Downtown Library_ to what makes a library “contextual” — and I address just how slippery that term can be.
23. This sentence was amended after publication to note the multiple motives of implementing the bookBot storage and retrieval system; its compact storage allowed the library to reintegrate some collections that were formerly stored off-site. The library has also developed a Virtual Browse catalog system, which aims to promote virtual discovery that isn’t possible in the physical stacks.
24. According to a late 2013 web-based survey of libraries, 41 percent of respondents provide maker-spaces or maker activities in their libraries, and 36 percent plan to create such spaces in the near future. Most maker-spaces, 51 percent, are in public libraries; 36 percent are in academic libraries; and 9 percent are in school libraries. And among the most popular technologies or technological processes supported in those spaces are computer workstations (67 percent), 3D printers (46 percent), photo editing (45 percent), video editing (43 percent), computer programming/software (39 percent). 33 oercent accommodated digital music recording; 31 percent accommodated 3D modeling, and 30 percent featured work with Arduino and Raspberry Pi circuit boards (Gary Price, “[Results From ‘Makerspaces in Libraries’ Study Released](http://www.infodocket.com/2013/12/16/results-of-makerspaces-in-libraries-study-released/),” _Library Journal_ (December 16, 2013). See also James Mitchell, “[Beyond the Maker Space](http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/05/opinion/backtalk/beyond-the-maker-space-backtalk/),” _Library Journal_ (May 27, 2014).
25. Anne Balsamo, “[Videos and Frameworks for ‘Tinkering’ in a Digital Age](http://spotlight.macfound.org/blog/entry/anne-balsamo-tinkering-videos/),” Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning (January 30, 2009).
26. This sentence was amended after publication to note that the Apple Technology Showcase was named after former NCSU faculty member Dr. J. Lawrence Apple and his wife, Ella Apple; in an email to the author, library director Carolyn Argentati wrote that the corporate pun was intentional.
27. Emily Badger, “[Why Libraries Should Be the Next Great Start-Up Incubators](http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/02/why-libraries-should-be-next-great-startup-incubators/4733/),” _Atlantic Cities_ (February 19, 2003).
28. Stephen Abram in _Library 2020_ : 46; Courtney Greene in _Library 2020_ : 51.
29. See my “[Resonant Texts: Sounds of the Contemporary American Public Library](http://www.wordsinspace.net/publications/Mattern_Senses%20and%20Society.pdf),” _The Senses & Society_ 2:3 (Fall 2007): 277-302.
30. See David Harvey, _A Brief History of Neoliberalism_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
31. Zadie Smith, “[The North West London Blues](http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jun/02/north-west-london-blues/),” _New York Review of Books_ Blog (June 2, 2012).
32. Barbara Fister, “Some Assumptions About Libraries,” Inside Higher Ed (January 2, 2014).
###### __Cite
Shannon Mattern, "Library as Infrastructure," _Places Journal_ , June 2014.
Accessed 09 Jun 2019.