Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY
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masses, to desire to increase literacy rates, to a wish to open up educational
opportunities by providing learning resources to the disadvantaged (Allred, 1972).
Whatever divided these motives and aspirations, what lay behind them all was
an important, if usually unstated, conception of information. That is, public
libraries were formed and developed on the basis of a notion that information
was a resource which belonged to everyone rather than being a commodity which
might be proprietary. It followed that, since information and indeed knowledge
could not be exclusively owned, it should be available freely to those who wished
to gain access to it, a conception which appears to have been at the core of the
establishment and operation of the public library system in this country. It
is fundamental to the public library network that if people want information,
then – subject to legal constraints – they ought to have help in getting it and not
be penalised in that search (Usherwood, 1989; Kranich, 2004). However, the
public library system has come under challenge on both philosophical and practical
grounds. That is, there have been serious attacks made on the underlying
premise that information ought to be free to users of the library, and policies
have been put in place that have pressured libraries increasingly to charge for
their services.
What can only be regarded as an assault on their raison d’être has been
mounted from three main quarters. First, there has been the matter of sustained
reductions in funds from the public purse, with the result of fewer book purchases,
fewer staff available, fewer current periodicals and frequently no daily newspapers,
declining opening hours in many places, as well as more dowdy and
unkempt surroundings (West, 1992). A corollary has been a shift towards
commercialisation of services, chiefly at the margins since librarians’ professional
ethics and government legislation inhibit the process, as an attempt to recoup
diminished resources. Thus orders for specified books, inter-library loans and
some reference services now command a fee, while the fine system for overdue
books is increasingly calibrated as a mechanism for generating funds rather than
to encourage prompt return of materials. Not surprisingly, between 1986 and
1996 there was a 20 per cent decline in book lending from libraries; worse still,
since 1996 book loans have plummeted a further 30 per cent.
Second, there has been an attack from the political right (armed with a
general enthusiasm for the ‘market’ in all things) that regards public librarians as
being unaccountable to anyone other than themselves, something which lets
them foist their values on library users since they determine what stock to
purchase, and, moreover, allows them to allocate most of the library budget
to their own salaries. In addition, the Adam Smith Institute (1986) believes that
nowadays people are well able to satisfy their information needs by paying for
them, as witness the ‘paperback revolution’ that has brought cheap books to
everyone, and the boom in video rental chains which customers seem happy
to use. Yearning for a return of subscription-based services and admiring of the
success of the Blockbuster video company, the ideology of the market – increasingly
articulated as the voice of the ‘real world’ as well as representative of
popular choice and responsiveness to ordinary people – has cast a cloud over
the library system as it bowed under cuts.
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