Readers consume publisher’s products many hours every day– and consume on publisher’s terms. Publisher’s framing on our screens, publisher’s business models, publisher’s flow and pacing. Yes, there are many publishers now, but we are, mostly, locked into their presentation forms. We check into their black box theaters and consume as intended.
Libraries have always bought publisher’s products but have traditionally offered alternative access modes to these materials, and can again. As an example let’s take newspapers. Published with scoops whatsapp lead and urgency, yesterday is “old news,” the paper it was printed on is then only useful the next day as “fish wrap”– the paper piles up and we felt guilty about the trash. That is the framing of the publisher: old is useless, new is valuable. – flip up to read on. Scroll through your “feed” (gosh, the word “feed” is illustrative, what happens after “feed” is “fed”? Well, it comes out the other end in a way we do not cherish .
But a library gives old news a new life, not a commercial life, but a life that encourages reflection, perspective, critique, analysis. In a word– “History”. The library keeps the former “news” and offers it in new ways in a new framing, with new tools– not just flip flip flip. It can be quoted, placed side by side with other publisher’s news and enable researchers to inject commentary.
This capture, representation, searching, rethinking is not a crime– it is thought, it is memory and our history– it builds to become our culture. It has been supported, nurtured, taught.