

"Existential threats don’t scare us. We’re librarians." - kickingvegas
http://nowviskie.org/2012/reality-bytes/

======
btown
It's an amazing speech, and one which deserves to be read in its entirety by
hackers like us. But I'll provide the TL;DR even so, as specified by the
speaker:

"the more a digital object is handled and manipulated and shared and even
kicked around, the longer it will endure... public access is tactical
preservation."

[My thoughts:] This really hits home for me. By democratizing the data that
makes up the so-called "shoulders of giants," by enabling and encouraging
collaborative interpretation/scholarship/remixing/discussion/inspiration on
top of that context, we perpetuate the cultural foundation of humanity. I'm
working on a startup/prototype that aims to help to do this with music, and
this definitely helps to put things into perspective.

~~~
riordan
This is exactly it! And it's fundamentally a transformative concept for
"cultural memory organizations" as libraries, archives and museums often
(somewhat pretentiously) call themselves.

Of course, this is a concept hackers have understood for decades. It's why
Jason Scott collects text files, scans old arcade manuals, and why Archive
Team rips the entirety of Yahoo! Video, Geocities, and poetry communities just
before they're about to be shut down. And they then ensure sure they're
available to all who ask. For free. Forever. On Bittorrent.

Unfortunately, the old stuff isn't as easy to copy. It's locked up in big
places like my office, The New York Public Library. But cultural memory
organizations, even if they don't realize it, are WHERE ITS AT when it comes
to transforming all that documentation of human endeavor and into some of the
most powerful, useful, and amazing materials going forward.

While we used to treat our super rare special collections as cherished things
never to see the light of day except by a couple of curators, interns and a
few handpicked researchers and only then in climate controlled bunkers. On
rare occasions, the public sees them only as part of an exhibition, on display
once every few years for a few hours a day. While this is great for the
insuring the longevity of the object, it's not so great for exposing the
public to tangible history. Now we're opening up the rarest of materials,
which are often the freest in terms of restrictions (due to their age), making
them public, and making them richer with use. Suddenly using the rare stuff
makes it better with every use. Way better.

These kinds of places are among the best beachheads in the fight for Free
Culture. Some of the smartest thinkers about the copyright fight are now
leading the Harvard Libraries from the inside. John Palfry's the head of the
Harvard Law Library (for a few more days), David Weinberger is leading the
team that's writing the code behind the Digital Public Library of America, and
Jonathan (JZ) Zittrain, who cofounded the Berkman Center for Internet and
Society, is about to become the Law Library's Vice-Dean.

Basically what I'm saying is that there are vast swaths of human knowledge and
endeavor at crazy risk of being left behind. This isn't bit rot. This is real
rot. Or sometimes we "digitize" something by just taking a picture of it. But
then it's just a picture, not a page from an atlas with grounding in a a real
time and place, and it gets lost in a photo gallery and a metadata system. And
it's just sitting there, waiting for someone to come along and breathe life
back into it, to make it something more powerful than it ever was on paper. To
be fully indexed, crosslinked, talking to all the other information available,
related, and relevant. That's eminently possible, it's just not being done at
sufficient scale.

We need hackers in every position in these organizations. Here at the New York
Public Library, we're working on that. We have one curator who hacks on Node
and Backbone because it means he can better disseminate and preserve musical
theatre (also because it's really fun). We have one curator who's digitizing
copyright-free maps of New York City and is using it to basically create
historical Google Maps all the way back to when Europeans first showed up on
North American shores - or as someone just called it "Building guidebooks for
time travelers" [1] (I'm particularly proud of that one). And now I'm going to
move into the realm of shameless self-promotion and a plea. My team looks for
cool datasets throughout the library and builds projects on top to transform
them into structured data by any means necessary (often it's often
crowdsourcing) then builds APIs so anyone can get to that data. We also build
animated gif creators [2].

Basically what I'm saying is that those rare books, those archives, those old
photographs need hackers to keep these materials around. To keep them
relevant. To inspire countless others to create great works. And here's the
point. We need so many more people helping us.

We need you. Not just at NYPL, but everywhere across this industry. Because
how cool is it to hack on the sum total of human knowledge and make it
available to all who ask? If this piques your interest, consider joining our
team[3]. (Or work on this issues on your own and tell us about them.)

[1][http://betabeat.com/2012/06/doctor-who-companion-
application...](http://betabeat.com/2012/06/doctor-who-companion-application-
new-york-public-library/) [2]<http://stereo.nypl.org> [3] <https://jobs-
nypl.icims.com/jobs/6882/job> | We're not always hiring, but we've got an
opening now if you want to join us

------
kickingvegas
Who would think that HN would be interested in what a Librarian would say?

Here's a Google cache link:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nW-
mGWQ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nW-
mGWQL5UMJ:nowviskie.org/2012/reality-
bytes/+Beth+nowviskie+reality+bytes&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari)

------
Rickasaurus
I always wanted to be a librarian, but I went into computer science because of
the opportunities. Still, much respect to all in this line of work.

~~~
saraid216
My B.S. is in a program housed by the library school and included a mandatory
track for understanding the practical basics of computer science. (Namely,
writing code, databases, and networking. With a little "how to write a search
engine" on the side.)

------
Anon84
The title reminded me of this: <http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0368197/> "Read or
Die" An anime about the library of congress "special ops" unit..

~~~
wccrawford
The OVA was amazing. I just wish the TV series had been better.

------
kickingvegas
So many great observations in Nowviskie's post which have direct relevance to
our audience. I'll mention just one:

"Against librarianship lies oblivion."

------
stan_rogers
"Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information.
Never piss one off." - Spider Robinson

------
tomjen3
The link gives a 404 message :(

~~~
kickingvegas
Just tweeted this to her Twitter account. Also added the Google cache link to
the comment thread.

~~~
nowviskie
Of _course_ getting posted to HN would coincide w/planned server maintenance.
(Should be back up before too long. Thanks!)

