Beyond the Fortress
Libraries, AI, and the Revolution in Knowledge Culture
December 14, 2024, Vol. 2, Issue 53
Cite as: Coleman, Anita S. (2024, December 14). Beyond the Fortress: Libraries, AI, and the Revolution in Knowledge Culture. Infophilia, a positive psychology of information, 2 (53).
✨Welcome, new readers, to Infophilia — a space for exploring how a positive psychology of information, or infophilia — our human affinity for knowledge and connections — can help us all thrive, individually and collectively on a global scale. I'm thrilled to learn about the unique connections new readers bring to information styles, a love of books, libraries, diverse cultures, gardens, technology, and more—creating a shared vision of a “grand” theory of information! You can browse the Archive to see the complete collection of my writings (public access and paywalled) and check out Notes (public) too! And to all returning readers, welcome back! 🤗 Feel free to reach out anytime with ideas, comments, or questions.
➡️I was motivated by an ALA Members Connect discussion on alternative forms of media and scholarly communication to start compiling a list of Substacks written by librarians and library faculty. Since the last update on Wednesday, I’ve received a few more and will be adding them soon. In the meantime, here’s Librarians / Library Voices on Substack: Exploring New Frontiers in Scholarly Communication.
Today’s essay offers an assessment of the recent announcement to develop an AI training commons of books, focusing on academic trends, both the positive and negative news about libraries, and providing the impetus to radically reimagine them. AI training data continues to serve as a connector for the compelling stories and roles of various actors — authors, libraries, publishers, and even medical diagnostic systems— featured in the Wellness Wisdom and Your 5-Minute AI sections. Library News reports on the dismissal of the Western Illinois U library faculty, and I close with a sneak preview of It’s Time for a Living Systems Metaphor for Librarians! This concept of adaptive infophilia offers a biological, vibrant living systems metaphor that centers librarians—and their work—not just libraries, as vital to human flourishing in our evolving digital information landscapes and global knowledge culture.
Libraries are incubators of healthy infophilia. Librarians are not only the curators of information and knowledge cultures, but they also nurture curiosity culture.
📚 The Knowledge Fortress
Publicly funded libraries and academic institutions are meant to embody the ideal of universal access to knowledge, particularly when supported by taxpayer dollars. Yet, my own experiences have highlighted the frustrating gap between these ideals and the reality faced by the public. As a doctoral student, I once conducted research on designing an information system for reference work, and as part of my user study, I shadowed librarians at the then-new Science Library at the University of California in Irvine (UCI). One day, after assisting a patron who was clearly not a student but a local resident, the librarian told me, unexpectedly, that she did not enjoy serving the public. In fact, the library, she told me was not designed to serve the public either. She was also unhappy that I was observing her work and had only reluctantly agreed to the observation due to her supervisor’s directive. So much for informed consent (doctoral students beware!).
A few years later, as a faculty member at the University of Arizona at Tucson, I received reciprocal privileges with UCI Libraries. When I quit UA, those privileges were revoked — despite the fact that I remained a resident of Irvine, a professional colleague, and a neighbor, but it did not matter. This experience, paired with my earlier one, drove home a harsh reality: here were institutions, supported by public funding, that had become increasingly disconnected from their purpose of providing knowledge access to the public.
I share these personal stories to underscore a broader, deeply concerning trend: how some universities (and their libraries), intended to be open spaces for knowledge-sharing, have become increasingly exclusive. Before I continue, I want to make one thing absolutely clear upfront: I don’t blame librarians. I believe that this climate and directive is from leadership in the university that is often pursuing a business model while using disruptive technology and social trends to rationalize their decisions.