speech writing on google is the death of libraries

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At most libraries, the hand-typed card catalogues thumbed by generations of patrons have been supplanted by electronic indexes accessed via PCs locally or over the Web. Now that Google has agreed to scan millions of books from five major libraries and to make their contents searchable on the Web – a project that experts say is likely to yield spinoff technologies that drastically lower the costs of digitization and catalyze similar efforts worldwide – can the disappearance of libraries themselves be far behind?

Most librarians say no, as our story “ The Infinite Library ,” reports. Whatever the form in which book content is stored, librarians believe, people will still come to libraries for expert help finding information, for public access to the Internet, or for the comfortable atmosphere libraries provide for reading and reflection. And there will always be a need, professionals point out, for places that preserve traditional paper books.

All of that may be true. But there is still room to wonder how libraries will trump the expediency of being able to download a whole book over the Web, at little or no cost, instead of schlepping to the library. Print-on-demand services are spreading fast (see “ The Future of Books ,” January 2005), and electronic reading devices will continue to improve until they rival the resolution and usability of regular books. At that point, the only burning reason for a physical trip to the library will be to see a copy of a needed book that has not yet been digitized, or that has been digi­tized but is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions.

So in reality, the future of libraries may rest on just two factors: the rate at which digitization and display technologies ­advance, and the evolution of laws and practices regarding copyrights. In the United States, books published before January 1, 1923, are in the public domain and can be copied and redistributed by anyone, free of charge. At the same time, many books written in the past five to eight years have been published in both print and electronic form, and libraries have arranged with publishers to make some of these new e-books available for loan. (Borrowed e-books typically “expire,” becoming unreadable after a certain period.) It’s arranging access to the huge number of in-between books – those published between 1923 and the late 1990s – that is the critical issue.

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Who says libraries are dying? They are evolving into spaces for innovation

Postdoctoral Researcher , University of California, Irvine

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Crystle Martin received funding from Young Adult Library Services Association/Voices of Youth Advocacy.

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With the expansion of digital media, the rise of e-books and massive budget cuts, the end of libraries has been predicted many times over.

And while it is true that library budgets have been slashed , causing cuts in operating hours and branch closures, libraries are not exactly dying. In fact, libraries are evolving.

As a researcher of youth learning in out-of-school spaces, I have studied the online information habits of youth. I am currently studying how librarians are supporting teen learning and teaching coding to novice learners.

So, how are libraries changing and what is their future?

Making a difference

Traditionally, libraries provided no-cost access to books and a quiet place to read.

But many of today’s public libraries are taking on newer roles. They are offering programs in technology, career and college readiness and also in innovation and entrepreneurship – all 21st-century skills, essential for success in today’s economy.

Look at some of the examples of this change happening across the nation.

In 2014, the San Diego Public Library Central Library opened the IDEA Lab , where students can explore and learn new technology with the support of their peers.

The lab hires teen interns to run workshops on a variety of topics of their interests. These range from Photoshop to stop-motion animation and skill-building technology projects.

These interns, coming from schools with predominantly African-American and Latino students, also get to work with a librarian to plan activities that give them experience related to their career goals.

Similarly, in early 2015, librarians at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library in North Carolina created a “maker space” called Idea Box , a place where area youth are invited to learn to 3D model, 3D print, knit and code. This creates learning opportunities for the youth and develops their interests in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) careers.

In another such example, the Seattle Public Library started a partnership in 2014 with the Seattle Youth Employment Program. Together, they have designed curriculum to build digital and information literacy skills.

Alongside individual libraries, national organizations such as YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) , who strengthen library services for teens, are already making changes to what they view as the purview of the library professional. Their recent report focuses on changing the role of library staff to support young people as they explore and develop career paths.

Libraries for the homeless

This is not all. Libraries are expanding beyond their traditional roles and reaching further into their communities.

Since spring 2014, the Brooklyn Public Library has been running “transitional services” that focus on providing programs such as “pop-up libraries” for people who are homeless, as well as opportunities for children to read books with parents who are incarcerated .

Even institutions going through budget cuts strive to maintain this component of serving the community. For example, when the Detroit Public Library had to deeply slash its budget during the economic downturn , alongside reducing its branch hours to 40 per week, it reworked its schedule to maximize the number of evening and weekend hours it was open , so as to best serve the community.

Future will be service

Libraries in the 21st century are going to be less about books and more about the services that library staff provide to their communities.

Miguel Figueroa of the Center for the Future of Libraries sums it up best, when he says:

The library of the future, whether the physical space or its digital resources, can be the place where you put things together, make something new, meet new people, and share what you and others bring to the table. It’s peer-to-peer, hands-on, community-based and creation-focused.

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The Fight over the Google of All Libraries: An (Updated) Wired.com FAQ

The Justice Department's antitrust division has twice weighed in against the settlement, dimming Google's chances of convincing a federal judge to let it slice through stifling copyright law to create a vibrant online library. Critics argue effectively that the Google Book settlement gives Google an unfair advantage in search and is so complex that it should be left to Congress to iron out.

Google begs to differ, saying the settlement isn't a bridge too far and calling it a "remarkably creative settlement, beneficial to the parties and absent class members and the public," that also settles the legal dispute.

Federal judge Denny Chin will have the difficult job of sorting that out Thursday, as he gives the second version of the Google settlement a "fairness hearing."

The story of Google Books is a complicated one, combining copyright law, anti-trust issues, plain old capitalist competition and the odd problem of orphan books. It's also the story of one company's audacious attempt to create the largest and most comprehensive library in the history of the world.

And despite the fancy and upbeat name for Thursday's hearing, there's not likely to be any way to make a happy ending out of this plot.

Here's Wired.com's FAQ to help make sense of the complicated issue.

• Google is a search engine, right? What do words printed on dead trees have to do with it? Google claims its mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." If that’s your goal, then a library full of books makes you salivate in hunger for the knowledge held inside. So in partnership with major university libraries, Google began scanning and digitizing millions of books in 2002. The books Google began digitizing included ones like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that are no longer copyrighted to the Harry Potter series to books whose authors and publishers cannot be located. The idea is simple, and audacious. Make the library of all libraries by converting every book ever published into an e-book that can be indexed, searched, read — and sold — online.
• That’s cool! Where can I find this? Go to Google Book Search , for one. You might also see book snippets in Google's Web search results.
• How many books are in there already? Google has scanned more than 7 million books as of April 2009.
• Can I download or buy old books through Google right now? Yes and no. Google lets you download any book it has scanned that is not in copyright in the U.S. anymore – books that have fallen into the public domain. You can also turn those books back into hard copies -- on demand -- at selected bookstores around the world that have an Espresso book printer. For other books, the online display shows up to 20 percent of the text, and usually includes links to places to buy it online if it's in copyright.
• What about new books? Are they included? Many are, but that’s through Google's Partner project that lets publishers and authors decide how much or how little of their books go into Google’s index, as well as letting them get a portion of the money from ads shown next to their book pages. New books aren't part of the settlement.
• How did Google get away with scanning 7 million library books? __ __Well, there’s no problem with scanning millions of public domain books so long as you have the cash, cool technology and cachet to convince some of the world’s best libraries to work with you. As for in-copyright books, Google says it has the right to scan and index them, and show snippets online, under the Fair Use doctrine, which carves out exceptions to copyright holders’ rights. Google was prepared to defend itself on these grounds before getting a better deal. Being a massive company, mostly loved by users, also helps.
• So could I go into the library and legally rip every music CD and video they have, and put snippets of them online, under the Fair Use doctrine? That’s an interesting question. How good is your lawyer and how big is your bank balance?
• Then why did the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sue Google in 2005? Well, once they saw Google using snippets of the books in search results and making money off it, they decided they deserved some of it. After all, they wrote the books. At least some of them, anyway.
• Why did Google settle in 2007 if it has the right to do this? Especially since they have to pay $125 million in lawyer fees and royalties? Well, Google could have fought a court battle to definitively answer that question -- setting ground rules that all search sites would have to follow. But that was risky and potentially put the company at risk of losing, setting a bad precedent for 'fair use' and having to pay billions in fines.

By contrast, the settlement gives Google the legal cover to digitize all books that are in copyright. That's exclusive cover. For books that are copyrighted but out-of-print, Google gets to show 20% of the book online and sell digital copies of it, keeping 37 percent. For books in-print and copyrighted, Google gets the right to scan the books, use snippets in search results and use them for some research.

• What about anthologies or photos licensed for use in a book? How does that work? Well, that’s complicated. That’s partially why the original agreement was 334 pages long.
• Why should I care about the settlement at all? Google. Monopoly. World’s Greatest Library. You do like books, don’t you?
• Who manages authors and publishers' rights if Google is going to be advertising next to book pages and selling books? The newly-created Book Rights Registry is in charge of finding rights holders, collecting and disbursing payouts, setting prices and negotiating other deals. It's not unlike the ASCAP system that collects royalties for song writers, musicians and publishers.
• What about libraries? University and public libraries around the country will get one free subscription for one computer that will let users read and print all pages from the full text of all the books in Google's catalog, excluding books still in-print. Beyond that, libraries and institutions can order additional subscriptions. The demand is likely to be high. Very high.
• What is an author's role in all this? Rights holders can go to Book Rights Registry's database and choose whether to let Google include their works, sell them online, and show snippets and ads. They can also opt-out and reserve the right to negotiate their own terms or sue Google later .
• How can Google get a monopoly? Can't the Book Registry negotiate with other entities that want to do the same thing? No other project has come close to scanning as many books as Google has, in no small part thanks to the size of Google's bank balance. The Open Book Alliance calls on the government to create a digital Library of Congress that could license a similar size database to any qualified companies.

Of course, if Microsoft wanted to catch up it could try to make an agreement with the Book Registry, but only for those authors it can speak for – in other words, the known authors of copyrighted books.

• Is the opposition to the settlement all about the so-called orphans? Not solely, but it's a huge problem. There are more orphans (books whose copyright holders can't be located) than in a Dickens novel . Google won’t say how many there are. But UC Berkeley Professor Pamela Samuelson estimates that 70 percent of books that are still in copyright have rights holders that can’t be found.
• What’s the problem with orphans? Copyright infringement can be expensive – up to $150,000 per violation. So if you scan an old book and start selling copies of it, or displaying chunks of it on the web, and the orphan’s father shows up one day waving a paternity test in your direction, you could face a mean copyright infringement suit. Unless you are Google: Since all U.S. book copyright holders are now plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Google gets liability protection from authors who abandoned their books by not registering in its books database. If they show up later, all they can do is collect a little cash, change their book price or ask Google to stop selling the book.
• Could Google end up with the most comprehensive online library in the world? Won't libraries place thousands of subscriptions due to overwhelming demand? And since there’s only one vendor (Google) and the Book Registry will set the price, won’t the price be incredibly high? Or at least climb that way over time? Bingo.
• Why can’t Amazon or Yahoo or Microsoft go to the Book Registry and get an orphans waiver like Google is getting? The registry can set rates and negotiate contracts for all authors, unless they opt-out. But signing away unknown people’s rights to sue? Only a judge in a class-action lawsuit or Congress can do that.
• So what changes did Google/The Authors Guild make in November when they submitted the amended version? And why do the feds still object? The settlement was changed in some odd, but important ways. It changed from being worldwide to covering only works registered in the U.S. or published in the U.K., Australia or Canada. If Google makes money selling a book whose author can't be found the money is held onto for 10 years, and then it is either turned over to states or given to literacy projects. Previously, the unclaimed money was to be distributed among the known authors. Other retailers can sell out-of-print books, getting most of the 37 cents that goes to Google for that sale. Authors also have more control over how their works are displayed and shared, including choosing Creative Commons licenses that allow for re-use.
• If another company wants to digitize, display and use orphan works without the Sword of Damocles hanging over its head, it has to start digitizing without permission, get sued by a reasonable plaintiff and the go through this settlement process again? Exactly. They could negotiate with the Books Registry to get the same or better deal than Google got for known works, but that leaves the orphan works gap.
• That’s ridiculous. Isn’t there a better solution to the orphan works problem? __ __Yes. For one, Congress could step up and pass a law about orphan works. But the last time Congress passed a substantial copyright law, it extended them for 20 more years to keep Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain. That's kept more and more books from reaching the public domain. Don’t expect much help here.
• Is a lot of money at stake? __ __If you think all the value in digitizing the world’s knowledge will come from selling out-of-print books as e-books for an iPhone, you’re not thinking like Google is. Think of all the subscriptions that universities and colleges and high schools and corporations will need to buy. Think of how search could be improved if you can test your algorithms on a huge digitized swath of the world’s knowledge. And current thinking about search engines is that most people choose as a default the search engine that gives them the best answer on the "rare" or hard queries. Google Books is one way to that solution.

Think of the data that could be mined from an index of tens of millions of books, or how a question-and-answer service resembling artificial intelligence could be created. Google “the Singularity.” Or better .

• Why is the Justice Department involved and disapproving? The Justice Department has made it clear over the last year and a half that its worried about Google becoming an abusive monopoly -- and they considered the idea of Google getting sole power over orphan works to be a real problem.

That's why they opposed the original settlement saying, "A global disposition of the rights to millions of copyrighted works is typically the kind of policy change implemented through legislation, not through a private judicial settlement." And while they commended the changes made in the Amended Agreement, the feds stuck to their argument that the issue at hand was too big for a court or a lawsuit to change.

• When does all this end and I get to start browsing the library of the future and buying out-of-print books? The federal court’s final hearing on the fairness of the settlement is on February 18. Then the judge has to rule, which could take months. In the best case scenario for Google, it will have something resembling the library of the future online sometime in 2010, but given the number of lawyers eying this deal and the potential amount of money at issue, one can be pretty sure the legal battle will drag out far into the 2010s, no matter what the court rules.

Note: This FAQ was originally published on April 30, 2009. It has been substantially updated and edited to reflect the events of the last nine months.

Photo: ailatan /Flickr

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Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

A lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens

• Authors condemn £4m library fund as a ‘sop’ and a ‘whitewash’

I t’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members’ interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I’m going to tell you that libraries are important. I’m going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I’m going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I’m an author, often an author of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about 30 years I have been earning my living through my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.

So I’m biased as a writer. But I am much, much more biased as a reader. And I am even more biased as a British citizen.

And I’m here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. Which supports literacy programs, and libraries and individuals and nakedly and wantonly encourages the act of reading. Because, they tell us, everything changes when we read.

And it’s that change, and that act of reading that I’m here to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what reading does. What it’s good for.

I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn’t read. And certainly couldn’t read for pleasure.

It’s not one to one: you can’t say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations.

And I think some of those correlations, the simplest, come from something very simple. Literate people read fiction.

Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it’s a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it’s hard, because someone’s in trouble and you have to know how it’s all going to end … that’s a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you’re on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far.

The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children’s books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading. I’ve seen it happen over and over; Enid Blyton was declared a bad author, so was RL Stine, so were dozens of others. Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy.

It’s tosh. It’s snobbery and it’s foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn’t hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.

Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. (Also, do not do what this author did when his 11-year-old daughter was into RL Stine, which is to go and get a copy of Stephen King’s Carrie, saying if you liked those you’ll love this! Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years, and still glares at me when Stephen King’s name is mentioned.)

And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

You’re also finding out something as you read vitally important for making your way in the world. And it’s this:

The world doesn’t have to be like this. Things can be different.

I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?

It’s simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.

And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it’s a bad thing. As if “escapist” fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.

If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn’t you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real.

As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.

Another way to destroy a child’s love of reading, of course, is to make sure there are no books of any kind around. And to give them nowhere to read those books. I was lucky. I had an excellent local library growing up. I had the kind of parents who could be persuaded to drop me off in the library on their way to work in summer holidays, and the kind of librarians who did not mind a small, unaccompanied boy heading back into the children’s library every morning and working his way through the card catalogue, looking for books with ghosts or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders. And when I had finished reading the children’s’ library I began on the adult books.

They were good librarians. They liked books and they liked the books being read. They taught me how to order books from other libraries on inter-library loans. They had no snobbery about anything I read. They just seemed to like that there was this wide-eyed little boy who loved to read, and would talk to me about the books I was reading, they would find me other books in a series, they would help. They treated me as another reader – nothing less or more – which meant they treated me with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect as an eight-year-old.

But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.

I think it has to do with nature of information. Information has value, and the right information has enormous value. For all of human history, we have lived in a time of information scarcity, and having the needed information was always important, and always worth something: when to plant crops, where to find things, maps and histories and stories – they were always good for a meal and company. Information was a valuable thing, and those who had it or could obtain it could charge for that service.

In the last few years, we’ve moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That’s about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need.

Libraries are places that people go to for information. Books are only the tip of the information iceberg: they are there, and libraries can provide you freely and legally with books. More children are borrowing books from libraries than ever before – books of all kinds: paper and digital and audio. But libraries are also, for example, places that people, who may not have computers, who may not have internet connections, can go online without paying anything: hugely important when the way you find out about jobs, apply for jobs or apply for benefits is increasingly migrating exclusively online. Librarians can help these people navigate that world.

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them. They belong in libraries, just as libraries have already become places you can go to get access to ebooks, and audiobooks and DVDs and web content.

A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it. That includes health information. And mental health information. It’s a community space. It’s a place of safety, a haven from the world. It’s a place with librarians in it. What the libraries of the future will be like is something we should be imagining now.

Literacy is more important than ever it was, in this world of text and email, a world of written information. We need to read and write, we need global citizens who can read comfortably, comprehend what they are reading, understand nuance, and make themselves understood.

Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open.

According to a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, England is the “only country where the oldest age group has higher proficiency in both literacy and numeracy than the youngest group, after other factors, such as gender, socio-economic backgrounds and type of occupations are taken into account”.

Or to put it another way, our children and our grandchildren are less literate and less numerate than we are. They are less able to navigate the world, to understand it to solve problems. They can be more easily lied to and misled, will be less able to change the world in which they find themselves, be less employable. All of these things. And as a country, England will fall behind other developed nations because it will lack a skilled workforce.

Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.

I think we have responsibilities to the future. Responsibilities and obligations to children, to the adults those children will become, to the world they will find themselves inhabiting. All of us – as readers, as writers, as citizens – have obligations. I thought I’d try and spell out some of these obligations here.

I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing.

We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.

We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.

We have an obligation to use the language. To push ourselves: to find out what words mean and how to deploy them, to communicate clearly, to say what we mean. We must not to attempt to freeze language, or to pretend it is a dead thing that must be revered, but we should use it as a living thing, that flows, that borrows words, that allows meanings and pronunciations to change with time.

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it’s the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all. We have an obligation not to bore our readers, but to make them need to turn the pages. One of the best cures for a reluctant reader, after all, is a tale they cannot stop themselves from reading. And while we must tell our readers true things and give them weapons and give them armour and pass on whatever wisdom we have gleaned from our short stay on this green world, we have an obligation not to preach, not to lecture, not to force predigested morals and messages down our readers’ throats like adult birds feeding their babies pre-masticated maggots; and we have an obligation never, ever, under any circumstances, to write anything for children that we would not want to read ourselves.

We have an obligation to understand and to acknowledge that as writers for children we are doing important work, because if we mess it up and write dull books that turn children away from reading and from books, we ‘ve lessened our own future and diminished theirs.

We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

Look around you: I mean it. Pause, for a moment and look around the room that you are in. I’m going to point out something so obvious that it tends to be forgotten. It’s this: that everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it was easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on.This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, this city, exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things.

We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. We have an obligation to clean up after ourselves, and not leave our children with a world we’ve shortsightedly messed up, shortchanged, and crippled.

We have an obligation to tell our politicians what we want, to vote against politicians of whatever party who do not understand the value of reading in creating worthwhile citizens, who do not want to act to preserve and protect knowledge and encourage literacy. This is not a matter of party politics. This is a matter of common humanity.

Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. “If you want your children to be intelligent,” he said, “read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.

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Technology – The death of Libraries

• . Update: Mar 18, 2023 9:11 pm

Table of Contents

Yes – Technology is killing libraries:

• Due to search engines , now there is no need to search for a reference book. There is so much content on the internet to refer to. So, that means there is no need to go to the library like earlier.
• Due to smartphone addiction or busy lifestyles, many people do not have enough time to read books . So, they may not even think of going to libraries. That means the number of people going to libraries is decreasing with time.
• Some people are preferring to read books on electronic reading devices due to their hectic lifestyles. They can carry a single device anywhere and can read any book they want without carrying all the books. So, this facility is decreasing the number of people going to libraries.

No – Technology is not killing libraries:

• With the internet, now there is more publicity for many books. So many websites on Internet are encouraging people to read books. People are sharing book reviews on the internet and lakhs of people are watching those reviews . So, it is evident that libraries won’t vanish in the near future.
• Reading content as pdfs or on the internet doesn’t give us the same feeling as reading books . And hence many people prefer to read content in books instead of reading it online.
• A few people choose to read books instead of reading content online to avoid distractions while reading on the internet.
• In the present time, several libraries are providing desktops with WiFi . So, libraries are changing and will not disappear anytime soon.

Conclusion:

Due to electronic reading devices and internet, now there is no need to carry a physical book. So, many people who were going to libraries earlier are not going there now. But this will not result in the death of libraries, because still many people are interested in reading physical books and going to libraries.

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What the 'death of the library' means for the future of books

These are things that cannot be replaced by mere technology — not even a fully-loaded Kindle Fire

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Forbes contributor Tim Worstall wants us to close public libraries and buy everyone an Amazon Kindle with an unlimited subscription. "Why wouldn't we simply junk the physical libraries and purchase an Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription for the entire country?" he asks. Worstall points to substantial savings on public funds, arguing that people would have access to a much larger collection of books through a Kindle Unlimited subscription than they could get through any public library and that the government would spend far less on a bulk subscription for all residents than it ever would on funding libraries.

Is he right? Are libraries obsolete? He might be correct — but only if libraries were just about books, which they are not. Libraries are actually an invaluable public and social resource that provide so much more than simple shelves of books (or, for those in rural areas, a Bookmobile like the one this author grew up with). A world without public libraries is a grim one indeed, and the assault on public libraries should be viewed as alarming.

Humans have been curating libraries for as long as they've been creating written materials, whether they be tablets, scrolls, handwritten books, or printed mass-media. They've become archives not just of books on a variety of subjects, but also newspapers , genealogical materials, art , and more. Notably, early libraries were primarily private, with only wealthy individuals maintaining stocks of printed materials due to their expense.

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That's what made the Great Library at Alexandria such an impressive, and important, resource. It wasn't just the huge volume of material on site, but the fact that any member of the public could take advantage of its resources (by demonstrating an interest and relevant skills). It hosted scores of scholars at any given time and was a critical location for research and cultural exchange.

It marked a key turning point in the history of libraries, presenting the idea that knowledge could become a public resource, and that a library could turn into a public gathering space. The ideology of the library as a place of free exchange waxed and waned over the centuries, but by the 1800s, the idea that public libraries were an important part of a free society was firmly enshrined, and numerous nations, including the U.S., made public libraries an important part of their culture.

The popular myth about the Library at Alexandria is that it was sacked and burned, but in fact, the truth of it is more complicated. It was in fact subjected to multiple raids and burnings at various points in history, after which its collections were rebuilt time and time again. What ultimately killed the Library was budget cuts .

The American Library Association has identified funding as one of the most pressing concerns for modern libraries, noting that in a nation embroiled in foreign wars and the creation of a massive security state, libraries and other public domestic resources are getting short shrift : "Libraries have seen cuts to the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), and many other programs that benefit libraries have been severely cut or in some cases terminated. We follow these other programs as well, because libraries are just one part of a much bigger picture that includes education, the humanities, the arts, and many other important social functions."

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In addition to federal funding cuts, libraries have also faced state funding shortages. Earlier this year, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo suggested slashing library funding in New York . In Vermont, the state government offers no funding assistance to libraries. In Oregon, the Pendleton Library was forced to beg for funds from the public, and it's not the only one; the Sharpsburg Community Library barely managed to meet a fundraising goal, while in Ohio, legislators are fighting to defend libraries .

Libraries are also being hit by privatization, with firms promising to cut costs for library services. Such companies actually tend to cost more for regional libraries, thanks to their incredibly high administrative costs.

Why are libraries so important? If the Kindle can provide immeasurable books at a fraction of the cost, why not simply turn to this option?

Setting aside the fact that the Kindle is laden with problematic Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, which limits individual freedoms, people don't just go to libraries for books, and technology isn't the solution to every problem. The library is a social gathering place, used to conduct classes and provide people with public resources — including computers and wireless networks for those who can't access them at home, and struggle to find their footing in a world dominated by technology .

Librarians also provide highly unique and specialized services, benefiting from years of training to learn to serve patrons. It's not just that a library provides access to books, but that it also offers access to brilliant individuals who provide research assistance, guidance, book recommendations, and tools to help people empower themselves when it comes to researching and locating information. Giving everyone a Kindle doesn't solve that problem.

The library has historically been and is today a resource for low-income people, including members of the homeless community, who can't afford individual access to what libraries have to offer. It's not just tangible things like books, magazines, and research materials such as old newspapers and property records, but the intangible: The experienced librarian, the tax preparer who provides advice, the community lectures. These are things that cannot be replaced by mere technology — not even with Kindle Fire's much-vaunted Mayday Button.

Writing in defense of libraries in 1921, George Bernard Shaw said:

The debt of British literature, and indeed every department of British culture, to the British Museum Library is incalculable. I myself worked in its reading-room daily for about eight years at the beginning of my literary career; and oh (if I may quote Wordsworth) the difference to me! And that difference was a difference to all the readers of my books and of my contributions to journalism, as well as to all the spectators of my plays: say, to be excessively cautious, not less than a million people.

He spoke to the great democratizing influence of libraries. Today, facing a yawning class and culture gap, and a shrinkage of public gathering places and public resources, library patrons need libraries more than ever before — especially since many libraries are embracing the digital revolution and becoming so much more than repositories of dead tree books. Libraries are offering computer classes, access to digital resources, and so much more.

These aren't things that a Kindle can provide, and they aren't things Amazon will ever be able to offer. Rather than giving Amazon even more power over the publishing world, we should be sinking funds into libraries to shore up society and culture — and we should give thanks for all the amazing things libraries have brought us as a public resource with a value that truly can't be estimated.

From our friends at The Daily Dot , by S. E. Smith.

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Google and Other Search Engines will be the Death of Libraries? (Essay Sample)

Do you Believe that Google and Other Search Engines will be the Death of Libraries?

Name Professor Course Date Do you Believe that Google and Other Search Engines will be the Death of Libraries? It is with no doubt that the dawn of the World Wide Web, Google or search of information has become an important business unit in the commercial and competitive world markets. Libraries are just participants in this market with inclusive of stakeholders such as online content integrators publishers and search engines. It is with no doubt, that Google and other search engines will not lead to the death of libraries. Researchers or students are able to search information through search engines that are both academic and non-academic. In some incidences information acquired from Google or other search engines may not be academic approved. This makes libraries to be more adequate in providing précised information through the help of librarians for the individuals who are not able to use search engines effectively. Today, using a variety of popular search engines, users are able to use non-library public and academic directories and portals. 

Other Topics:

• Forms and Moral Difference of Euthanasia to Murder or Suicide Description: Death has become a common occurrence in the society with its cause varying from diseases, accidents, euthanasia and so forth; however, the deliberate cause of death to others may be not only a violation of moral values but also legal provisions across the world. Despite many patients willing to live, some ... 4 pages/≈1100 words | 5 Sources | MLA | Social Sciences | Essay |
• Employment Report Social Sciences Essay Research Paper Description: The country of Mexico is currently ranked 74th in the Gender Development Index with a value of 0.334 in the year 2018, according to the most recent Human Development Report published by the United Nations. It is highly alarming to realize that women are underrepresented in all levels of the workforce... 1 page/≈275 words | 15 Sources | MLA | Social Sciences | Essay |
• Different Disciplines In Addressing The TLC Theme In Communities Description: Discrimination whether based on one’s gender or sexual orientation is a major issue in our communities. This is because discrimination leads to exclusion of individuals from important services which may result into aggressive behavior such as violence or mental disturbances and suicidal behavior... 2 pages/≈550 words | No Sources | MLA | Social Sciences | Essay |
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Research for Essay Writing in English

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• Running your search
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What about Google?

Why can’t I just use Google or Google Scholars, you ask. You probably use this search engine every day, therefore you are really familiar with it. But there are many good reasons to use the library when doing research at the university. Here’s what you should know:

1 - Paywalls

When searching for sources on Google, you might find a scholarly article that is exactly what you need. But when clicking on the article, you cannot have access to the full text without paying or subscribing to the journal (also requiring fees).

As students, you should never have to pay to have access to scholarly material. The library is already subscribing to databases and journals so you can have access to them. If we do not have direct access to a specific article, you can always request it through our interlibrary loan service . We got your back! 

2 - Diversity 

Did you know that the library does not only holds books? Compare to Google where you will find mostly digital material, such as blog posts, articles, and websites, the library can provide you access to archives material, data, maps, government information, rare books and manuscripts, historical and current newspapers, audio and visual media, dictionaries and encyclopedias. This diversity of sources can expand your views on your topic!

3 - Credibility

Anyone has the capacity to publish online. This can make it difficult to know if a webpage or information that you've found on the internet is trustworthy and credible. Therefore, there's a lot of things that you should be looking for when evaluating a source (see Evaluating your results ). But when you are using the library, you know that you are consulting a carefully curated set of resources. Librarians are working hard to select the best sources and scholarly publications for the University of Ottawa students. 

4- Findability

The library gives you access to a robust search engine, Omni , and hundred of specialized databases. Those tools offer you filtering options to limit your search results and help you find the most relevant sources for you. We also provide  specialized research guides to help you navigate the resources available for your discipline. Even more, if you are still struggling, you have access to librarians who are experts in their fields! Better than Google, I would say. 

(This content is adapted from Why can't I just use Google? from the University of Toronto Libraries)

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The End Of The Library

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A simple link. That’s all it took to unleash a hailstorm of angry emails, messages, tweets, and comments. Why? I dared wonder if libraries will continue to exist in the future.

I mean, it’s not that crazy a notion, right? (If you’re a librarian , you’re not allowed to answer that.)

Last Monday, I linked to this piece by Art Brodsky for Wired from my blog. In it, he argues that beyond the recent hoopla around e-book pricing, the real problem with e-books is what they’re doing to libraries. That is, killing them.

As Brodsky notes:

Imagine walking into a library or bookstore and needing three or four pairs of different glasses to read different books manufactured to specific viewing equipment. Or buying a book and then having to arbitrarily destroy it after say, two weeks. That’s just nuts. But it’s the current situation we’re in with ebooks.

He’s referring to the fact that Amazon, Apple, Google, and others now have their own e-book stores which sell goods which only work on certain devices or within certain applications.

Also, while the economics of e-books at a library should theoretically be better (since there is no more physical product, and any replacements or new copies are just a download away), they’re actually far worse:

Take the example of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous book, Cuckoo’s Calling. For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 from book distributor Baker & Taylor — close to the consumer price of $15.49 from Barnes & Noble and of $15.19 from Amazon. But even though the ebook will cost consumers $6.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, libraries would pay $78 (through library ebook distributors Overdrive and 3M) for the same thing. Somehow the “e” in ebooks changes the pricing game, and drastically. How else does one explain libraries paying a $0.79 to $1.09 difference for a physical book to paying a difference of $71.50 just because it’s the electronic version? It’s not like being digital makes a difference for when and how they can lend it out.

And so, with these things in mind, it’s hard not to imagine a future where the majority of libraries cease to exist — at least as we currently know them. Not only are they being rendered obsolete in a digital world, the economics make even less sense. One can easily envision libraries making their way to the forefront of any budget cut discussions.

I know this sucks. Libraries have been an invaluable part of human history, propagating our culture and knowledge over centuries. But recognizing the changing times and pointing out the obvious shouldn’t be considered blasphemy. It is what it is.

The internet has replaced the importance of libraries as a repository for knowledge. And digital distribution has replaced the role of a library as a central hub for obtaining the containers of such knowledge: books. And digital bits have replaced the need to cut down trees to make paper and waste ink to create those books. This is evolution, not devolution.

It’s hard for me to even remember the last time I was in a library. I was definitely in one this past summer in Europe — on a historical tour. Before that, I think it was when I was in college. But even then, ten years ago, the internet was replacing the need to go to a library. And now, with e-books, I’m guessing the main reason to go to a library on a college campus is simply because it’s a quiet place to study.

I do recall the last several times I went to a library in high school — it was to borrow some CDs. (Which may or may not have been subsequently ripped onto a computer…)

The point is, times have changed. And things continue to change with increasing speed. So where does that leave libraries?

Undoubtedly, some of the largest, most prestigious libraries will live on. But the people lurking in them may increasingly look like Gandalf in the bowels of Minas Tirith looking through the scrolls of Isildur.

Meanwhile, some other spaces currently known as libraries may live on as cultural and/or learning centers . Others like the notion of using libraries as some sort of newfangled technology demo pits. Tablets over here! 3D printers over here! One article even likened them to Apple Stores.

There is also the notion of libraries shifting their focus to go further up the stack, as it were, to help content creators earn a better living from their writing. Eli Neiburger of the Ann Arbor District Library has written extensively about this. (Multiple people dismayed by my original link, pointed me to Neiburger’s thoughts.)

But even Neiburger admits that this is likely only a possibility for niche and/or independent writers. The big name publishers and big ticket books are never going to go for this. And again, this may mean a future where libraries have less of a focus on actual books.

All of these prospects for the future of libraries sound nice on paper (figuratively, not literally, of course). But I’m also worried that some of us are kidding ourselves. These theoretical places are not libraries in the ways that any of us currently think of libraries.

That’s the thing: it seems that nearly everyone is actually in agreement that libraries, as we currently know them, are going away. But no one wants to admit it because calling for the end of libraries seems about as popular as the Dewey Decimal System .

It’s almost like some people want to interpret anyone talking about the end of libraries as talking about the end of learning — and, by extension, the end of civilization. The reality is that learning has evolved. It’s now easier than ever to look something up. And the connected world has far better access to basically infinitely more information than can be found in even the largest library — or all of them combined . This is all a good thing. A very good thing. Maybe the best thing in the history of our civilization. Yet we retain this romantic notion of libraries as cultural touchstones. Without them, we’re worried we’ll be lost and everything will fall apart.

So we’re coming up with all these other ways to try to keep these buildings open. Co-working spaces! Media labs.  Art galleries? We’ll see. But it’s impossible to see a world where we keep libraries open simply to pretend they still serve a purpose for which they no longer serve.

I’m sorry I have to be the one to write this. I have nothing but fond memories of libraries from my youth. Of course, I also have fond memories of bookstores. And we all know how that has turned out…

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Guest Essay

Is This the End of Academic Freedom?

By Paula Chakravartty and Vasuki Nesiah

Dr. Chakravartty is a professor of media, communication and culture at New York University, where Dr. Nesiah is a professor of practice in human rights and international law.

​At New York University, the spring semester began with a poetry reading. Students and faculty gathered in the atrium of Bobst Library. At that time, about 26,000 Palestinians had already been killed in Israel’s horrific war on Gaza; the reading was a collective act of bearing witness.

The last poem read aloud was titled “If I Must Die.” It was written, hauntingly, by a Palestinian poet and academic named Refaat Alareer who was killed weeks earlier by an Israeli airstrike. The poem ends: “If I must die, let it bring hope — let it be a tale.”

Soon after those lines were recited, the university administration shut the reading down . Afterward, we learned that students and faculty members were called into disciplinary meetings for participating in this apparently “disruptive” act; written warnings were issued.

We have both taught at N.Y.U. for over a decade and believe we are in a moment of unparalleled repression. Over the past six months, since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, we have seen the university administration fail to adequately protect dissent on campus, actively squelching it instead. We believe what we are witnessing in response to student, staff and faculty opposition to the war violates the very foundations of academic freedom.

While N.Y.U. says that it remains committed to free expression on campus and that its rules about and approach to protest activity haven’t changed, students and faculty members in solidarity with the Palestinian people have found the campus environment alarmingly constrained.

About a week after Hamas’s attacks in October, the Grand Staircase in the Kimmel student center, a storied site of student protests , closed indefinitely; it has yet to reopen fully. A graduate student employee was reprimanded for putting up fliers in support of Palestinians on the student’s office door and ultimately took them down; that person is not the only N.Y.U. student to face some form of disciplinary consequence for pro-Palestinian speech or action. A resolution calling for the university to reaffirm protection of pro-Palestinian speech and civic activity on campus, passed by the elected Student Government Assembly in December, has apparently been stuck in a procedural black hole since.

The New York Police Department has become a pervasive presence on campus, with over 6,000 hours of officer presence added after the war broke out. Hundreds of faculty members have signed onto an open letter condemning the university’s “culture of fear about campus speech and activism.”

Such draconian interventions are direct threats to academic freedom.

At universities across the country, any criticism of Israel’s policies, expressions of solidarity with Palestinians, organized calls for a cease-fire or even pedagogy on the recent history of the land have all emerged as perilous speech. In a letter to university presidents in November, the A.C.L.U. expressed concern about “impermissible chilling of free speech and association on campus” in relation to pro-Palestinian student groups and views; since then, the atmosphere at colleges has become downright McCarthyite .

The donors, trustees, administrators and third parties who oppose pro-Palestinian speech seem to equate any criticism of the State of Israel — an occupying power under international law and one accused of committing war crimes — with antisemitism. To them, the norms of free speech are inherently problematic, and a broad definition of antisemitism is a tool for censorship . Outside funding has poured into horrifying doxxing and harassment campaigns. Pro-Israel surveillance groups like Canary Mission and CAMERA relentlessly target individuals and groups deemed antisemitic or critical of Israel. Ominous threats follow faculty and students for just expressing their opinions or living out their values.

To be clear, we abhor all expressions of antisemitism and wholeheartedly reject any role for antisemitism on our campuses. Equally, we believe that conflating criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism is dangerous. Equating the criticism of any nation with inherent racism endangers basic democratic freedoms on and off campus. As the A.C.L.U. wrote in its November statement, a university “cannot fulfill its mission as a forum for vigorous debate” if it polices the views of faculty members and students, however much any of us may disagree with them or find them offensive.

In a wave of crackdowns on pro-Palestinian speech nationwide, students have had scholarships revoked, job offers pulled and student groups suspended. At Columbia, protesters have reported being sprayed by what they said was skunk, a chemical weapon used by the Israeli military; at Northwestern, two Black students faced criminal charges , later dropped, for publishing a pro-Palestinian newspaper parody; at Cornell, students were arrested during a peaceful protest . In a shocking episode of violence last fall, three Palestinian students , two of them wearing kaffiyehs, were shot while walking near the University of Vermont.

Many more cases of student repression on campuses are unfolding.

Academic freedom, as defined by the American Association of University Professors in the mid-20th century , provides protection for the pursuit of knowledge by faculty members, whose job is to educate, learn and research both inside and outside the academy. Not only does this resonate with the Constitution’s free speech protections ; international human rights law also affirms the centrality of academic freedom to the right to education and the institutional autonomy of educational institutions.

Across the United States, attacks on free speech are on the rise . In recent years, right-wing groups opposed to the teaching of critical race theory have tried to undermine these principles through measures including restrictions on the discussion of history and structural racism in curriculums, heightened scrutiny of lectures and courses that are seen to promote dissent and disciplinary procedures against academics who work on these topics.

What people may not realize is that speech critical of Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies has long been censored, posing persistent challenges to those of us who uphold academic freedom. Well before Oct. 7, speech and action at N.Y.U. in support of Palestinians faced intense and undue scrutiny.

Our students are heeding Refaat Alareer’s call to bear witness. They are speaking out — writing statements, organizing protests and responding to a plausible threat of genocide with idealism and conviction. As faculty members, we believe that college should be a time when students are encouraged to ask big questions about justice and the future of humanity and to pursue answers however disquieting to the powerful.

Universities must be places where students have access to specialized knowledge that shapes contemporary debates, where faculty members are encouraged to be public intellectuals, even when, or perhaps especially when, they are expressing dissenting opinions speaking truth to power. Classrooms must allow for contextual learning, where rapidly mutating current events are put into a longer historical timeline.

This is a high-stakes moment. A century ago, attacks on open discussion of European antisemitism, the criminalization of dissent and the denial of Jewish histories of oppression and dispossession helped create the conditions for the Holocaust. One crucial “never again” lesson from that period is that the thought police can be dangerous. They can render vulnerable communities targets of oppression. They can convince the world that some lives are not as valuable as others, justifying mass slaughter.

It is no wonder that students across the country are protesting an unpopular and brutal war that, besides Israel, only the United States is capable of stopping. It is extraordinary that the very institutions that ought to safeguard their exercise of free speech are instead escalating surveillance and policing, working on ever more restrictive student conduct rules and essentially risking the death of academic freedom.

From the Vietnam War to apartheid South Africa, universities have been important places for open discussion and disagreement about government policies, the historical record, structural racism and settler colonialism. They have also long served as sites of protest. If the university cannot serve as an arena for such freedoms, the possibilities of democratic life inside and outside the university gates are not only impoverished but under threat of extinction.

Paula Chakravartty is a professor of media, communication and culture at New York University, where Vasuki Nesiah is a professor of practice in human rights and international law. Both are members of the executive committee of the N.Y.U. chapter of the American Association of University Professors and members of N.Y.U.’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine.

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