No maps for these territories

I had the great privilege of speaking at DPLA West last weekend, where I was one of a panel of speakers giving perspectives on the possibilities of the DPLA; I spoke as a Wikimedian and as a librarian.

It was only five minutes, so I wrote down my talk in full; the text is below. I was pretty happy with it as a short, punchy speech.

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A couple of years ago a Wikipedian named Liam Wyatt had an idea that the Wikimedia projects should do more formal outreach with libraries and museums and archives. Liam ended up being the first Wikipedian-in-Residence, at the British Museum, helping curators and Wikipedians alike share the Museum’s immense treasures with the world via Wikipedia articles. Other cultural institutions thought this was a cool idea, and today there are Wikipedians in Residence throughout the world, in institutions like the Smithsonian and the National Archives. And there have also been tremendous donations of archival collections to Wikimedia Commons, which is our immense free media repository, with images from NARA and many, many other sources finding a new home and a new audience as freely licensed works that Wikimedians and everyone online can use. And I hope that we can link these collections to the DPLA, and vice versa, sharing tools and metadata as common community-curated platforms.

Why does this matter, that cultural resources are now free on the web? Among other reasons, because it enables them to be seen and to be used. Wikipedia is by far the largest and most read reference work ever to exist in human history. And to make it great — to really cover all of human knowledge — we need to be able to access and share the vast riches that are in cultural institutions. Openness and free licensing for Wikimedia is not something we simply pay lip service to; it’s a concrete part of how Wikipedia editors are able to do their work of using and curating information to make something useful.

And in turn, of course, all of the content on Wikimedia projects is free for reuse and remixing as well. An example is the Wikidata project being developed now by Wikimedia Germany. Wikidata aims to be a central storehouse of semantic data that’s tied to Wikimedia projects – so that, for instance, you could update the population of the United States in Wikidata and have it be automatically updated in all the Wikipedia articles in all 270 languages. And imagine the power of linking all this shared data up to databases of references – like, say, the Harvard libraries catalog — and great open data sources, the way that Commons has opened up to the great archives of the world. And so, I hope that the DPLA, too, is a force for open data, to help make this astonishing vision possible.

But of course, all of these efforts are dependent on people editing and compiling. When I look at a Wikipedia article, I don’t just see text. I see the individuals behind it — the quirky, amazing people. We tend to talk about the Wikipedia community as if it were a monolith, but of course it’s made up of thousands of individuals all doing different things — from editing articles to fact-checking references to doing in-person outreach, like Liam, but all working under the same broad umbrella of shared values about free knowledge. And I think that the reason Wikimedia works, sometimes against all odds, is that every level of our organization and our projects is open to community contributions and community leadership. And so more than anything, I hope that the DPLA follows the same model. I hope that it is open to all kinds of contributions, large and small, no matter what your talent or passion or position is.

It’s not easy to build a great information platform. We know it’s not easy. And I see the problems from the library side, as well, in my job as a reference and collections librarian. We are fortunate at the University of California to have the strength of the UC library consortium and the California Digital Library behind us, which means that the faculty and students that I support on a daily basis have access to phenomenal library resources. But there is a cost to this that’s not just financial. From the behind-the-scenes perspective, wrangling those resources, licensing and managing them, and trying to negotiate with publishers can feel like death from a thousand papercuts. And all of that librarian effort, the work of hundreds of people, means that UC researchers and scholars do have access to the books and journals that they need — but they are the lucky ones. Most of the half-billion readers of Wikipedia from around the world can only imagine having such access to information.

We can do better. And we must do better, in order to fulfill our collective mission as research libraries, as public libraries, as a free knowledge movement, and as individuals committed to preserving the cultural record and eliminating information disparity. I want to live in a world where my next-door neighbor and I can both look at the same Wikipedia article, and both get access to the same sources cited in it, even though I am affiliated with a great research university and she is not. And, I want the Wikipedia editors who write that article — the editors in Bangladesh, in Argentina, in rural Wyoming, in New York City — to also have access to those great sources — indeed, as Wikimedia’s vision says, to have access to the sum of all human knowledge.  Together, I think we can make that happen. Thank you.

Tonight I went to a nice talk about particle physics, and observational scale: the idea that how we observe something, and at what scale, changes what we see. A simple idea, fundamental to art and science, often forgotten in other areas.

I am fond of the human scale, myself. If I am honest about my understanding of the world, theory is largely lost on me, as are physical things only seen with sophisticated instruments. If there is a chance of sighting something with glass alone — whether far or near — I feel I can get some kind of handle on it; it seems my capacity for conceptual understanding is firmly rooted in the technology of the 18th century. Not that I disbelieve the particle physicists, the radio astronomers, the quantum chemists: but I only feel polite curiosity at their results, not true wonder. (This is, parenthetically, one of the reasons I doubt I’ll ever really get a proper handle on the physical workings of computers; though I grasp the general idea of a semiconductor, understanding it seems a different matter. But give me high-level code — again, a human scale — and I do just fine).

Complexity is not the issue; scale is. Give me trees, or flukes; moon craters or ants, steel or ash. Something visible; something tangible. This is what I have always thought my relationship to science was; dirt on the knees, cells under a microscope, everything else for others with a stronger capacity to believe in equations and shadows on walls, who can tell the rest of us stories about the very small and far away.

I have thought this. But if it’s true that I like the concrete, then why have I spent so much time on the truly intangible: trying to decipher the meaning of words, the feeling of agreement, the nature of love?

My friend and colleague Ben Yates died Monday evening. He was 29. He was my co-author, with Charles Matthews, on our book How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part of It. He was a skilled artist and designer, and he was responsible for the beautiful figures in the book.

I first encountered Ben before that, in 2006, when he contributed designs for our international conference Wikimania. Ben ended up designing a striking and easily reproducible logo for Wikimania 2006, which we have used ever since for the annual conference. Ben was also interested in Wikipedia merchandise, designing t-shirts and posters, and helped propose fundraising ideas (including the idea of collecting stories from community members) that are only today really being implemented at the WMF — he was ahead of his time.

Ben had been a Wikipedia editor, as User:Tlogmer, since 2003. He wasn’t a heavy contributor, but he was a good one, and like me he was interested in the project from a meta perspective. He wrote a blog about Wikipedia that, while it ran, was widely read in and out of our community — the reporter for the New York Times that has long covered Wikipedia issues once mentioned it to me as one of his sources. Ben was insightful and incisive, funny and smart, with a fondness for the small, absurd things that make Wikipedia so enjoyable. He had a long history of contributions to collaborative projects; he was a contributor to Everything2, starting in 1999. And he was a musician in addition to an artist and writer.

We worked closely together for months on the book, but never got a chance to meet in person. The three of us did almost all of our work over email, and on those long threads and endless discussions Ben was always patient, responsible and helpful; I never had a bad interaction with him. He was shy, too; I never knew much about his personal life. In the last couple of years, we weren’t in close touch; we corresponded a bit and I knew that he was still living in Michigan, where he was from. He never got a chance to go to Wikimania, the conference that enabled his logo to be shown on 5 continents, from banners on the street in Taiwan to books in Argentina.

Ben was a lovely person, and he will be greatly missed.

Edited:

I was looking for things on the web by Ben, and came across this short piece he wrote on Andrew Lih’s wiki where contributors speculated about the way forward for Wikipedia. Ben died on the eve of Encyclopedia Britannica posting that they were no longer going to produce printed volumes, so this seems prescient — as does the note about alternative views, given recent discussions.

From http://wikipediarevolution.com/wiki/Rivals%2C_spinoffs%2C_parallel_projects

“Wikipedia will not see a real competitor for a long time. Direct competition is a quixotic task, because of wikipedia’s mindshare advantage, or whatever you want to call it — size begets size.

But “rivalry” is the wrong way to think about it. There’s a lot of potential for other ways of viewing and framing and contextualizing and thinking about wikipedia content — who’s to say that there shouldn’t be wikipedia in one frame and another resource in another? Or a commentary on the wiki page integrated into the text, color-coded? Or that the most recent version of the wiki article must be the canonical one (the one you see first)? There will be alternate interfaces to wikipedia’s content, especially as the API becomes more full-featured.

The catch is that a customized version of wikipedia (look! I’m by default only seeing the article revision rated funniest by wikipediafilter!) is in some ways less compelling than the ordinary version — there’s power in seeing what a bunch of other people are seeing. It ties you into society. Alternate interfaces will have to overcome this obstacle if they are to succeed.”

Ben’s obituary is here.

As in the past election, I’m posting my candidacy statement for the Board of Trustees publicly. I’m running as a part of the chapter-selected seats process, which is outlined here. My term is up in July; the chapters aim to have a decision made in May.

It has been a true honor as well as a stressful endeavor to be on the Board the last two years! My statement, which is in the form of a letter, follows. It’s long; my apologies. I was feeling reflective.

——–

Dear colleagues,

I write this on the way home from the 2012 Finance Meeting, which was an unexpectedly joyful event. At the end of the meeting, we were all asked to write down a word summarizing the weekend. Mine was “community.” To me, the idea of community — people brought together over shared experience and shared work — is the essence of Wikimedia: it is what defines us as more than just a website or reference work. On every level, whether it be financial decisions, organizational communication, software development, or writing articles, remembering that we are all part of the same community is what makes our work and mission possible.

After much thought, I am running for another term on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. To say that being on the Board is difficult is an understatement; it is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But it is also important, exciting work. I have been honored to have been a part of it the last two years, and I would be glad to continue on behalf of our community.

I believe I bring the following qualities and experiences to the Board:

* Familiarity with the Board and the WMF
Becoming a trustee involves a steep learning curve. It can be particularly difficult to negotiate the transition from being an outspoken community member with many friendships and connections to a position of impartial and hands-off organizational leadership. In addition to this (sometimes painful) transition and learning to work collegially with the other trustees and Sue, in the last two years I’ve also learned a good deal about non-profit governance issues and best practices though books, conferences and my fellow trustees. Continuing education and professional development is a priority for trustees, and if reappointed I would continue my governance education. I have also spent many years closely following WMF developments, and bring knowledge of both our history and the organization’s current projects to the Board.

* An academic background, specifically a background in libraries
Over the last two years my background as an academic librarian has strongly influenced my viewpoint in certain discussions, including those around how we should do planning; I believe that it is imperative for us to think of our role as stewards of the projects, and as such to plan for long-term site operation funding and preservation mechanisms. I also bring a belief in access to knowledge for all as a fundamental right, the academic values of shared governance and open scientific debate, and as a researcher, a specific familiarity with our own vibrant wiki research community. I think it is important for the Board to include at least one trustee with this type of background. I am proud to have been the first librarian on our board, and I have tried to make the most of the opportunity by promoting Wikimedia within the library community (though talks and outreach) during my service.

* Commitment to good organizational communication
I ran for Executive Secretary of the Board because I think organizational communication is critical to Wikimedia. As secretary, I’ve followed up on the great work that my predecessor SJ did to improve internal communication processes (such as developing better resolution voting mechanisms), with trying to improve Board communication with the wider community. In addition, I have also focused on internal communication, including summarizing Board discussions and bringing community discussions forward to the Board. I think I have done a fairly good job as secretary, but there is still a great deal more that I would like to do in terms of reporting Board activities, clarifying meta pages, posting information in a timely manner, and making it easier for the community to give input to the Board. Communication is one area where I feel my specific skills, background and interests can really help the Board as a whole succeed.

* Commitment to understanding and supporting our community, and the individuals and groups in it
I have a sympathetic and consensus-based approach to managing relationships and problem solving. I sometimes feel that my role within Wikimedia (in and out of the Board) is to engage in a certain self-reflection and to bring empathy for the situations of others. I have wide experience within our community, including meeting many Wikimedians around the world; I try to always bring those viewpoints and my own experience as a community member to the table. An example is in the fundraising and funds dissemination discussions, where I have attempted to understand and bring in the perspective of what it means to be an independent organization affected by our proposed changes.

* An open mind
I bring an open mind to Board and community discussions; I listen carefully, take the time to reflect, and am not afraid to change my mind based on what I hear. An example is the controversial content discussions, when I entered soon after I joined the Board. I was initially skeptical of the need for action on the issue; but I listened carefully to trustee and community concerns (as expressed in the Harris report and in discussions) and was convinced that there was a real thread of concern that should be addressed. I worked with fellow trustees to carefully craft a proposal around the Harris recommendations that we felt wouldn’t go against Wikimedia principles. After much outcry and reflection, today I think our specific proposal for an image hiding feature is not the right way to address those concerns (which are still quite real), and I support rescinding that part of our resolution. In all of this long difficult process, I have tried hard to keep an open mind and to listen to concerns fairly in order to come to the right decision.

* Time, energy, and the ability to keep up with the challenges facing us
This is an intense period to be on the Wikimedia Board. It is difficult to commit the amount of time and energy that is needed, and I had to think carefully before deciding that I was up for the challenge again. However, I am in a good situation personally: I have the support needed from my job to spend time on Wikimedia, I have the energy to do it, and I have the skills needed of being able to read, parse and summarize a vast amount of material, and of being able to write well and quickly. And I am responsive and responsible to my obligations — something that is important, as the Board very often relies on each member being available for a particular question or vote on short notice. On the Board, you can’t quit or go on an extended wikibreak; each trustee must be consistently reliable.

All that said, there are certain things I lack that the Board does need:

* Direct chapter experience
I do not have Wikimedia chapter experience, although I do have experience running a local chapter of another organization (a professional library association), and I have spent a good deal of time working and socializing with Wikimedia “chapters people” in a variety of settings globally. I have also worked hard to learn about the chapters. However, my own personal experience as a community member has been one of individual volunteer work and empowerment.

* Global diversity
I am a monolingual American. Though this makes parts of trustee work easier for me — speaking English natively enables me to keep up much more easily, and living in California means trips to the WMF office are faster and cheaper — nonetheless, I feel the lack of having a truly global perspective. Our Board has discussed our pressing need for more diversity, particularly for geographical diversity and especially perspectives from the “global South.”

* Other special expertise
I do not have special financial, management or strategic planning skills related to large, international organizations, nor do I bring a deeply technical perspective. Though we currently have a skilled treasurer, other trustees with financial expertise, and a highly competent staff, the Board is always in need of trustees who have a deep financial and nonprofit background. In addition, we do not currently have anyone who comes from the technical development community on the Board. While a number of us have done our share of minor hacking, and several trustees have managed large technical organizations, it would be helpful to have a voice directly from the tech community on the Board.

In conclusion:

The next two years, the Board will face multiple planning challenges, including setting up a new funds dissemination structure (probably including a “funds dissemination committee”); changing how WMF annual planning is approved as a result; figuring out how to do movement-wide and continued WMF strategic planning, and setting up long-term support for the projects. We also face the growing and unsolved editor retention and recruitment crisis; must guide the WMF as it rolls out changes to update and improve the projects (including a visual editor and continued global infrastructure); and continue to set the tone for what kind of an organization we are.

I know there are many good candidates running for the Board this year, including people who have run in past community elections; many of the other candidates would be great on the Board, and I would be glad to see them seated. I am excited about the work facing us and the chance to continue; regardless of the outcome of this election, however, I am truly grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of this during the past two years. Thank you for it.

You can find my professional C.V. at http://phoebeayers.info/Ayers_CV_2012.pdf and my wiki-C.V. on my userpage at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:phoebe.

The Board has taken up two weighty subjects in the last few weeks and months: fundraising and funds dissemination (or, how should we best distribute resources — including fundraising resources — around all the many Wikimedia-related projects); and movement roles (or, what are all the moving parts in Wikimedia, and what roles do they play and what recognition should they get?)

Suffice to say that I’ve been taking a lot of headache relievers this month.

These questions are hard in large part because there’s no real accepted model or best practice we can follow; there are plenty of other international fundraising non-profits, but none quite like us — that operates almost entirely online and is volunteer-driven — and at any rate, other big international non-profits don’t have these questions entirely solved either. There are always issues.

So in large part discussions are being driven by a combination of both philosophy and gut instinct, and practical issues. For instance, accounting practices and funds transfer restrictions on the one hand, and a commitment to decentralization and openness on the other. This is not a statement meant to denigrate gut instinct; I’d say on balance, the group of people talking about these issues has as good an instinct for how to lead an open, online, international community as anyone on earth. But it does mean that we are often a bit lost in discussions, because there are multiple layers. Data won’t answer the philosophical questions; philosophical orientation won’t make data go away.

For my part, there are certain things that I do know; I know what behaviors I personally want to see emerge and be encouraged by our practices, both financial and recognition-oriented.

* I want to make it always clearer, easier, and more open for volunteers and editors everywhere to get involved in online and real-life Wikimedia projects, to take leadership of those projects, and to become involved in Wikimedia governance if they so choose.

This is often referred to as “empowerment” but I’ve never liked that word; it’s so nonspecific. And we use “decentralization” a lot too, but that can also be nonspecific. I mean very specific things: I want existing projects to be easy to find and clearly linked to online endeavors. I want it to be easy to identify gaps and propose new projects, and have those projects be peer-reviewed and taken seriously in defined processes, including funding processes. I want it to be easy and always welcoming to both volunteer for a project and to look for volunteers, and to find resources and information from work that has gone before.  And I want the processes of governance (including funding governance) and the ways that decisions are made on any given level to be open, transparent, non-discriminatory and welcoming. While they are open, our bodies and groups should be robust: not prone to takeover by a few strong personalities or outliers, and built on practices that can be replicated and taken up by new people who join. I want it to be possible for people from all parts of the projects and beyond to come to the table and help set the agenda, to bring up new ideas and then execute them without barriers and dependencies in their way from the existing structure. I want to encourage the personal pride and sense of ownership (in the best possible way) of community members in the projects.

I want it to be easy to be inspired to build things, and then to do so.

This covers everything. It covers chapters, informal projects, wikiprojects, and the Foundation.

* A variation of the same theme: I want an organizational structure — again, online and off — that anyone at any level can figure out how to participate in.

Say: I’m an editor. I love doing work in the real world in my community. I want to start a mailing list for the regular meetups I’ve been running. Also, I want to be able to apply for a grant to fund supplies for a conference. And I want to put up a geolocated notice on Wikipedia about my group, get the museum professionals in my group hooked up with international GLAM efforts for ideas, and there’s been talk of a mediawiki hackathon in my area and I’m interested in making that happen. Lastly, I want some ideas for presentation materials to teach teachers about Wikipedia. I don’t speak English. There is no chapter in my country. I should be able to do this, and I should be able to get help easily and efficiently.

Say: I’m an editor. I want to get a project funded to buy some reference materials. (”Wouldn’t that be nice? I think.) I live in a country with a national chapter. I want to contact them for help and propose my small project for funding, and get a reasonably fast answer.  I should be able to do this, and I should be able to get help easily and efficiently.

Say: I’m a new staffer at the Wikimedia Foundation. I am working on… well, let’s say new MediaWiki features. I want to get some community feedback from a wide variety of editors in different languages on a few different designs. I don’t know where to go or how to ask. I should be able to do this, and the structure of our organization should help me.

Say: I’m a reader. I’ve never edited; I want to. I also happen to be a real-life expert in something. I’ve heard there’s a Wikipedia conference in my area; should I go? Also, I want to give the project some money. This should be easy.

Say: I’m in a leadership role on the projects. I have been involved in Wikimedia for a long time. I want to help out editors; I want, also, to help make big-picture decisions about future strategy and large-scale funding. I am concerned about the direction Wikimedia is going in, and I think there are important classes of projects that haven’t been funded; I have big ideas. I want to have a say in not just overall governance but also strategy; and I want to be able to weigh in on whether budgets are appropriate and what new projects should be started; I want to help make these decisions even though I’m not on staff or the WMF board or on a chapter board.  I should be able to do this, in a respectful, open, and meaningful way; I should be able to lead as part of a community.

Say: I’m in a leadership role in a chapter. I have started a chapter, and nursed it through the first few years. I am thinking about the organization’s future: what kind of projects should we work on, how will we stay sustainable, and who will take over after me? I want to see us funded in a responsible way; I have an ownership stake in making this organization work. I feel I can offer a lot when it comes to peer review. I do not want to see what I’ve built be undermined or destroyed through neglect; I know we do important work. I should be able to participate in a community of peers, and get help building this group, and share my knowledge too.

* I want the projects — Wikipedia and her sisters — to be kept online and made available forever; to serve as a corpus of free knowledge that can be openly stewarded for the long haul.

I was around when we had the “Wikipedia forever” slogan in the fundraiser, and it amused me up too (4eva!) But I am reminded of our seriousness of purpose. We’re in this business in the first place to promote free knowledge, and our role is to be caretakers of the Wikimedia projects. Financially, that means that operating costs for the projects need to be covered without caveat for a very long time, because we are stewards of something important.  It also means that we should worry about the sustainability of the projects above all, whether than means losing editors or bad software or simple hosting needs. When it comes down to it, I’d place this financial goal above all others, with the additional notion that….

* I don’t want us to embarrass ourselves over money.

Seriously. That means we have better things to fight about, as a movement. It means that money is important, because it enables us to put this thing out to lots of people and do stuff that supports that — but we shouldn’t overweight it . We are worldwide famous, after all, for building the best reference work ever without paying anyone to do so and then giving it away. Money is not our motivation around here, in general, and we shouldn’t confuse it as a substitute for things that are hugely important to us — like autonomy and agency and collaboration.

It also means that when things get fucked up somewhere, for some reason, as they no doubt will someday in the largest online movement that ever was (and have in fact already in our distant and murky past), that we have good peer review, professionals, and accountability practices to deal with it, without crisis. That we don’t inadvertently put people who do have better things to worry about at risk, because they don’t know how we need money to be handled to meet unforgiving national tax codes. That we share what we know on this subject, and encourage sunshine. That we are not in a position of being stressed out by externally-imposed requirements, or ideally internally imposed ones either.

* I know that we will iterate, and that’s OK.

One thing that is hard in these conversations is I sometimes feel like there we all suffer from a lag between what we talk about — what was-once — and the reality of what it is today. Things are not the same as they were in 2009, people. For one thing, Wikimedia’s fundraising department is now even more kick-ass and getting more efficient by the minute (for those who haven’t spent an afternoon in the fundraising war room, I encourage it). We are regularly making choices that change the territory: having Global Collect means we can efficiently collect payments from all over the place in all sorts of mediums. This is new! It changes the territory! On the chapters side, we’re at nearly forty chapters which is a lot, and they are all sorts of different kinds of organizations, with different needs. And I haven’t heard anyone argue for a straight 50-50 split recently — we tried that, and it doesn’t really work in lots of situations. We are iterating. We will continue to iterate. And even this round will not be perfect, even though we (the board) are trying our damnedest to approach it with intentionality and thoughtfulness for the long term.There will be unexpected consequences for some of the things we do, and bad habits that we inadvertantly reinforce. We need to be able to name and fix these when they come up.

—

But: my dear friends and colleagues, you know what I don’t know? I don’t know what all of the above means when it comes down to making, say, decisions about payment processing criteria or how to build a funding decisions body or even if a funding decisions body is the right call (though at this point in my thinking I think it is). I just know what I, personally, want to solve for. And I think we’re actually on the right track, despite ourselves, to building a good and robust structure. But what I’m looking for is help figuring out how to build the right things. And if we are trying to solve for different outcomes, then I want that to be clear and explicit and on the table; this will take all of us.

(NB: or you could just watch this Clay Shirky video)

I wrote this for a science librarians mailing list, and in lieu of having time to write another post (today is a big day for us at Wikimedia) reproduce it here.

—-

I’m a science librarian at UC Davis and sit on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia.

In a nutshell: it’s far easier to stop bills from being passed than it is to overturn them once they have been passed. Wikimedia stands with much of the rest of the internet community in being concerned that these bills, as written, don’t just threaten individual sites but indeed threaten the whole structure of the open Internet. SOPA/PIPA have provisions that would overturn  the DMCA “safe harbor”, by requiring not just sites to take down links to infringing content on request and without review, but also ISPs to block access through DNS hacks and payment networks to stop payment to targeted sites. This is a kind of blacklisting that to date has only been seen in repressive regimes. The target of the legislation is “foreign infringing websites”, but the entire internet’s architecture would be affected.[1]

So no, it’s not just our business model that Wikimedia is concerned about. We are concerned about the entire network that we all rely on to freely and openly access information. And while Wikipedia *articles* hold to a principle of neutrality, Wikipedia *the project* is political: our mission and belief is that that everyone on earth should have access to good information, and that is a position that is under constant threat from censorious actions around the world. Wikimedia is in a unique position in that we aren’t dependent on ad revenue or commercial interests, and don’t have ties to big media (like most news outlets do) or shareholders (like most big information companies); we are only dependent on the goodwill of our community, and that community has spoken quite loudly and clearly that they want to protest these bills.[2]

Day in and day out, we take the internet for granted — that the network is there as a public and common good, and will always be accessible. But in fact, the open internet as we know it is dependent wholly on the legislation regulating it, and the U.S. has been a leader in this way in the last couple of decades, with laws that have enabled the innovation of Silicon Valley and the most vibrant information-based economy in the world. Bills like this threaten that openness. We don’t take a protest lightly — it is a big decision, and there are many questions about timing and so on — but we are willing to stand up for our beliefs and what Wikimedia stands for.

The American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries have both spoken out against SOPA/PIPA, as the bills would also affect library and university networks and would serve to greatly expand copyright infringement penalties [3]. However, most major publishers have signed on as being in favor of the bills[4]. So while the next couple of days are indeed a chance for libraries to shine as places to get information even when major websites are offline — be aware that as institutions our services are also threatened by these bills.

– Phoebe Ayers

1. see for instance: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/how-sopa-will-hurt-the-free-web-and-wikipedia/, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech, http://www.cdt.org/paper/sopa-summary, http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57344028-281/vint-cerf-sopa-means-unprecedented-censorship-of-the-web/
2. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/16/wikipedias-community-calls-for-anti-sopa-blackout-january-18/
3. http://www.acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/archives/4574, http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/lca-sopa-8nov11.pdf
4. http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/List%20of%20SOPA%20Supporters.pdf

Tuesday. In the past four days I have discovered something about what it is like to be a part of a community in sudden crisis, to have your campus put squarely and nearly instantaneously on the map of vast public consciousness,  and to have that crisis turned into 24/7 news, a wickedly funny recursive internet meme and a symbol of vast outrage right before your eyes.

It means that you look to other people in that community for comfort, and talking, and an uncertain but very real need to come together.

General Assembly, 11/21/11, UC Davis Quad. Credit Jonathan Eisen, cc-by.

More pictures from Dr. Eisen here

And it means that you find yourself in the unenviable state of having your campus be the centerpiece of the facebook updates and twitterstreams of friends and the discussion topic of strangers’ cocktail parties, and of hard discussions in every department and email list and water-coolered hallway, for an event that you wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Working for a university is a different kind of thing than attending one. I do not feel the same kind of alma mater loyalty that makes people nostalgic, or wear collegiate sweatshirts. Instead I realize — perhaps slightly queasily at times — that I do support this school, and have certainly affiliated myself with its success and prosperity, because I have put my labor and my best efforts (and perhaps my best years) into making it so. I have always believed that it matters where you work; that, given the privilege of choice (and it is a privilege, a deep one, to be able to choose) one’s labor shouldn’t go to something you don’t truly believe in.

The nature of protest is that you care enough to act — that you believe that some part of the system you take part in can be made better. There have been dozens of commentaries the last couple of days on police brutality in America and on college campuses; there have been eloquent essays about the nature of protest. Many pieces of advice have been given to our suddenly-embattled chancellor; many eloquent letters from our faculty have been published online, some calling for resignation but many calling for support and strength. A piece that has stayed with me is one by Cathy Davidson, pointing out that really student protestors are on the side of everything university leaders should be on the side of; that these students are the best allies for going to a state legislator and an unwilling populace to ask for support. The students, in other words, care enough about the system they are in to act.

At UCD last night, some enterprising students built a 30-foot steel-framed geodesic dome to stand where the razed tents had stood (and where they reappeared last night). Whose education does this help? All of ours, we can hope.

Geodesic Dome, UC Davis quad. Credit Jonathan Eisen, cc-by.

tents on the UC Davis quad. Credit Jonathan Eisen, cc-by.

ETA: Katehi’s speech last night.