Open Culture at the Heart of the University: Libraries as Multicommons

Open Culture at the Heart of the University: Libraries as Multicommons
Anna Gold University Librarian, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Open Knowledge Conference, 2013 Hello and thank you for coming. My name is Anna Gold, and I’m the university librarian at Cal Poly, a public university in California. I’m going to talk today about the relationship between libraries and open culture. I’m also going to propose a name for what today’s libraries are becoming: a multicommons.

Outline Plowing the dark 2. The multicommons 2.1 Plowing the commons
2.2 Programming the commons 2.3 Commons and place 3. Steering the multicommons ADVANCE My presentation introduces the idea of the multicommons through images from popular culture. ADVANCE I’ll talk mostly about what goes on in the multicommons through illustrations from libraries. ADVANCE I’ll close by talking about governance of the multicommons as it relates to open culture. ADVANCE

1. Plowing the dark The title of my first section comes from the novel by American writer Richard Powers. [Plowing the Dark, 2000]

In this novel he describes the work of virtual reality engineers in “The Cavern.”
They use programming, but also art, memory, and imagination to create a virtual shared world. ADVANCE In Power’s novel, a painter works with virtual reality engineers ---- REFERENCE: Powers, Richard (2000). Plowing the Dark. IMAGE:

….to transform white walls by taking this painting – Henri Rousseau’s “The Dream” – and bringing the rain forest alive, with rustling leaves. REFERENCE: - Review of Plowing the Dark, New York Times IMAGE:

The holodeck "functions as a cultural repository of narrative possibilities that would normally be excluded from the ship's own sociohistorical moment.” (Hardy & Kukla) Here is the holodeck from Star Trek -- another blank canvas from popular culture. The holodeck is a room where reality can be simulated or recreated. Those who enter the holodeck may observe, or may interact with the simulated reality. REFERENCE: Sarah Hardy & Rebecca Kukla, "A Paramount Narrative: Exploring Space on the Starship Enterprise" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 2 (1999): 182. Citation from Wikipedia, “holodeck,” retrieved August 15, 2013, IMAGE:

“Real things invite inspection. Sabotage can be detected.
Hacking is possible.” (Brantley) As Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive says, “The real life fact that one must enter a holodeck is critically important.” (2012) IMAGE: REFERENCE: The holodeck is a place of “self-enactment and storytelling in a social context.”

And it’s no longer a fantasy.
Here is the “reality deck” at Stony Brook University in New York. Here we see a very important aspect of the holodeck: it is activated by the imagination and vision of the people who use it. ---- IMAGE and REFERENCE: “[T]his might just be the closest we’ve ever come to seeing the holodeck. Named the ‘Reality Deck’ and built over four walls at Stony Brook University (SBU) in New York, it’s made up of 416 Samsung LCD high-resolution displays (each of 2560 x 1440 pixels), which brings in a total resolution of over 1.5 billion pixels.

This point - that a holodeck is activated by the people who use it - is key to my talk today.
It is the same point I want to make about how open culture is activated by people who use it. This happens in what I will call a “multicommons.” ----- IMAGE:

multicommons space + tools + people =
As I’m defining it today, a multicommons is the whole system: ADVANCE the canvas, the tools, and the people who activate them. ADVANCE If we’re going to plow the dark, we need a multicommons. ---- SOURCE: IMAGE:

2. The multicommons I’d like to start by looking back for a moment to the historic idea of the commons, from medieval times. Next we’ll look at an excellent example of the multicommons. Then we’ll look at some of the elements that make up a multicommons.

We think of the traditional commons as a big open grassy space: in this image, the “common pasture”.
This picture illustrates that the commons is much more: it’s a system of open fields: pasture, fallows, autumn planting, spring planting. It’s not only a system of resources, but also a system of agreements and practices, as Lewis Hyde has explained in his book Common as Air (2010): Those practices and agreements both permit, and constrain, or “stint” the use of common resources. REFERENCE: Hyde, Lewis (2010). Common as Air. IMAGE:

“A commons is a shared space and collection of resources activated, managed, and cared for by the public for the benefit of all. A cultural commons is a similar environment. It encourages the sharing and remixing of ideas, art forms, and culture.” (Walker Art Center) An excellent example of the multicommons is a museum in Minneapolis: the Walker Art Center.. Since 2011, this museum has been running a project called “Open Field.” ADVANCE This photograph here is literally an open field that lies in front of their building, and it’s where a lot of the Open Field project happens. Their definition of a commons, and of a cultural commons is shown here: [DON’T READ] “A commons is a shared space and collection of resources activated, managed, and cared for by the public for the benefit of all. A cultural commons is a similar environment. It encourages the sharing and remixing of ideas, art forms, and culture.” I’m taking this another step to say that the commons only exists when people are in it. ----- REFERENCES: IMAGE:

The Walker Open Field project explores the idea of a commons as something that is created through participation of the public. Without them, it’s just an open field. REFERENCE, IMAGE:

Their aim is to build a museum “that intentionally sets out to produce something of collective value with the public, rather than for them.” ----- REFERENCE, IMAGE:

They explore the idea of the open field in other places.
Here is a photo of the “Do You Feel It Too?” project, using a city street as an open field, and inviting people to dance in public to their favorite songs. Now let’s take this idea of the multicommons to see how it applies to university libraries. ------ REFERENCE: IMAGE:

To begin with, university libraries occupy a position at the crossroads of commercial culture, and open culture. They are part of a complex system of managed knowledge. Libraries license access to digital information from publishers, for use by their communities. In doing so, university libraries agree to, and enforce, significant barriers to the knowledge commons. ----- IMAGE:

A true tragedy of the commons played out at MIT and Harvard earlier this year, against this background, when activist Aaron Swartz was legally prosecuted. We could say that by agreeing to terms of digital access that undermine a variety of valid user needs, libraries participate in stinting the commons even within their own communities. ---- REFERENCES: Accessed August 15, 2013. Eschenfelder et al., “How institutionalized are model license use terms? An analysis of e-journal license use rights clauses from 2000 to 2009.” College & Research Libraries: 74:4, July 2013. IMAGE:

But libraries have also protected and expanded the commons.
Libraries are among the most vigilant of citizens in “beating the bounds” of the commons to maintain the widest possible access to cultural and knowledge resources. Libraries are also global leaders in developing and protecting new forms and instances of the cultural commons. They’ve done this through mass digitizing, with Hathi Trust and the Digital Public Library of America, and hundreds of locally managed open access digital repositories. REFERENCE: (beating the bounds): Hyde, Lewis, Common as air, p. 37. IMAGE:

These are important contributions, and they are providing many resources that the multicommons requires. But if, as I’ve claimed, the multicommons exists when people act in it, these contributions are not enough to make a multicommons. ------ IMAGE:

Even though university libraries sit at the heart of universities that are increasingly enclosed, as multicommons, they offer an alternative to enclosed culture. Let’s see some examples of how libraries can do this. ----- IMAGE:

Teaching and exercising the powers needed to contribute to culture is a fundamental purpose of our education systems, including our libraries. Why should young artists be only sponges at the shores of culture? Why shouldn’t they become part of the lake as they swim, dive, and play in its waters? Here are some examples. REFERENCE: - Lewis Hyde, Common As Air (204) IMAGE: “The commons of culture is a huge lake; young artists are sponges at its shores. Some become great rivers as well, and feed the lake.” (Hyde) 2.1 Plowing the commons

Libraries have long been centers for reading culture, but they’re becoming centers also for writing culture. ---- REFERENCE: See (Elmborg 2005) for examples of co-located services, consolidated services, faculty development projects, and archival studies of student writing. IMAGE: Typing in Public.

This also means a broader notion of reading and writing: one that includes visual information, data, sound, and video. IMAGE:

Most libraries now provide production studios or software for users to create media and data artifacts. IMAGE: YOUmedia at Chicago Public Library

Here’s another type of writing in libraries: skilled, informal public inscription.
Whiteboards are everywhere: on wheels, on walls, doubling as gallery spaces. Even windows have become transparent white boards. ----- REFERENCES: IMAGE:

One might say our students see the world as a whiteboard – local, visible, inscribable, erasable.
They practice inscription as personal, and public; functional, and aesthetic. What better practice for participating in culture? IMAGE:

People are also also “writing” things in libraries.
This year the Chicago Public Library opened up a maker lab with 3D printers, laser cutters, and a milling machine. The science library at the University of Nevada in Reno (UNR) is offering a 3D printer / copier. These are just two examples of a growing trend. ------ SOURCES: [slide quote] “Many libraries are becoming maker spaces, providing opportunities where people can gather and create. … It’s almost like libraries are going back to how they began: as gathering spaces for people to talk about ideas, and shaping new concepts. It is a paradigm shift from how things have been recently, but it’s almost really like going back to basics.” See also: In Chicago, 3-D Printers Are Available To Anyone With A Library Card. POPULAR SCIENCE | JULY 11, IMAGE: OR “Many libraries are becoming maker spaces, providing opportunities where people can gather and create.” (PPS)

Libraries are also inviting people to add names and details to historical images that would otherwise be silent. The Metadata Games Crowdsourcing Toolset is an experiment in inviting users to tag photographs and images. ------ SOURCES:

Using their social media skills, people are adding to the cultural commons by creating annotations, comments, lists, ratings, and more, increasing the value of the commons to others. SOURCES: Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums Part 1: Site Reviews. Karen Smith-Yoshimura, OCLC Research, Cyndi Shein, Getty Research Institute IMAGE:

Libraries are expanding their openness to user-contributed knowledge in other ways.
At my library we invite, capture and share stories by researchers and others about their work outside the library. Most of these can be found through our blog, Out Loud. SOURCES ;

“The longer I work at Kennedy Library, the more I realize that it’s not just a big cement box filled with books and computers and couches. The library is a project, a work-in-progress, constantly growing and expanding and changing as students’ needs change.” We also invite students and librarians and staff to share stories about their work inside the library. ----- SOURCE:

Library walls and virtual spaces are used to share users’ research and creative work - everything from artwork, sculpture, and photography, to research posters and books. ------ IMAGE:

It used to be that “curation” was an esoteric topic
It used to be that “curation” was an esoteric topic. Now we’re in what has been called a “curation nation.” Libraries help users collect and reflect on their own culture. At my campus, a professor invites the region’s ethnic communities to bring in family records and documents, scanning them with the aid of students and researchers. Last spring she invited Filipino community members to bring in their letters of love and friendship. ----- SOURCE: IMAGES:

After they’re scanned, the artifacts go home with the families.
The records enter the cultural commons without diminishing the ability of communities and families to own their own histories. ---- IMAGE: Kennedy Library Choose a Layout …then click the placeholders to add your own pictures and captions.

Click a picture, and then click the Format Picture tab to create your own frames and make picture corrections such as adjusting contrast and brightness or cropping the picture for just the right look. Japanese American families, including families that had been uprooted from the California central coast during World War II, gathered in our university library to see and talk about each others’ photographs and records. IMAGE: Kennedy Library

2.2 Programming the commons
So there’s a lot going on in libraries, with users reading, writing, singing, collecting, talking, sharing. And this brings me to another important point about libraries and the multicommons. Part of what makes a multicommons work is having programs that attract and invite people to participate. In its simplest terms, a program is “having something going on.” ----- SOURCE: 2.2 Programming the commons

At the Kennedy Library we have someone who is our programs coordinator.
Her job is to network within our community in order to find out “what’s going on,” and to create occasions and circumstances that allow others to see it and share it. ---- IMAGE: Kennedy Library

In an academic library this type of position is still very unusual: she is part designer, part story-teller, part educator, full-time listener. To use a mixed metaphor, she has her hand on the “voice of the library” as it emerges from all sectors of our community: students, scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors, planners.

Our library programs include three series: Science Café, Conversations with Campus Authors, and Data Studio Presents. Each event happens in a library space that provides transparency and friendship, and each event is a loosely guided performance: The cast includes researchers, writers, students, and technicians. They work with an audience that expects to be both entertained and involved.

While digital open culture is an important part of the multicommons, and libraries do a lot in this area, the local, physical aspect of libraries is also incredibly important. Public places like libraries play a vital role in the cultural commons, as a place to exercise public ownership of culture and knowledge. 2.3 Commons and place

I should clarify that “public places” are not the same thing as public buildings.
Many library buildings have been handsomely expanded and redesigned, or even built from scratch. ------ IMAGE: Model: Credit: Gehry Partners Caption information: A model submitted to the University in 2005 conveyed the design. Rather than draw architectural plans, the architect used a modeling technique, coupled with computer software, to render the design.

In contrast, library buildings as vibrant public places are places that support the multicommons.
Good public places are the focus of a great organization called the Project for Public Spaces (PPS). ------ SOURCE: PPS “lighter quicker cheaper” principles: IMAGE:

They develop and share ideas for developing great parks, plazas, streets, sidewalks, and other public places – places that are accessible; comfortable; sociable; and full of people doing things. IMAGE: Kennedy Library

The group has created this Place Diagram, as a tool to illustrate how to link the intangibles of a good place, with observable indicators that it’s working. ------ SOURCE:

Lighting use and design Moveable seating Tents and awnings
Water element Lighting use and design Moveable seating Tents and awnings Vending carts Bus shelters Food Sitwalls, ledges, and steps Signage Waste receptacles Seating Benches They’ve also developed advice for furnishing great public places. ------ SOURCE:

#6: Bus shelters Libraries are doing many of these things intuitively!
Learning from other successful public places, we can do even more. ---- IMAGE:

1. The community is the expert.
1. The community is the expert. Among the principles to follow in creating good public spaces: use the community as the expert. We found this to be very good advice: our students asked for color, landscaping, electrical power. They’ve been right again and again. ----- SOURCE: Eleven Principles for Creating Great Community Places

6. Start with the petunias.
Another principle of good public places is: “start with the petunias.” They mean this literally- plant flowers! They also mean making other differences,“Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper”, with signs, chairs, artwork. This works too. IMAGE:

11. You are never finished Another principle of good public places: “You are never finished.” Creating a place is both a process, and a process of creating a process. If it is successful, it will change. ------ IMAGE:

3. Steering the multicommons
Finally, there is the issue of the governance of the multicommons: Who is in control? How is power exercised, and how are decisions made?

In my university town, there is an active Farmer’s Market culture.
As a public place, Thursday night’s Farmer’s Market has all the good qualities of public places described above. ----- SOURCES: Project for great public spaces: “What Makes San Luis Obispo Farmers Market a Great Place?” IMAGE:

But farmers markets, as Lewis Hyde has explained, are complicated entities. They need governance and rules to keep them healthy. ----- SOURCES: REFERENCE: Hyde, Lewis (2010). Common as Air. IMAGE:

Like a successful farmer’s market, libraries provides a place to gather, room to dialogue, think, and create. The library also anchors and facilitates community life and civic engagement. And like a farmers market, this takes governance. ------ SOURCE: Oldenburg, Ray (1989). The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day. New York: Paragon House IMAGE:

It turns out that libraries are a very good at governance for open culture.
---- IMAGE: Kennedy Library, Cal Poly

One example of library governance of the commons at a national level is their proposal to create SHARE, a networked commons providing public access to research journal articles and research data when their research has been funded by taxpayer dollars. ----- SOURCE: IMAGE:

Another example of how libraries support governance in the multicommons is pictured here.
At my university a group of faculty is creating an experimental cross-disciplinary program. My university library offered this project “incubator” space in the library: a former photocopy room. As you see, they are occupying it like crazy, they’ve created a micro version of the multicommons in this tiny room. This group needed a space, but they were also attracted by the library’s culture of inquiry and innovation. --- IMAGE:

“[The library’s] attention is on learning that serves the well-being of the larger community, even if that community extends beyond their organizational tribe.” (Vanasupa, SUSTAIN SLO) So building a multicommons is also about building a culture of governance that is open and based on common responsibility. ---- IMAGE:

Through the tools and resources it provides, as well as its programs, place, and governance,
a university library can exemplify the multicommons on which our common culture and knowledge depend. ---- IMAGE: Kennedy Library

“For the first time in as long as she cared to remember, the future held more pictures than the past.’’ - Plowing the Dark In Powers’ novel, the artist in the Cavern realizes that the blank field she seeded with Rousseau’s jungle has come alive. It has become a generative place, for human action and choice: in other words, a multicommons. For anyone committed to open culture this is key: REFERENCE: Powers, Richard (2000). Plowing the Dark. spoken by the artist in Richard Powers’ novel.

open culture needs a multicommons: place and tools for the people
programs of the people steering by the people The future of open culture ADVANCE requires tools, programs, place, and an enabling governance: But above all, its future depends on the people who will bring it alive.

Thank you! Thank you.

[intentionally blank]

Sources: Slide 5: REFERENCE: Powers, Richard (2000). Plowing the Dark.
IMAGE: Slide 6: REFERENCE: - Review of Plowing the Dark, New York Times IMAGE: Slide 7: REFERENCE: Sarah Hardy & Rebecca Kukla, "A Paramount Narrative: Exploring Space on the Starship Enterprise" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 2 (1999): 182. Citation from Wikipedia, “holodeck,” retrieved August 15, 2013, IMAGE: Slide 8: REFERENCE: IMAGE: Slide 9: REFERENCE AND IMAGE: References and Image Sources, p. 1

Sources, continued: Slide 10:
IMAGE: Slide 11: IMAGE: Slide 13: REFERENCE: Hyde, Lewis (2010). Common as Air. IMAGE: Slide 14: REFERENCE: IMAGE: Slide 15: REFERENCE, IMAGE: Slide 16: REFERENCE, IMAGE: Slide 17: REFERENCE: IMAGE: References and Image Sources, p. 2

IMAGE: Slide 19: REFERENCES: accessed August 15, 2013; Eschenfelder et al., “How institutionalized are model license use terms? An analysis of e-journal license use rights clauses from 2000 to 2009.” College & Research Libraries: 74:4, July 2013. IMAGE: Slide 20: REFERENCE: Hyde, Lewis, Common as air, p. 37 (“beating the bounds”). IMAGE: Slide 21: IMAGE: Slide 22: IMAGE: Slide 23: REFERENCE: - Lewis Hyde, Common As Air (p. 204) IMAGE: Slide 24: IMAGE: Kennedy Library. See also: References and Image Sources, p. 3

IMAGE: Slide 26: IMAGE: Slide 27: REFERENCE: IMAGE: Slide 28: IMAGE: Slide 29: REFERENCES: IMAGES: and Slide 30: REFERENCE and IMAGE: References and Image Sources, p. 3

REFERENCE: Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums Part 1: Site Reviews. Karen Smith-Yoshimura, OCLC Research, Cyndi Shein, Getty Research Institute IMAGE: Slide 32: REFERENCE: Slide 33: REFERENCE: Slide 34: IMAGE: Slide 35: REFERENCE: IMAGES: Slide 36: IMAGE: Kennedy Library, Cal Poly Slide 37: References and Image Sources, p. 4

IMAGE: Slide 39:-42: IMAGES: Kennedy Library, Cal Poly Slide 43: IMAGE: Slide 44: REFERENCE: IMAGE: Slide 45: IMAGE: Kennedy Library, Cal Poly Slide 46: REFERENCE and IMAGE: Slide 47: REFERENCE: Slide 48: IMAGE: References and Image Sources, p. 5

Sources, continued: Slide 49: REFERENCE:
Eleven Principles for Creating Great Community Places IMAGE: Kennedy Library, Cal Poly Slide 50: IMAGE: Slide 51: IMAGE: Slide 53: REFERENCE: Project for great public spaces: “What Makes San Luis Obispo Farmers Market a Great Place?” IMAGE: Slide 54: REFERENCE: Hyde, Lewis (2010). Common as Air. Slide 55: REFERENCE: Oldenburg, Ray (1989). The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day. New York: Paragon House IMAGE: References and Image Sources, p. 6

Sources, continued: Slide 56: IMAGE: Kennedy Library, Cal Poly
REFERENCES: IMAGE: Slide 58-59 REFERENCE: Slide 60: Slide 61: REFERENCE: Powers, Richard (2000). Plowing the Dark. References and Image Sources, p. 7

Open Culture at the Heart of the University: Libraries as Multicommons

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