Signed by an enormous and numerous listing of authors, the letter decries conduct from main publishers and commerce associations, together with their lawsuit in opposition to the Internet Archive, demanding that they stop efforts to undermine the important contributions of libraries to an accessible and inclusive world of books.
Over 1000 authors have joined Neil Gaiman, Alok Menon, Naomi Klein, Saul Williams, Hanif Abdurraqib, Lawrence Lessig, Chuck Wendig, and Cory Doctorow in signing an open letter defending libraries’ position within the digital age. The letter initially debuted on September twenty ninth, 2022 with 300 signatures. Over 700 further authors have signed on since that point.
The Digital Future Of Libraries
Authors identify amongst their issues a broad battle over digital lending that appears destined for the US Supreme Court, in addition to Association of American Publishers’ President and CEO Maria Pallante just lately characterizing librarian advocates as “mouthpieces” for Big Tech. Authors make three calls for of main publishers, distributors, and commerce associations:
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In response to the letter, {industry} commerce associations issued false statements, together with the false assertion that authors have been “misled” into signing on.
The full textual content of the letter, full listing of signatories, in addition to a kind for extra authors to signal on, is out there at http://FightForTheFuture.org/Authors-For-Libraries.
The letter reads partly:
“Libraries are a basic collective good. We, the undersigned authors, are disheartened by the latest assaults in opposition to libraries being made in our identify by commerce associations such because the American Association of Publishers and the Publishers Association: undermining the standard rights of libraries to personal and protect books, intimidating libraries with lawsuits, and smearing librarians.“
Among the various array of notable new signatories are bestselling authors James Lee Burke; Matt Forbeck; Karen Joy Fowler, and Mercedes R Lackey; award-winning authors Cecil Castellucci, Eleanor Davis, Michael DeForge, Ursula Hegi, E.C. Myers, Angel Nafis, Mary Doria Russell, and Saskia Vogel; Colorado Poet Laureate Bobby LeFebre; Vermont Poet Laureate Luisa A. Igloria; official Nelson Mandela biographer Charlene Smith; Danish Feminist icon Tania Ørum; Guggenheim fellows Patricia Aufderheide and Laurence Senelick; celebrated tutorial Dr. Noura Erakat; and founding father of the Wikipedia library Jake Orlowitz.
Author Chuck Wendig mentioned: “Libraries and librarians are champions of both the under-served reader and the under-seen writer. I used to work in the public library, and I cherished that the library helped writers find readers, and readers to find writers — and writers of every level, to boot, from midlist or bestseller or debut. It is vital we make sure these seeds are planted, watered, and allowed to grow unhindered.”
Author Cory Doctorow, whose forthcoming e book Chokepoint Capitalism with fellow signatory Rebecca Giblin explores the harms of huge content material to creators, mentioned: “Anyone who tells you libraries and authors are on the opposite side of *any* issue has grossly misunderstood the nature of libraries, or authors, or both. We are class allies and artistic comrades-in-arms.”
Author, PEN/Hemingway award winner, and first trans girl nominee for the Women’s Book Award Torrey Peters mentioned: “I flat-out owe my profession as a trans creator to the unimpeded circulation of digital books: the primary trans books that impressed me have been digital, my very own first books have been printed digitally.
Bookstores didn’t carry our books at first. Therefore, any readers which have felt their very own feelings modified by my printed work–regardless of in what medium–in the end additionally owe that change to digital books. Everybody advantages when digital books are accessible.”
Author and Guggenheim Fellow Patricia Aufderheide mentioned: “Libraries are “palaces for the people,” because the title of Eric Klinenberg’s e book says so effectively. They are studying areas, secure areas, caring areas, and public areas.
They enable members of the general public to see themselves as equal to others and welcomed into this house. Libraries’ capacity to gather, protect, and share sources is a sine qua non of democracy. Bullies who decide on libraries are anti-democratic.”
Lia Holland, Campaigns and Communications Director of digital rights nonprofit Fight for the Future and lead organizer of the letter, mentioned: “In the face of a rising tide of e book bans and defunding of numerous and inclusive schooling, it’s disappointing to see main publishers to aim to squeeze the standard roles of libraries out of our digital future.
Already, cities and cities are banning life-saving numerous tales and threatening entry to info on abortion and different important healthcare.
The Association of American Publishers even gave their 2022 Distinguished Public Service Award to Senator Tom Tillis, infamous for his in depth file of anti-LGBTQ+ coverage and racist rhetoric, in addition to for cosponsoring a invoice to defund 1619 Project Curriculum.
It is obvious that the values of those commerce associations are deeply misaligned with the values of the literary group.”
Bestselling Author Matt Forbeck mentioned: “Libraries were a formative part of me learning to read, and they should be free for all forever.”
Author Jeffery M. Reynolds mentioned: “Copyright has previously century been twisted to profit companies and different companies, not creators and their estates, nor libraries who serve a public curiosity.
It is excessive time to evaluate how we have now turned our system away from permitting the unfold of data whereas guaranteeing artists get duly paid into one the place the rich extract limitless hire from the exhausting work of others and restrict public entry to that information.”
Poet Yesika Salgado mentioned: “Without libraries my friends and myself wouldn’t have had the entry to literature that we establish with and inspired us to inform our personal tales. To prohibit their skills to mortgage books is to stifle voices like ours “
New York Times bestselling creator Scott Carney mentioned: “Libraries are a vital institution to cultivate engaged readers. Allowing them to carry books in formats that readers actually use only helps authors. Not allowing libraries to function puts the control of reading into the hands of big tech companies.”
Author Marianne Díaz Hernández mentioned: “Libraries are the guardians and the bulwark of cultural range and inclusion, significantly for individuals who don’t have the means to entry tradition by different pathways.
They are the place the place individuals, significantly kids, can entry books and different supplies concerning the matters that concern them, embarrass them, or that they don’t really feel that they’ll discuss with anybody else.
The standing of libraries as a spot freed from censorship and surveillance, to hunt information we want and tales that replicate us, is likely one of the keystones of a free, open, and democratic society, and each inch that we lose on this battle contributes to the disintegration of civic house.”
Author Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez and founding father of Latina Rebels mentioned: “Libraries should be protected, it is how I first discovered my love of reading. There is no me the author without public libraries.”
Author Elizabeth Kate Switaj mentioned: “I write as a result of I wish to be learn. My most just lately printed e book is on the Internet Archive—and that delights me. I additionally make use of on-line archival materials regularly in my inventive and important work.
Moreover, as a university administrator in a small-island state (or, extra precisely, a Big Ocean Nation), I understand how vital digital sources are to international entry and fairness.”
Dan Gillmor, creator and cofounder of News Co/Lab, an initiative to raise information literacy and consciousness at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, mentioned: “Big Publishing would outlaw public libraries of it could — or at least make it impossible for libraries to buy and lend books as they have traditionally done, to enormous public benefit — and its campaign against the Internet Archive is a step toward that goal.”
Award-winning creator David Weinberger mentioned: “Publishers trying to limit the reach of libraries are hastening the death of literacy, of book culture, and of community pride in their educated differences.”
Author, and Faculty Affiliate on the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Sasha Costanza-Chock mentioned: “It’s absolutely shameful that publishers would try to destroy the efforts of the Internet archive. The future is open access publishing!”
Author Ernie Smith mentioned: “Closing off libraries to truthful entry within the digital age closes off one of the crucial vital instruments for analysis we have now. The Internet Archive’s managed digital lending method is a superb option to rapidly analysis matters from main sources that will not have digital equivalents.
The library needs to be allowed to fairly sustain with the instances, and we must always not enable publishers to aim to redefine it simply because the format is altering.”
Award-winning poet and Guggenheim Fellow Philip Metres mentioned: “The public library, to me, is the closest thing to a church for everyone–a place where people seek stories and answers to every question under the sun. Those who threaten that sacred space, who seek to reduce access to that temple of learning and exploration, are a danger to democracy itself.”
Author Mirta Wake mentioned: “Retracting the flexibility to learn from the poor is not going to web you extra gross sales, it’ll merely restrict the attain that your work might have.
Libraries that lend e-books are likely to require these borrowing to have units to learn them on, whereas the digital lending of books as in the event that they have been bodily ones by way of a PDF means that you can entry the e book it doesn’t matter what gadget you’re utilizing to learn on.
Furthermore taking down Internet Archive and forcing all into bodily libraries to borrow bodily books fails to account for a) the mobility standing of the borrower (are they even in a position?) and b) the supply of libraries of their space within the first place as increasingly libraries disappear off the map to by no means re-appear ever once more.”
Author and Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens Douglas Rushkoff mentioned: “Libraries rule. They are the clearest example of a commons that we can point to.”
Author Ashton Applewhite mentioned: “Preserving traditional library rights is essential for free speech and the transmission of information in the digital age.”
Author Diana Rosen mentioned: “Eternal vigilance is essential not for our democratic principles but for access to information, the key to an informed and responsive public. Long live our public libraries!”
Author Alex Benedict mentioned: “Growing up in Brecksville, Ohio, my native parks system and library have been my refuges. Beyond demanding that libraries be capable to buy books for everlasting use in any format in addition to be protected against lawsuits and harassment, I hope that small presses can set up nearer relationships with libraries.
Cleveland writer and poet d.a.levy freely shared his books with many libraries throughout and past Ohio. Although many libraries could also be immune to different types of literature, small presses and authors can set an instance in opposition to conglomerate writer financialization by taking sharing books with libraries.”
Poet and co-organizer Jonathan Mendoza mentioned: “I desire a future by which authors and artists are pretty compensated for his or her work and the place their works can nonetheless be reasonably priced and accessible to everybody most affected by capitalism and inequity.
Libraries, and their capacity to lend e-books in an affordable method, are key to this final result. The ever-more-common profit-driven efforts of main publishers to drive up the price to entry literature ought to misery us all. I encourage authors to affix this letter in help of libraries and of the extra equitable and accessible future that our works so usually search to construct.”
Engineer, VTuber, comic, voice-over artist, digital content material creator, and creator Margaret Gel mentioned: “Humanity will never be free, never colonize the stars, never advance as a species, as a people, as a civilization, as long as information remains shackled by Capitalism.”
Author and retired University of Oklahoma Professor Laura Gibbs mentioned: “I make sure to upload all the books for which I control the rights to the Internet Archive: it’s the library I use most, and I am proud to see my books there.”
Prof. Dr. Ellen Euler mentioned: “Libraries are crucial for a functioning democratic knowledge society. In times of multi-crises and populist propaganda, they should be able to fulfill their mission in the best possible way, including via digital and networked media!”
Author and poet Dominick Knowles mentioned: “Solidarity with library workers, archivists, and all those who make public knowledge possible against the privatizing forces of capital.”
Author Robert Berger mentioned: “Enough of Corporations trying to shove Artificial Scarcity down our throats!”
Author Steven Ok. Stroh mentioned: “The Internet Archive is an absolute treasure of the modern era. As an author, I want my works to be made widely available to the public, in perpetuity, through non-commercial organizations such as Internet Archive.”
Author Jerry Michalski mentioned: “Through their overzealous overprotection of intellectual property, the copyright industries have set civilization back considerably. Profit maximization and collective intelligence are at odds with each other.”
Author Ricardo Dominguez mentioned: “Free Archives are the only manner of making sure that information will be available to all people now and in the future. We cannot fully depend on current and developing platforms for pay-only access to make knowledge available to all.”
Author Chris Tilly mentioned: “Libraries are a cornerstone of democracy. They are at their best when they introduce people to new ideas, so it is critical that they present diverse views and experiences, and provide a wide range of published work.”
Sean O’Brien of Yale Privacy Lab mentioned: “Just because the printing press and pamphleteers democratized the sharing of textual content and paintings centuries in the past, we should battle to make sure that twenty first Century studying and sharing consists of creation and dissemination of digital copies in addition to backups of books.
Libraries are a public establishment we must always cherish, and librarians should be supported of their mission to archive and distribute public information and artistic works.”
Poet and author Raina J. León mentioned: “Ideas, imagination, compassion, community are the ways of life. Let us walk with that alignment and attunement!”
Author Jeff Sharlet mentioned: “Libraries saved my life as a young reader, and I’ve seen them do as much and more for so many others. At a time when libraries are at the frontlines of fascism’s assault on democracy, it is of greater importance than ever for writers to stand in solidarity with librarians in defense of the right to share stories. Democracy won’t survive without it.”
Author Erin Taylor mentioned: “The Internet Archive is a public good. Libraries are a public good. Only the most intellectually deprived soul would value profit over mass access to literature and knowledge.”
Author Kate Bornstein mentioned: “I grew up within the Nineteen Fifties and 60s. There was no web, however there was the Asbury Park Public Library. That’s the place I found books concerning the Weimar Republic, Magnus Hirschfeld, and American ex patriots residing in Paris.
I discovered the phrase invert, and I knew that was me. It was a public library that laid open my horizons. with at the moment’s assaults on LGBTQ individuals, we want libraries now greater than ever.”
Author Mike Godwin mentioned: “When you contemplate what number of library patrons will grow to be (or already are) lifetime e book consumers, the shortsightedness of the publishers who assault libraries and librarians is stark.
Fortunately for the remainder of us, the librarians by temperament and coaching are used to taking the lengthy view. America, I’m placing my geek shoulder to the wheel in help of librarians. (The librarians will rapidly catch the allusion.)”
Author Zin E. Rocklyn mentioned: “We must support libraries, librarians, and what they stand for: the freedom of diverse education.”
Author Andrea Vocab Sanderson mentioned: “Representation is so important. Empowering people to share their narratives with the largest audience possible will be the most impactful for all generations.”
Author Rafael J. González mentioned: “Libraries are sacrosanct keepers of the word; nothing must stand in the way of their sacred function.”
Author Bruce Edwards mentioned: “Libraries are important to the lifetime of a civilization. As increasingly of the inhabitants accesses its info electronically, it’s simply as important to have free and open entry to digital books as bodily books.
Without entry to the world of concepts and the circulation of data, the world will grow to be barren of freedom of thought and inspiration. Corporations are already doing lots to make sure the destruction of the world with their zero-sum ideology.
Libraries – and FREE entry to books – is the one bulwark the vast majority of the world has in opposition to the overwhelming thought means of our time: extra for me, much less for you.”
Author Jim Alan mentioned: “For many individuals at the moment, libraries are their solely entry to books and data. For many others, akin to myself for instance, they served as matchmakers by introducing readers to new authors.
I found Robert Jordan in such a fashion and now personal the complete Wheel of Time. As a soon-to-be-punished creator, I hope my books are present in the identical approach, to grow to be simply as cherished.
Libraries are one of the crucial vital linchpins to a free, truthful, and knowledgeable society. They are hallowed and, dare I say it, storied establishments that needs to be handled with the dignity and respect they deserve.”
Author Kat Fury mentioned: “As an author it is embarrassing to see any publishers behaving in this manner. Libraries allow people to find stories. The business aspect follows, a reader for a book is a reader for another. The love of reading means often buying books when you can. Give access and it brings money.”
Author Victoria Hansen mentioned: “I am a young playwright who depends on libraries and open information to write my monologues. If that were to disappear, I wouldn’t be able to write the way I do.”
Author Bradford McCormick, Ed.D. mentioned: “Libraries are especially important for persons who cannot afford to buy the books they read and who therefore would not contribute to authors’ royalties even without libraries, but who would be more intellectually (spiritually) in addition to already being financially impoverished, without libraries.”
Author Alexander von Essen mentioned: “Fight further dismantling of human knowledge! We need more libraries, not more Amazons!”
Author Sydney Bredenberg mentioned: “Keep libraries free. The free discussion of individual ideas benefits everyone in a free society.”
Author Manoj Barpujari mentioned: “Libraries are symbols of human history and accomplishments. Libraries represent civil norms and beauty. Why on earth they shouldn’t be preserved and enhanced as centres of knowledge, learning, aesthetics and reservoirs of what civilisations achieved so far?”
Author David Abel mentioned: “As a printed creator, skilled editor, small press writer, and bookstore proprietor for greater than thirty years in states throughout the nation, I’ve seen that libraries are indispensable to the well being of each literature and society as an entire, they usually can’t serve the broad public that want them most with out help from all quarters — particularly from those that are in one of the best place to help, not antagonize them.
The company publishers who’re squeezing libraries for digital titles would haven’t any market by any means if not for a century and a half of free public library service.”
Author Wesley Parish mentioned: “Growing up within the Papua New Guinean bush it started to hassle me about the identical time it started to hassle Jared Diamond and Yali, and an entire lot of different folks in PNG as effectively, about why the Europeans have been so a lot better outfitted than the Papua New Guineans.
One side of the reply, which occurred to me in High School in Canberra a number of years later, was that Europeans have been in a position to file info, so they may do issues with it that have been unattainable with out such info storage within the type of books.
Then later I found that the monastic dissolution ordered by one of many English kings had eradicated a majority of their libraries. And likewise the destruction of the Library of Alexandria had erased a major quantity of details about the previous – primarily ancients’ self-knowledge, as a result of the storage of data had already led to a rise in scientific info.
The parallel between the restraint of commerce within the type of information that these lawsuits symbolize, and the burning of bodily libraries at varied instances, is disturbing to ponder.”
Author Roger Bird mentioned: “My books are published under a Creative Commons Licence so I have no objection to non commercial use. The Internet Archives are the major source for my historical research.”
Author Marie Farge mentioned: “Ideas and scientific results are not of the same nature as material products, because when we share them, we do not lose them. Knowledge is therefore not a product to be sold, but a common good to be shared freely.”
Author Stephen Robertson mentioned: “I’ve donated copus of my two books to local libraries. The books encourage people to read. Libraries share knowledge. It’s a win-win for us all, because it opens authors to new readers, and readers to new authors!”
Author Anna Witoniak mentioned: “For civilisation to flourish all people need access to information and various points of view.”
Author Joe Forrest mentioned: “Stories are meant for everyone, not the privileged. They are the glue that holds our society together. Stop this madness.”
Author George Neville-Neil mentioned: “Libraries are how I and most other authors learned to write. Strangling libraries cuts off the very air that young and aspiring authors breathe.”
Author Christine Minton Anderson mentioned: “I educate the world and would love my work to be obtainable to all. I’m not in a position to journey far and huge to fulfill my eclectic studying pursuits. Libraries and librarians are my heroes.
I selected a college based mostly on the library and one of many highlights of my life was having the ability to spend time within the uncommon books room studying all of Vardis Fisher’s novels. I’d not wish to have books like these unavailable to readers.”
Author and previous president of the Michigan Press Association W. Edward Wendover mentioned: “Publishers who fight libraries are shortsighted or putting profits ahead of public good. We fought this battle early on with newspaper publishers too.”
Author Leyla Oya mentioned: “Society can solely develop via schooling. The system is already geared to stop these in communities from having correct entry to the instruments of studying. Do not be part of that system.
Allow ALL regardless of their background, race, gender, intercourse and many others. to thrive in the great thing about a library. For the place there are libraries there may be true equality. There is the chance to thrive, engineer, and create. Give the generations current and future the choice and talent to open their very own doorways in the direction of information.”
Author B.M. Francisco mentioned: “One of the fondest reminiscences I’ve as a baby goes to the varsity library or the native public library to take a look at a e book. It was so great to examine characters akin to Pippi Longstockings, Madeline, or Charlotte and really feel a reference to them.
To this present day, I nonetheless maintain expensive these darling little white books by Beatrix Potter and the tales she shared by way of the pages of a e book. Please don’t deny future cherished reminiscences from being made just by going to the library.”
Author Diego Luis Morales Rivera mentioned: “Libraries are indispensable to my research as an independent scholar. We must protect them, their staff, and the people they serve.”
Author Ann Franchi mentioned: “I have discovered so many great authors through libraries. Authors whose books I have gone on to buy. Authors whose books I would never have bought, had it not been for libraries.”
Author Nakisha Smith mentioned: “It is heinous to think that libraries would be put on trial! Music was taken out of schools, women’s rights overturned, and now this attack on libraries? People attend colleges to obtain degrees in Library Sciences. A person who would say something like this to a library has low regard for social, cultural, and ethical values.”
Author Kezia Thompson mentioned: “Libraries are important. I’ve read most, or all, of the books I’ve drawn inspiration from, from the library. Support our libraries! We won’t be the same without them.”
Author Sandra John mentioned: “Libraries have a sacred trust to preserve the records of human life and thought. They are an essential public service. Publisher’s have a part to play in that and should be supporting, not undermining, libraries. Shame on them for putting (unjustifiable) private profits before the public good.”
Author Marilyn Montalvo mentioned: “Any attempt to restrict access to library resources and collection development by any means is in violation of the right to information granted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and an assault to democracy.”
Author Jim Dawson mentioned: “The internet archive keeps the learning key to human advancement alive. The archive actively fosters freedom of thought, which outweighs any pecuniary concern.”
Author Mary Fitzpatrick mentioned: “My love of learning and my love of the written word were first fostered in a small-town library. Librarians are the saints of literacy, and libraries are the churches. ENABLE THEM for a stronger democracy, smarter populace, upward mobility, and richer arts!”
Author Maude Pagan mentioned: “Books are our future. Librarians are the keepers of the past, present, and future. Help people to continue to freely access books, no matter the format, so that humanity may continue to teach and learn.”
Author Ariadne Ross mentioned: “The Internet Archive is an indispensible resource for everyone, but especially so for those of us who live abroad and have little if any access to books in our native languages.”
Author Dan Lee mentioned: “Readers who might otherwise not be afforded the ability to read, experience, and broaden their horizons deserve to have access without threats or intimidation from corporations and politicians acting in the interest of financial gain.”
Author Renée Hornischfeger mentioned: “Aside from all of the aforementioned causes, allow us to not neglect that libraries are a public place that may convey individuals collectively (Authors for e book signings, college students for research teams, and many others) my father took my siblings and I to libraries once we have been little to A: develope a love for books.
B: have a enjoyable, quiet, secure place to bond (we couldn’t at all times afford amusement parks and the like). Libraries make us all household to some extent, via our mutual love of studying.”
Author Duygu Nur Arabaci mentioned: “Academic texts like articles and books usually are behind exorbitant fees, rendering a lot of them inaccessible to the public. While the authors are usually not being paid anything at all to write and peer review these articles and book chapters. The profits that publishers make should not be at the cost of people the text is meant to reach, and the people who create the work.”
Author Harmony Williams mentioned: “Libraries are the pillars of our communities. They’re a solace in times of need and a way to open our minds to the realities other people face. The fact that publishers see an opportunity for profit in that is sickening and it has to stop.”
Author John Daily mentioned: “The majority of my first play, So Long, Mr. Broadway, was written in libraries across New York state. Indeed, it’s where I prefer to do most of my writing. Once silent sanctums of the “shush!”, libraries are actually residing, thriving communities, every with its personal persona. They need to be acknowledged, revered, and preserved.”
Author Timothy Royce mentioned: “An assault on libraries is an assault on humanity, and humanity wants desperately to evolve previous the selfishness and elitist atrocities perpetuated by capitalism.
Author Melara Dark mentioned: “Books are the gateways to different worlds, and libraries are the hub that launches us via these gateways, connecting us not solely to what it means to be human inside ourselves, however what it means to be human within the wider universe.
To shackle and extort libraries is to shackle and warp the quintessential nature of what it means to be human; to erase the dear decorations we add to our lives that make it so we will thrive and never simply survive.”
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