Brewster Kahle Should Be the Next Librarian of Congress

Brewster Kahle Should Be the Next Librarian of Congress(slate.com)

98 points by Hagelin 10 years ago | 12 comments

I know HN has a love affair going with IA and stuff, but as someone who has worked in the digital library world and has traveled in some of the same circles as IA, I don't really see this.

The IA is a great project and all, but it's not really the same as the Library of Congress. LC has to be sort of an indelible record of the doings of government and the literature of the day. The scope is big, but it's well-defined.

The IA is a moonshot effort at capturing everything, which is another way of saying it's more important to capture more things than it is to capture a given single thing well. It's interesting and important, but it's anti-library in a way, rather than being an enhancement of what libraries do.

Not to mention, I don't really believe IA is a pinnacle of digital library engineering by any means. I've heard tell of digital signatures that have shifted over time, for example.

I think Mr. Kahle has come to represent "forward thinking" in terms of providing library services in a digital age in the technology world, because he comes from the Valley and founded a successful internet property and whatnot, but that doesn't mean there aren't prominent technologists that come from the library world rather than the tech world who aren't also capable of pushing LC forward on the digital front.

kyledrake 10 years ago | |

Brewster isn't considered forward thinking because he's from San Francisco and worked on a startup. He's considered forward thinking because he's selflessly and tirelessly spent an enormous amount of time and money working to prevent a Lost Decade for human knowledge, while the rest of us (including me) were sitting around letting it erode away. I've met web researchers that have told me they sometimes spend 80% of their time on the Internet Archive. That's how bad the problem is, and how important it is that Brewster has worked to address it.

The Library of Congress, like every library in the world, needs to not only get serious about digitization of content and archival of web content, but also about providing access to that information for the public.

This not only requires the right kind of technology for data archiving (which the Internet Archive has developed and used successfully), but it also requires a step forward for the nature of things like HTTP, and how we federate and distribute data. With the right technology, we absolutely can and should archive as much information as we can to preserve our true history for future generations, not just the "New Books" section of Barnes and Noble.

I've been doing some work on that front, and Brewster was right there advocating for it (http://brewster.kahle.org/2015/08/11/locking-the-web-open-a-...). When it comes to getting things done, I bias towards the people that show up to do the work. Brewster showed up, but I haven't seen any "digital library world" people around lately, except for when they tried to lock up Aaron Swartz for opening up JSTOR, a company making a profit off the public funding of research by locking the public out of the information it paid for. That's not the future of information, and that's not how things are going to be. All that is is a data cartel that's run out of ideas working to push out competition.

I think the only relevant question here is "does Brewster actually want the job?", but I think he's perfectly qualified for it, and there is not a single person on the planet that is better qualified for it.

E34C3EFAF162 10 years ago | | |

So... CDL doesn't exist. LOCKSS doesn't exist. DPLA doesn't exist. HathiTrust doesn't exist. DuraSpace doesn't exist. Well, interesting.

cwyers 10 years ago |

The headline on Slate, "The Creator of the Internet Archive Should Be the Next Librarian of Congress," is better than the proferred headline here on HN, and the HN guidelines say to use the original headline unless it violates one of several rules (this doesn't).

Hagelin 10 years ago | |

I think the original headline of the article was "Brewster Kahle, the Creator of the Internet Archive, Should Be the Next Librarian of Congress" and that I submitted it shortened to it's current headline "The Creator of the Internet Archive Should Be the Next Librarian of Congress."

dev1n 10 years ago | |

"The Creator of the Internet Archive Should Be the Next Librarian of Congress" might have been too long of a headline to fit into HN's title box.

rsync 10 years ago |

I don't know who Brewster Kahle is, and I don't know who is doing what at the LoC, but I do know that however it shakes up, someone needs to get Jason Scott[1][2] onboard and give him the resources he needs to keep doing what he does at ever-increasing scale.

[1] http://ascii.textfiles.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Scott

Edit: Oh, I guess BK is an IA person, so he knows Jason Scott very well :)

archseer 10 years ago | |

Brewster Kahle is the founder of IA and Jason Scott's boss.

pshapiro99 10 years ago |

Brewster Kahle would be a wise choice for the next Librarian of Congress. His devotion to the public good is unquestionable. His great strength - the digital realm - will help the Library of Congress catch up to lost time, carrying our nation forward to where it needs to be -- leading, not following.

Einstalbert 10 years ago |

This is a remarkable idea. I could think of no one better, but then again, I haven't really thought about this sort of thing. Bias or no, if it wouldn't impede on what is clearly something we should consider a World Wonder, I would love to see Mr. Kahle fit the role.