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Dear Chuck, This is a good post. Nevertheless, in speaking about the library of the American Philosophical Society, you are speaking of a specialized research library established and funded for different purposes that university research libraries. Benjamin Franklin also founded the University of Pennsylvania, and it purpose is different to the purpose of the American Philosophical Society. If these and the Library Company of Philadelphia had all had the same purpose, Franklin would have only founded one organization instead of several. Some of the systems you propose will also work for university research libraries when they are well enough funded. Philadelphia has several advantages. One of these is private foundations dating back to Benjamin Franklin’s time with a history of fundraising and public giving, along with some kinds of tax support. This creates a massive amount of capital on which these institutions draw to meet their foundation goals — human capital, social capital, financial capital. To do this on a broader scale across the nation requires a serious public policy debate that the majority of Americans do not seem willing to consider. Funding more public goods requires that Americans and the people they elect must vote for and accept higher taxes. Since 1987, I have lived in nations where I pay roughly 50% of my income in taxes to support such public goods as libraries, public schools, hospitals, and universities. In some years, quirks in tax treaties or accounting problems meant that I paid as much as 66% of my income in taxes. I agree with the tax burden — my only complaint has been that on some occasions, I was charged for taxes that I did not owe. After paying all the taxes I did owe, that irked me. The challenge of living in a wealthy but underfunded nation such as America is that many organizations struggle simply to do what they were chartered to do. This is the case for many of the great university research libraries. If these libraries reach out to serve a broader public, they must do so at some cost to the main research mission within the research university. The solution is a shift in public policy, not a change to the mission of the research libraries that were designed to support research universities. Many of these libraries now struggle to perform their main chartered responsibility within the budgets on which they must survive. Even the American Philosophical Society functions primarily to serve the goals of its members. It provides some public services — but other services cost money, and one must pay for them. For example, using the archived publications on JSTOR require a subscription. You benefit from access to some APS services as a nearby resident, and you are able to attend public programs. That doesn’t apply to everyone, everywhere. APS provides many admirable online services to the world at no cost — but even APS makes choices. By and large, I agree with most of what you suggest. I am saying that this may not apply to university research libraries. Since the 1980s, the American states and the United States federal government have turned away from the concept of public goods on the principle that America will somehow build a better society by enriching and empowering those who are already wealthy. This position gained significant momentum since the election of the year 2000 with several rounds of tax cuts and rebates to the wealthy. Today, the differences are astounding. In 2010, 388 billionaires owned as much as the poorest 50% of the world’s population. In 2016, 8 multi-billionaires owned as much as the poorest 50%. 8 individuals owned as much as the poorest 3,800,000,000 people. The problem is that we do not seem to understand as a global society how to solve the problems of inequality and public goods. This has given rise to a significant literature, for example, Freeland, Chrystia. 2012. Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. https://www.amazon.com/Plutocrats-Rise-Global-Super-Rich-Everyone/dp/0143124064 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plutocrats-Rise-New-Global-Super-Rich/dp/0141043423 Temin, Peter. 2017. The Vanishing Middle Class. Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy. https://www.amazon.com/Vanishing-Middle-Class-Prejudice-Economy/dp/0262036169 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vanishing-Middle-Class-Prejudice-Economy/dp/0262036169 Scheidel, Walter. 2017. The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. https://www.amazon.com/Great-Leveler-Inequality-Twenty-First-Princeton/dp/0691165025 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Leveler-Inequality-Twenty-First-Princeton/dp/0691165025 These transformations operate at scale across societies. They limit what shrinking public funding can do. But understanding these problems doesn’t resolve the issue of what university research libraries ought to do. In the long term, I’d argue that we must consider different issues if we are to understand and fund large-scale public goods. This is a policy debate, not a question about the future of the university research library. Your subject header — “The Future of Libraries” — is interesting and important. I’m offering these comments to note that the public library and the university research library are different kinds of institution, and the private foundation research library such as the American Philosophical Society is yet another. If we are to expand the mission of the university research library, we must expand the funding we provide to those libraries. Yours, Ken — Chuck Burnette wrote: —snip— Dear Colleagues, I had a wonderful experience yesterday that brought me new appreciations of the past and new insights into possible futures for specialized research libraries, embodied meaning, and dictionary definitions. It began 3 blocks from my home at the American Philosophical Society in a room containing almost all of Benjamin Franklin’s personal library, one of the incredible resources gathered by the Society since its founding by Franklin in 1743. There the curator of printed documents on all the many subjects covered there, explained not only what one could learn from what Franklin had read, but how he worked during his life from his compilation of almanacs, the complete set of which was there. The conservation of rare books, and how books were published in Franklin’s time and beyond up to a paper on the Eniac computer in Nature in the 1950’s were presented and discussed within our small group. In the 18th century people also formed organizations to share and discuss books. One became the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, an excellent research library that offers high definition scanning services to other Art Institutions in the City as well as digital access to its extensive resources on 19th century architecture. The American Institute of Architects was organized there even as it remains a private circulating library with an outstanding speaker series and a program of awards for local authors. My point here is simply that both wonderful organizations have outstanding programs that reach beyond their membership to address issues of knowledge and culture both locally and abroad. Both also happen to be specialized research libraries with unusual histories and broader visions of their role. They have become my favorite institutions. The evening at APS continued with a highly informative and entertaining talk by Kory Stamper, author of the celebrated new book "Word by Word: the Secret Life of Dictionaries". During the talk I began to realize that the theory of embodied meaning had no role in dictionaries in which descriptive definitions rely on epistemologies and examples of word use that lack intentional and contextual grounding. I began to think about the theories of Lakoff and Johnson and how they build on recurring patterns of embodied experience expressed through conceptual metaphors appropriate to the thinker’s purpose and the context of their expression. I thought that the many examples that have been the subject of research offer a sufficient basis for a trial of whether dictionaries could be designed on this model for instant adaption of term to subject by AI software. It should greatly enable the situation based interpretation and recall of information during communication if subject, background, and context can be established before processing, the idea I mentioned in my first reply to Don. Incidentally, Old Philadelphia is a great place to live, because there are so many excellent institutions, many the first of their kind, and the oldest. Or so I believe, Chuck —snip— ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------