By Sheldon Greaves

This piece originally appeared in the Citizen Scientists’ League blog in 2013, but given the present mania for book-banning, it seems like a good time to rerun it. Can people who love books and learning replicate something like this remarkable public institution?

A recent discussion on our FaceBook page has prompted me to do some additional thinking about last week’s installment, which covered the idea of citizen science creating their own institutions, using the example of MAD Fellows, a small research company as a kind of case study. My contention was, and remains, that at some point citizen scientists need to establish institutions of research, study, and learning that will address their needs, yet still maintain the standards embraced by the larger professional scientific community. It is also clear to me that the current model of citizen science in which volunteers collect or review data on behalf of professionals has matured and is already starting to stagnate. We are not seeing new amateur or citizen scientists emerging from the ranks of these volunteers who are capable of conceiving and running their own scientific projects. This is because there is no pathway or infrastructure that can channel their passion into expertise.

For this reason, I strongly believe that institutions formed by non-professional scientists are crucial to developing a truly sound community of scientific inquiry. This week I want to profile a different kind of independent institution, which may have an analogue for citizen scientists. A DIY public library.

In 2002 Megan and Rick Prelinger decided to create their own public library. Both had considerable private collections they intended to use, but finding space was a problem. Luckily for them, the commercial real estate market crashed in 2003, making it possible for them to acquire some warehouse space in 2004 that cost 20% of what it had in 2000. In addition to their own holdings, the nascent library drew upon library “discards” that were being weeded out of collections. They obtained help from professionals who assist libraries in managing periodical collections and, as they built their identity as a library, they became eligible to receive discarded government documents. What came to hand was astonishing:

We were shocked by the historical significance of the offerings: primary documents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs from the 1860s and 70s; US Geological Survey annotated map sets, one hundred years’ worth, bound. One hundred twenty years’ worth of the Official Gazette of the U.S. Patent Office, with illustrations of every registered patent and trademark from 1870 to 1982 (with just trademarks up to 1999). We got that for free from the Oakland Public Library, on the condition that we pick it up and take it away. It fit in ninety-seven 60-lb. boxes, which we hand packed and took away in a small rental truck one hot day in 2002. Most of what we began to collect was obtained for just the cost of postage reimbursements from librarians who were relieved to have found homes for their de-prioritized materials.

As we watched lists of offers emerge from many libraries over time, it became clear to us that much of the history being released from both academic and non-academic libraries was of significant social and political value. The example of the Bureau of Indian Affairs documents was just the beginning. For instance, we were offered a complete set of the 1911 Reports of the U.S. Immigration Commission (38 volumes). These reports summarized the ethnic makeup of the United States, and included phrenological studies of different races. These are the reports that were later used to justify ethnic quotas of immigrants. These volumes are the blueprints of institutionalized American racism in the twentieth century, and they were given away for the cost of postage. A small college in the Midwest offered us a related document, the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement’s Report on Crime and the Foreign Born from 1931. Government documents are not boring! An impulse to save crucial documents of U.S. social history became another motivation driving our collecting.

Today the library continues to thrive, driven in part by the plethora of free culture to be found in the San Francisco area, but also because the Prelinger Library is a truly public learning institution. It offers free access, open stacks, and makes a concerted, sustained effort to put as much of their collection online as they can. Their collection is eccentric and eclectic with offerings a diverse as film and ornithology.

One might ask, why couldn’t one just make do with an internet library of .pdf files? One could, and I’d love to see such a project happen. That said, there is a lot of material in dead-tree format that is probably not available on the web, and may not be for some time, if ever. More importantly, the Prelinger Library, like other public libraries, is a center for community learning and activity. They host events, offer workshops, and give people a place to interact and learn individually and collectively. Meetings are possible on the web, but they are thin gruel compared to the experience of actually working and talking beside another learner or teacher. You don’t form communities of the same vigor and cohesion that you can in the real world. Could citizen scientists do something similar? A physical public library of science? Sure. We probably should.