Robert Darnton, the historian who directs Harvard University’s library, recently hosted a high-level gathering to talk about how to put together a Digital Public Library of America. In some of his public comments about the proposed library, Mr. Darnton wrote that it “would make the cultural patrimony of this country freely available to all of its citizens.”
The phrase “cultural patrimony” caught the attention of some observers, including Paul Courant, the dean of libraries at the University of Michigan and a participant in the Harvard meeting led by Mr. Darnton. On his blog, Mr. Courant reiterated his support for the general idea. But “the notion of a national collection based on any nation’s ‘cultural patrimony’ is far too narrow,” he wrote. “It simply doesn’t make sense to divide this country’s cultural patrimony from that of the rest of the world. (And I have to admit that I’m not wild about the word ‘patrimony,’ either. Many have suggested that ‘heritage’ would be better, and I believe that Robert Darnton would accept this as a friendly amendment.)”
In a comment posted on Mr. Courant’s blog, Mr. Darnton took the suggestion. “Not only does ‘heritage’ have a happier ring to it, but it also evokes a more important point: Our cultural heritage in the United States is fundamentally international,” the Harvard scholar wrote. He said that in his opening remarks at the conference, which invoked the Founding Fathers, he “meant to evoke the Enlightenment ideal of a Republic of Letters, which is international by its very nature. So are our great research libraries,” he said. “Most of their material is in languages other than English. By amalgamating their holdings in a single digital collection, a DPLA would attempt to make all of the world’s learning available to all the people in the world.”
The Darnton-Courant exchange is worth reading in full, not only for the conceptual discussion described above but also for the authors’ thoughts about how to tackle the “fundamental problem” of copyright and what role the HathiTrust and Google might play in establishing the proposed digital public library.
4 Responses to National Digital Library Spurs Conversation About ‘Cultural Patrimony’
d_fevens - October 16, 2010 at 11:19 am
Paul Courant’s blog: A National Digital Library?
My “take” on Professor Paul Courant’s submission to the Google Book Settlement Fairness Hearing in February is here:
Submission of Professor Paul Courant
Douglas Fevens, Halifax, Nova Scotia
The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me>
frankiedee - October 18, 2010 at 10:10 am
Of course, American exceptionalism is anathema to these people. If it is a given that America’s cultural heritage contains international roots, does that make said heritage any the less American?
Look at it this way: Is there another, similar culture with similar roots somewhere else? No, there is not. America’s culture is as unique as it is multi-faceted, as unique as the culture of Colombia, Chad, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) or Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic and Slovakia). I don’t understand the compulsion to make America “just like every other country”, or the impulse to Balkanize America.
d_fevens - October 19, 2010 at 9:14 am
Who are you (America)kidding? It has less to do with “cultural patrimony” and much more to do with “Cultural Appropriation”!
Douglas Fevens,
Halifax, Nova Scotia
The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me
sand6432 - October 22, 2010 at 2:11 am
I added the following comment to Paul Courant’s blog:
It’s unclear whether Google’s permission to share its files with other libraries means only other HathiTrust libraries, all academic libraries, or libraries of any kind. Only the availability of these files to all libraries, public included, would really meet the needs of a National Digital Library. If Google restricts access to just the patrons of a certain segment of academic libraries, this hardly constitutes universality. I am suspicious because, when Penn State Press approached the University of Michigan Library with an offer to exchange greater use rights for our books within the university for the Google files of our books, Google nixed the deal. And the proposed Google Settlement contemplates a new business for Google in selling subscriptions to libraries, so why would Google allow all libraries access to its files? More clarity on the exact arrangement here would be welcome.
As for the “problem” of copyright, librarians and publishers have already agreed to an orphans works bill, which was passed once by the House but never got further. Congressional lethargy here is the culprit, not any opposition by the main parties involved.
There is still a problem of controlled access to in-print, in-copyright books. For university press books, this could theoretically be solved by moving all monograph publishing to “open access.” The proposed National Digital Library could buy one copy of every new book and make it available for free access worldwide. Assuming an average cost per book of $30,000 (factoring out costs associated with print such as paper, printing, binding, warehousing, and order fulfillment), and 10,000 new books published by university presses each year, the annual cost to the National Digital Library for buying every university press book would be $300 million annually–or about twice the annual budget of the NEH or roughly the cost of two new B777 commercial jets. Not too daunting a figure, is it?—Sandy Thatcher