1913 - library established in Houston by a black community. Years later, the city disbanded the all 8 black board members and shut the library down
1939 - 5 black people thrown out of a Virginia library for “disturbing the peace” (they were quietly reading).
1961 - Geraldine Edwards Hollis and eight other students from historically-black Tougaloo College — a group known as the Tougaloo Nine — held a sit-in at a “whites-only” public library in Jackson, Mississippi, as an act of civil disobedience.
1970 - the first meeting of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association formed to address the fact that the ALA wasn’t meeting the needs of Black library professionals.
The late 1990s started to become the sweet spot for library inclusion and governance. Everyone was welcome to access books and media without restriction.
In the 2000s, technology emerged in public libraries in a quite inclusive way. There some libraries had PCs and some had ethernet and/or Wi-Fi (free of captive portals). Anyone could use any of those technologies.
2024:
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Ethernet becomes nearly non-existent, thus excluding:
- people running FOSS systems (which often lack FOSS Wi-Fi firmware)
- people with old hardware
- people who oppose the energy waste of Wi-Fi
- people who do not accept the security compromise of Wi-Fi (AP spoofing/mitm, traffic evesdropping, arbitrary tracking by all iOS and Android devices in range)
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Wi-Fi service itself has become more exclusive at public libraries:
- captive portals – not all devices can even handle a captive portal, full stop. Some captive portals are already imposing TLS 1.3 so people with slightly older hardware cannot even reach the ToS page. Some devices cannot handle a captive portal due to DNS resolution being dysfunctional before the captive portal is passed and the captive portal itself is designed to need DNS resolution.
- GSM requirement – some public library captive portals now require patrons to complete an SMS verification. This of course excludes these demographics of people:
- People who do not own a mobile phone
- People who do not carry a mobile phone around with them
- People who do not subscribe to mobile phone service (due to poverty, or for countless privacy reasons)
- People who object to disclosing their mobile phone number and who intend to exercise their right to data minimisation (under the GDPR or their country’s version thereof)
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Web access restrictions intensified:
- e-books outsourced to Cloudflared services, thus excluding all demographics of people who Cloudflare excludes.
- Invidious blocked. This means people who do not have internet at home have lost the ability to download videos to watch in their home.
- Egress Tor connections recently blocked by some libraries, which effectively excludes people whose systems are designed to use Tor to function. So if someone’s email account is on an onion service, those people are excluded from email.
There’s a bit of irony in recent developments that exclude privacy seekers who, for example, deliberately choose not to have a GSM phone out of protest against compulsory GSM registration with national IDs, because the library traditionally respects people’s privacy. Now they’re evolving to actually deny service to people for exercising their privacy rights.
There needs to be pushback to get public libraries back on track to becoming as inclusive as they were in the 1990s. A big part of the problem is outsourcing. The libraries are no longer administrating technology themselves. They have started outsourcing to tech giants like Oracle who have a commercial motivation to save money, which means marginalising demographics of people who don’t fit in their simplified canned workflow. When a patron gets excluded by arbitrary tech restrictions, the library is unable to remedy the problem. Librarians have lost control as a consequence of outsourcing.
One factor has improved: some libraries are starting to nix their annual membership fee. It tends to be quite small anyway (e.g. $/€ 5/year), so doesn’t even begin to offset those excluded by technology.
Wouldn’t direct access to a library’s network via Ethernet in an uncontrolled manner pose a security risk though?
Also, while propriety Wi-Fi and other technology-related solutions are sometimes frustrating, many libraries are ultimately budget constrained, making the use of standardized solutions far more economical than custom ones.
Wouldn’t direct access to a library’s network via Ethernet in an uncontrolled manner pose a security risk though?
You would have to detail why. Ethernet offers /more/ security by not exposing users’ traffic and by avoiding MitM to a reasonable extent. It’s far easier to spoof a Wi-Fi AP from next door or even a block away than it would be to to plant an ethernet attached MitM box, which means getting behind the drywall or breaking into a utility room. Not to mention the mass surveillance of all iOS devices collecting data, timestamps, location of every other WiFi device in range and feeding that to Apple. Ethernet is trivially immune to that collection, whereas Wi-Fi users are exposed without a countermeaure. They can dynamically change their MAC daily or whatever but that’s not the only data being collected by Apple.
(edit) It’s worth noting as well that the NSA actually advises people not to use Wi-Fi.
Also, while propriety Wi-Fi and other technology-related solutions are sometimes frustrating, many libraries are ultimately budget constrained, making the use of standardized solutions far more economical than custom ones.
Economics does not justify excluding some demographics of people¹. If a public funded service cannot offer service in an equitable way, it’s better to not offer the service at all. When a public library offers a service, assumptions are then made in other contexts that the whole public has that access. Governments operate on the assumption that people they serve have access, and they use that assumption to remove analog means of contact and service. Some government offices have already closed their over-the-counter service. How was it that they could afford it previously but not anymore? Those budgets are themselves set by assumptions, like assumptions that everyone carries a mobile phone.
¹ exceptionally, public funding cannot for example cover every heart transplant everyone needs. But the library does not face those kinds of extremes. Ethernet cable is cheap enough. Getting people to agree to terms of service the old fashioned way (paper) is cheap enough. Priorities have to be really screwed up to be willing to exclude someone from service to save money on paper agreements.
Interesting perspective, but I’d tend to argue that the technologies such as WiFi have massively increased inclusiveness and accessibility for magnitudes more people than it has raised issues for.
WiFi, for example, allows libraries to offer servises 24 hours a day without the need to physically enter the building. Wirh such openness comes some security and resource sharing challenges, and metimrs addressed by throttling or overly aggressive firewalls. But for nearly everyone the expanded accessibility has been fantastic.
I am also concerned with outsourcing. But worried about cloudflare are pretty far down the list. Adobe controlled DRM on most ebooks, and even third party cloud based catalogues, are way more concerning. But unfortunately these happen to be the most cost effective way the limited funding of libraries can manage in many cases. I hate these circumstances but it seems to me the compromise is providing more access to more resources for more people, not less.
This is not to discourage always better ways and more freedom and efficiency. But overall I just can’t see how the issues you cite are excluding people more than helping include more people.
Lets face it, the half dozen people per million (if that) who care about the FLOSS status of thier WiFi hardware’s firmware, probably are technically capable enough to find a way to access library resources securely more than most people!
Interesting perspective, but I’d tend to argue that the technologies such as WiFi have massively increased inclusiveness and accessibility for magnitudes more people than it has raised issues for.
Not in the slightest¹. It has reduced inclusiveness. The groups being excluded were previously given full and equal access. To argue that nighttime access is possible is to inherently advocate for exclusive access to those who would sit on the sidewalk with their device while people who need access by other means are denied. What a bizarre and obscure corner case. It’d be somewhat elitist to be selective like that. Human rights calls for equal access to public services (UDHR Art.21¶2). That means if a service cannot be offered to all demographics it should be offered to no one.
It’s really hair-splitting esoterics to be concerned about what library access there is at night time on the sidewalk. Maybe it’s fair enough to say outside of hours there is no sense of equal access. I don’t want to die on the nighttime access hill either way. My post concerns equality during the day when the library doors are open. If there really is a notable need for nighttime access from the sidewalk, that can also be deployed in an egalitarian way by mounting exterior ethernet ports and removing the captive portals.
(edit)¹ well, Wi-Fi in the 2000s was inclusive because it did not generally come with a captive portal and it was offered in parallel to ethernet. Having Wi-Fi is an essential part of being inclusive now that wi-fi-only devices exist. But the way they are doing it in 2024 is exclusive, depending on the library. Some libraries still today do not have captive portals but that’s becoming more rare as libraries prioritize a paperless agreement above equal access.
I am also concerned with outsourcing. But worried about cloudflare are pretty far down the list. Adobe controlled DRM on most ebooks, and even third party cloud based catalogues, are way more concerning.
You’re thinking about the barriers and inconveniences to you personally. But when I speak about exclusivity, I’m talking about different demographics of people getting different treatment and different service. It’s unacceptible for a public service to say “sorry, some people just do not make the cut for the profile of those we are including… our public service is only for people who subscribe to private GSM service” (precisely the demographic less in need of public service). It’s better to pull the plug to ensure equality than to create unequal access.
The DRM problem is not a problem of exclusivity w.r.t the public library, AFAICT, because the library secures whatever DRM rights are needed equally for all patrons. DRM does not cause someone who cannot afford a mobile phone to be refused service. Unless a DRM mechanism were to require an SMS verfication – then I would be with you on that because that would be discriminatory and exclusive. Although I’ve heard that some forms of DRM prevent reading a page more than once. I can imagine that someone with an impairment of some kind might need to read a page more times than someone else to absorb the same book. In that case, DRM would indeed be adding to the exclusivity problem and would need a remedy in that regard. If a library could not negotiate an egalitarian deal in that case, then the egalitarian remedy is to drop that book from the library’s catalog completely, as that would ensure equal access.
Lets face it, the half dozen people per million (if that) who care about the FLOSS status of thier WiFi hardware’s firmware, probably are technically capable enough to find a way to access library resources securely more than most people!
It’s not a technical problem. It’s an ethical problem. When a public funded service is forces people to run proprietary non-free software on their own devices, it’s an abuse of public funding to needlessly force people into the private sector. In the US, the American Library Association has a bill of rights that states people are not to be excluded from the library based on their views or beliefs. Designing a library to only cater for people who are ethically okay with running non-free proprietary software would undermine that principle. It would be comparable to a public service denying service to vegans because of their ethical viewpoints.
