Thinking Critically about the Information Economy in America and Kazakhstan

Celia EmmelhainzAnthropology LibrarianANTH 189, UC Berkeley20 April 2016

Which information matters?

Aaron Swartz, age 26

5 years later: 48 million papers

Alexandra Elbakayan, 27 Kazakh neuroscientist

“When I was a student in Kazakhstan university, I did not have access to any research papers… Payment of 32 dollars is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers… I obtained these papers by pirating them. Later I found there are lots and lots of researchers… just like me, especially in developing countries.” - Alexandra Elbayakan

Posts from international researchers after the closure of library.nu in 2012“It's like the Library of Alexandria just

burnt down. Again.”“I am from a third world country where

buying original books is way too expensive... library.nu was a sea of knowledge for me”

“we the poor living in the south have been suffocated by the rich and able north”

“I come from India and… there were no books available in Statistics (for MSc) to buy in the first place.”

Your Library at UC Berkeley70,000 serials and 10 million

books$50 million budget for 32

libraries200 librarians, 200 staff, 600

student staff

Example: Nazarbayev UniversityNew “western” university in KazakhstanInterviews with 21 faculty, students, librarians

Location: Inner Asia

“I go to Google Scholar and entered some keywords and I stumbled upon a really good article but they’re closed. I mean, the access is limited and one would have to pay for them and be a professor… through the institution they were in.”

- Quralai, in literature

Challenges of locationo Limited access to bookso Paywalls on journal articleso Lack of reliable local sourceso Lack of published informationo Systemic issues; not the fault

of Atameken U. or Kazakhstan

A way around?

• Personal networks and asking for favors• Downloading PDFs from public sources• Google Scholar and Amazon previews• Using friends’ university logins from the

USA… until they’re cut off! • Illegal downloads from Sci-Hub, Bookzz,

LibGen: “books on my hard drive which I should not talk about.”

Use of personal networks“I sent a journal article out late last year and the reviewer [said] I need to cite this book that had been published in 1989. “It was not available as an ebook, the library here did not have it. But the author himself randomly passed through town… it turned out he had a PDF of the book and he was able to give it to me.” – Alex, Professor in Kazakhstan

“My friends…are also sources of information, because they look for other sources… They also help me to understand how to construct my argument. Because when I have a lot of ideas in my head, and I don’t know how to construct them in clear places, I have friends to talk to.” - Quralai, Kazakh student in literature

But: Information Ownership?

Ruth Benedict’s fieldnotes online—with a for-profit publisherArchaeology materials not releasedbecause of cultural concerns

For class discussion: Which information “counts” for your research?

How do you access it? o “unearned bonus” of citizenship, top universityo connected vs. disconnected in research networks

Who has power over information in your area?

Who profits from information? Who pays?

Who controls the sharing or privacy? o native peoples or cultural heritage institutions?

Is information a public utility or a private good?

Final thoughtso Build your networks: Reach out to

international researchers and invite them in

o Ask a librarian: librarians have the training and networks to help you find hard-to-access resources

o Work for change: Join student movements to open up access to scholarship worldwide: righttoresearch.org/act/individuals/index.shtml

For more infoCelia Emmelhainz,Anthropology and Qualitative Research Librarianemmelhainz@berkeley.edu