‘The Promise and Peril of Universal Libraries’

"Moreover, modernity has highlighted the fact that a library can be universal in scope but not in access. Who does have access, and under what terms? Who polices it? How does it extend beyond national (and other territorial) boundaries? The open-access movement in science reflects such questions. The other side of this issue of publics is of course publishing itself. What is its role in the age of universal libraries? A good case can be made that publishing is the business of managing credibility. It is the enterprise of ascertaining and affirming the worth of particular authorial works, thereby singling them out for advantageous production, exposure, and distribution, and of sustaining their authority and authenticity from then on. In previous centuries, publishers employed (or, earlier still, were) printers, and handled the actual manufacture of books; but this is an ancillary function. What is essential is the practice of judgment, at a corporate, collective level. The question is what role this practice has in a world where archiving is normatively universal, but searching often pesky; and how to provide for it economically in a world where openness is normatively universal too, but access in fact limited and partial...."