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From a review of a book called Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform by Charles Upchurch:

Previous historical accounts have made the unwarranted assumption that there was little public discussion or public awareness of same-sex activities in Victorian England until late in the century, when a series of notorious cases involving queers culminated in the prosecution and conviction of Oscar Wilde.

But Upchurch, after a decade of meticulous research, demonstrates that this assumption is palpably false. Earlier examinations of the press in early-and-mid Victorian England relied on indexes and databases built on key words that missed many published reports on same-sex conduct and legal action. But by minutely examining the files of three newspapers with different class audiences between 1827 and 1870, and cross-checking them with court records, official documents, and correspondence, Upchurch has shown that not only was there broad public awareness in these years of sex between men, but that male homosexual conduct was a matter of considerable public discussion.

I haven’t read Upchurch’s book, so I can’t verify the claims made in the review. But if the claims are true, then this story is an excellent illustration of the importance of proper indexing. The indexes and databases that previous researchers used ought to have covered the news stories and other documents that Upchurch discovered in the course of his research, regardless of the language used in those documents to describe homosexuality. That’s the whole point of creating subject indexes. In this case, inadequate indexing may have helped to obfuscate the already obscure history of homosexuality in the West.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that at least two major publishers are refusing to distribute e-books to public libraries. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster feel that e-books in libraries are incompatible with their business model. The fact that this violates the spirit (and possibly the letter) of the first sale doctrine is apparently not an issue for them. They can’t figure out how to adapt to the modern world, with its computers and internets and whatnot, so they’re doing what they can to prop up that business model against the tide of history.

If you’ve ever tried to use your library’s e-book collection, this probably won’t surprise you. Selection tends to be hit-and-miss, the user experience provided by most e-book vendors is appalling, and both problems are a direct result of content providers’ paranoia about their profit margins in the digital world. We’ve already seen that Macmillan and Simon & Schuster won’t sell e-books to libraries; other publishers don’t do the e-book thing at all because they’re afraid of piracy or too scared of change to see a market in e-books. In some cases, when you “check out” an e-book at your library, other patrons are prevented from signing out that “copy” of the book, which makes no sense at all — except, of course, as a mechanism for content providers to maximize their control and thereby, theoretically, their profits. I can’t even use large portions of my local library’s e-book collection because you have to install DRM-enforcing software on your computer (even for the public-domain e-books!), and the software in question doesn’t run on Linux. Some libraries have found ways around the usability problems, but if the publishers won’t sell you e-books under any circumstances, there’s not much that libraries can do about it.

So much for e-books. Now we learn (if a rumor on Twitter is to be trusted) that Baker & Taylor, the biggest wholesale vendor of library materials, is being forced by Hollywood to sell rental versions of DVDs to its customers, rather than the more feature-rich versions available on the retail market. In other words, a lot of content will only be available to individual consumers who shell out extra cash for their own personal copies. Aside from simply being unfair to library patrons, the studios’ actions here undermine the public library’s role as a sort of community memory, since the extra content simply won’t be available to the community as a whole.

The DVD restriction is not an earth-shaking development — we’re talking about special features on major-studio releases, after all — and it hasn’t been publicly confirmed yet, but if we combine that with the e-book problems outlined above, we see a trend on the part of “Big Content” to screw over public libraries in the digital realm in the name of profit and a failing business model. And when you add a legislative regime that’s moving towards the absurd restrictions on library use and distribution of digital content that we saw in last year’s proposed copyright law, it starts to look like maybe there is a real problem here.

Here in British Columbia, public libraries get a big chunk of their funding from the provincial government in the form of annual operating grants.* This year’s grants have yet to be distributed, even though we’re already four months into the new fiscal year. If that money isn’t received, we could see substantial cuts to programs and services — stuff like access to online resources, sharing of materials between libraries (giving patrons access to stuff that they just can’t get at their local library), and literacy programs for kids like the BC Summer Reading Club and Books for Babies. The chief librarian at Vancouver Public Library is already talking about reduced hours of operation and even branch closures. And the head of the BC Library Trustees Association has pointed out that “a cut to this year’s grant would guarantee there will be cuts in the future.”

During the last election, Premier Gordon Campbell talked about making BC “the best educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent.” Now his government is planning to cut funding for public libraries, which play a fundamental role in education and literacy. Even worse, this is happening at a time when libraries across the province have seen big surges in use because of the ongoing economic crisis. People are using library resources (books, the reference desk, free public Internet access) to look for work, to find other ways to make ends meet, or even just to cope with uncertainty and stress. Not only is the provincial government threatening to undermine an essential service, they’re doing it at precisely the moment when that service is needed most.

Heckuva job, Gordo.

Richard M. Stallman was in town earlier this month, lecturing the masses about freedom and information. For those who don’t know, Stallman founded the free software movement back in the mid-1980s.* He wrote the original GNU General Public License and formulated fundamental principles like copyleft and the four freedoms. He is directly responsible for the rich ecology of free and open source software that we enjoy today. (He also invented Emacs, but nobody’s perfect.)

Stallman’s major achievements are behind him. These days he spends most of his time fighting losing battles against people who use different terminology or have a slightly different definition of freedom than he does. When I attended his talk on the ethics of free software, I did so because I respect what he did a quarter-century ago and because I wanted to hear him talk about the stuff he’s famous for, not because I expected to hear anything new. And I got pretty much what I was expecting: Stallman talked about the four freedoms for a while, then turned to those terminological disputes — why you should say “GNU/Linux” instead of just “Linux,” why free software is superior to open source software, why Linus Torvalds is wrong, and so on.

But even so, I came away from the lecture with a renewed appreciation for his position. As it turns out, he’s not just resentful that other people have stolen his limelight.

When we talk about open source software, we are basically taking for granted the position Eric S. Raymond outlined in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Open source software, he says, is better because of how it’s produced. That’s why the Open Source Definition focuses on practical benefits like peer review. In fact, the term “open source” was explicitly invented to make the concept of non-proprietary software palatable to profit-driven corporations by convincing them that open source software is more reliable and bug-free. By contrast, free software (as Stallman defines it) is fundamentally a question of ethics. In his words, proprietary software is a “social problem,” an attack on the “social solidarity” of your community. When companies like Microsoft impose restrictive licenses and lobby governments for stricter “intellectual property” laws, they are directly and deliberately undermining your ability to share stuff with your neighbors — which in turn undermines the entire community.

None of this is news, really. Stallman and others have been talking about these issues for years. But it was refreshing to hear someone make the case — not least because of how it resonates with what I see in my professional life as a systems librarian.

In the library world, open source software is winning the battle against proprietary software. We’re a long way from victory, but there’s a general awareness among library workers — especially among the more technical types — that open source software has some significant advantages. Heck, right now I’m getting paid to help a bunch of libraries in BC make the switch from their proprietary (and expensive) computer systems to a free and open source alternative.

But when library folks talk about non-proprietary software, they almost always mean open source software rather than free software. It’s always about how open source software is more reliable and more feature-rich — and, usually, cheaper. There are, of course, good reasons for taking this approach: libraries are underfunded, so cheaper alternatives are always welcome, and the market for library software is small, so there’s relatively little competition and thus little incentive for serious innovation by the vendors (which is why we’re so often dissatisfied with their proprietary products). And like most bureaucracies, libraries have been infected by an MBA-style crackpot realism that values “outcomes” over principles. We’ve learned to focus on narrow “results” to help justify our existence to the people who control the purse-strings, rather than focusing on our real work of fostering healthy communities by providing free access to knowledge.** In that sort of environment, it’s only natural that we’ve learned to talk about the practical benefits of open source software.

Those practical benefits are perfectly valid reasons for avoiding proprietary software. But under the circumstances, it’s easy to forget that using free software is ultimately an ethical decision. I appreciate the practical benefits of the open source model, but I’m a free software advocate because I believe in the four freedoms. And I’m a librarian because libraries embody those same freedoms.

Public libraries are not neutral institutions. By their very nature, they stand for free access to information — a radically democratic proposition in an age of media concentration and draconian “intellectual property” laws. That’s why librarians are so committed to free speech: we think it’s wrong when people try to suppress ideas just because they don’t agree with them. We think people should be free to share ideas and information, build on them to come up with new ideas and information, and share the results in turn.

And that’s why libraries should use — and advocate the use of — free software. Proprietary software contradicts the fundamental values that libraries stand for. Our principles shouldn’t be confined to our bookshelves: if we’re genuinely committed to them, they matter just as much when it comes to the software we use on our computers.

Well, his nominee for Attorney General does, anyway:

President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general has endorsed an extension of the law that allows federal agents to demand Americans’ library and bookstore records as part of terrorism probes, dismaying a national group of independent booksellers.

Eric Holder said at his confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he supports renewing a section of the USA Patriot Act that allows FBI agents investigating international terrorism or espionage to seek records from businesses, libraries and bookstores. If not renewed by Congress, the provision will expire at the end of 2009.

The searches must be authorized by a court that meets secretly and has approved the government’s requests in nearly all cases, according to congressional reports. The target of the search does not have to be suspected of terrorism or any other crime. A permanent gag order that accompanies each search prohibits the business or library from telling anyone about it.

Happy Coronation Inauguration Day.