Welcome

My name is Julie Gaida and I have been working in library acquisitions for over a decade. How do I reconcile that with my anticapitalist standpoint? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

I was looking through the Progressive Librarian archives and came across Mark Rosenzweig's early 90s article, "Libraries at the End of History?" It references Francis Fukuyama's (in)famous article, "The End of History?" which was published in The National Interest, a conservative publication, in the year I was born. Fukuyama suggests that "the U.S. has created a truly universal consumer culture," and that the imminent end to the Cold War will constitute the end of history. This implication, that capitalism is the "final form" of human society (especially without a Soviet Union as a countervailing force), is especially interesting looking back from the year 2025, wherein many claim we are experiencing "late-stage capitalism."

My anticapitalist notions have been growing for a while now but were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the five years since the beginning of the pandemic, I've been doing a lot of thinking, and some talking with others, about these notions. I've consumed a lot of content from anticapitalist writers and thinkers. I've been trying to educate myself on theory. It's mostly been an introspective journey wherein I have had to "unlearn" certain "truths" that were instilled in me by my American education. I've never felt I have had anything to contribute because the work of unlearning and relearning seemed endless.

But something shifted nearly a month ago when Clarivate announced its transition away from print monographs and perpetual ebook licenses to an ebook subscription model. Clarivate framed this as something librarians were asking for – as if we would ask for MORE subscriptions. From their latest earnings call, however, it became clear that this was a move to benefit shareholder interests at the expense of library interests; this was clearly a divestment of libraries on Clarivate's part. I finally found I had something to say: perhaps libraries should boycott and divest from Clarivate as well?

I remarked on a listserv or two that this may be a canary in the coal mine for the library ebook marketplace. I've been bemoaning the artificial scarcity of library ebooks for years, but I learned a new term in the days that followed this announcement: rentier capitalism. According to Brett Christophers, the author of Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?, rent is "payment to an economic actor (the rentier) who receives that rent – and this is the key factor – purely by virtue of controlling something valuable." The ebook marketplace is made up of commodity platforms that allow rentiers such as Clarivate and EBSCO to profit off the labor of others at the expense of libraries and their users. They do not have a hand in the creation of the ebook, but they do profit off the licensing (yes, even "perpetual" licensing) of ebooks to libraries by controlling the platforms on which library ebooks are bought, stored, and read.

EBSCO and certain publishers issued statements in opposition to Clarivate's position in the days and weeks following the original announcement. Many librarians celebrated this news, and I admit that I also breathed a sigh of relief. But if Clarivate's move ends up, as I advocated earlier, as the impetus for libraries to boycott, will this make EBSCO a monopoly in the sphere of library ebook aggregators for the academic publishing market? And does not monopoly capitalism trend toward rent-seeking? Sure, we can rely on EBSCO now, but they also complicit in generating artificial scarcity in ebooks (think of one user, three user, and concurrent access models) when digital technology allows for almost infinite reproducibility (environmental factors notwithstanding).

According to Karen P. Nicholson and Maura Seale, "...librarianship has adopted neoliberal ideologies and corporate practices that foreground practicality and efficiency with little reflection or critique." Indeed, does library acquisitions exist because we see ourselves as beholden to the market, despite not being revenue-producing entities? Does the library ebook market exist in its current form because we allow it to do so? Would copyright need to exist in a non-capitalist society? I certainly don't know the answers to these and other questions, but I want to understand the underlying forces that situate our current reality.

In this newsletter/blog, I intend to write about what I'm reading and try my best to critically examine the academic publishing marketplace and the academic library's place within it. I hope to receive critical comments and feedback that will help me learn from flaws in my own thinking so that I may better understand the factors at play. I hope I will inspire fellow librarians to think critically about why library acquisitions exists. I hope we will come to conclusions that ultimately lead to outcomes that radically benefit libraries and their users in a time where libraries are being attacked, censored, and defunded in late-stage capitalism.

Sources

Christophers, B. (2020). Rentier capitalism: who owns the economy, and who pays for it? Verso.

Nicholson K. P. & Seale M. (2018) The politics of theory and the practice of critical librarianship. Library Juice Press.

Rosenzweig, M. (1989). Libraries at the end of history? The Progressive Librarian, 2(1), 2-8.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are the author's personal opinions. The facts and opinions presented do not reflect the views of the author's employer