Puzzles to solve, but how? It keeps occupying my mind. This has to do with finding the right mix of the public values that are connected to justice, humanity and autonomy, and the “neutral” position of the library (or not?). I have now attended three of the six afternoons that form part of the SURF Course on Digital Sovereignty (for Executives in the field of education & research). And would like to make up my mind as a mid-term activity.

Two years ago, in Spring 2023, I attended the SURF Course on Public Values (also in total six afternoons), together with colleagues from several educational institutes (I wrote a blog about this, “Improve the world, start doing something” – only available as part of a nonsearchable pdf).

One of the issues at that course was that we should keep our “crown jewels” in our public space, and to avoid that this public space becomes smaller and smaller. It of course was an extended discussion to come to a definition of these crown jewels. I wrote down that for me these would be our “knowledge and affiliated data”. To make sure that we would keep these crown jewels in the public domain, my conclusion was that we had to stand firm to the (Big Tech / Ed Pub) parties we are negotiating with, ánd that we can only do so by uniting ourselves. We have to transcend the individual institutional interest.

And this is still so true. I have now, at this moment, three observations that are not yet solving my puzzles, but we are getting there.

Public ownership

One of the recommendations during the course was to read the (Dutch) book by Reijer Passchier: “De vloek van Big Tech” (the curse of Big Tech). In my very brief summary, I conclude that we should try to see ownership as a collective good (again). The broader public should not only be or learn to be consumers and producers, but also ‘owners’ (capitalists, as Passchier writes). Ownership is the primal asset of Big Tech. Once, a long time ago, the purpose of ownership was to balance the interest of the creator and society as a whole. And now the big corporate ownership actually undermines the democratic rule of law, where it was actually meant to be its pillar. I read this also in [“Elon Musk wants what he can’t have: Wikipedia”[(https://archive.is/1mjMq#selection-717.0-717.45), with this citation “the improbable success of a volunteer-run website attempting to gather all the world’s knowledge is something to celebrate, not destroy.” What is publicly owned cannot be bought.

Collective action

Whatever we want to do, we cannot do it on our own. Not as an individual, not as an individual institute and not within one country. We need to transcend that institutional interest. And that is not easy. It is something I have learned in the past months, at KB, the national library of the Netherlands. The things we want to achieve (our ultimate goal is to make us in The Netherlands more creative, skilled and smart) cannot and should not be our “individual” goals. We work on this together, with so many others. And the good thing is, we are already doing this (just check our (Dutch) 2024 annual report for this). If we (in the educational and research institutes) want to be able to have a choice in the near future when selecting a learning management system, a cloud provider or data supporting software, we need to get our act together, and start to stimulate alternative solutions to avoid being left with one direction: the Big Tech “funnel”.

image Picture from Surf Course; us playing the Value Compass Game

Neutrality is not the right word

When we talk about public values, we also talk about the public space. Sometimes we then refer to “save or brave spaces”, when the physical library is mentioned. And then there is also the discussion about us (= libraries) being a neutral place/organisation, or not. I read the (Dutch) article by Cubiss, in which adviser Marit Leendertse explains: “By taking a supposedly neutral stance, you are also making a choice (…) By not taking a specific stance, you are not condemning the violence, injustice or violation of human rights. When you don’t intervene or speak out, you indirectly contribute to perpetuating that injustice.” She also refers to what is written down in Article 1 of the Constitution and that a library should respect all opinions, as long as they abide by that law. “Freedom of expression is not the same as freedom of consequence.” I cannot be against this statement. What I think is essential is the way you let the conversation / debate / exhibits be executed. There the term “accountable space” comes handy again. I also referred to this one earlier. In his blog Georges Fougaras quotes the definition from the article by Elise Ahenkorah, about “Safe and Brave Spaces Don’t Work (and What You Can Do Instead)”. The definition: “Accountability means being responsible for yourself, your intentions, words, and actions. It means entering a space with good intentions, but understanding that aligning your intent with action is the true test of commitment”. So my plea would be that this is what we should organize as Libraries: accountable spaces. Any third place should be an accountable space.

Conclusions

Not all of the above might be covered under the term “Digital Sovereignty”. I know. I guess that the word Digital, as is now also true for the word IT, becomes, for our type of organisations, a bit redundant, because in essence IT and Digital are all over us. This sovereignty is something that we (as with open) should approach more holistically. We need to work together, keep our public sovereignty, ánd need to make sure that our complete space (digital and physical) is an accountable one. Think about Tanita Tikaram’s song, and make it “no twist in our sovereignty”.