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Charleston Library Conference

Building Trust When Truth Fractures

Brewster Kahle Internet

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Brewster Kahle, "Building Trust When Truth Fractures" (2019). Proceedings of the Charleston Library Conference. http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284317192

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Brewster Kahle,

The following is a lightly edited transcript of a live system, people startng to not trust the actual votng keynote presentaton at the 2019 Charleston Confer- machines, the primary system sort of not refectng ence. A of this talk is available at htps://youtu what the majority of people wanted, all sorts of .be/bA67X9y-ozc. things kind of showed all sorts of creaks and prob- lems and the like, and part of this these Internet Courtney McAllister: Good morning. It is an honor companies that were pursuing maybe their own to introduce our opening keynote speaker, Brewster interests to the expense of their users. I think there’s Kahle. We are delighted to welcome Brewster back a growing idea and a growing understanding that the to Charleston and I’m sure you all are eager to hear Web is betraying us, that it’s not working very well, his thoughts on how digitzaton eforts can help it’s not on our side anymore, it’s not from us, by us, counteract the widespread disseminaton of fake it seems to be coming at us fltered by people and . Brewster founded the Internet Archive in 1996 reasons that aren’t refectng what it is we want to but even before that he was an infuental fgure have happen. transforming the ways we generate, archive, and access informaton. Shortly afer graduatng from This is horrifying, right? I’m really in the center of this MIT, he was the lead engineer on Thinking Machine’s whole Internet informaton generaton and I didn’t parallel supercomputer Connecton Machine. In 1989 know what maybe the Internet , or some he created WAIS, Wide Area Informaton Server, of the other organizatons I work with, their respon- which was the Internet’s frst publishing system. In sibility was for what happened three years ago but 1996 he cofounded , which was subse- more importantly, probably I didn’t know what to quently sold to three years later, and that’s do next. So, I looked for help from my friends. I’m just a tantalizing snapshot of his noteworthy contri- part of an executve director club. It’s a set of the butons. Brewster’s vision and passion for expanding executve directors of the high‐ tech open nonprofts access to informaton has impacted all of us working and I said, “Time to get together for dinner.” This in libraries and publishing. Please join me in welcom- is the head of Wikipedia, the head of Electronic ing Brewster Kahle. Fronter Foundaton, the head of Mozilla Foundaton, Public Library of Science, so I said, “Please come to Brewster Kahle: So, thank you to Beth and Anne for the Internet Archive and let’s have dinner.” So, they invitng me back to the Charleston Conference. I’ve all came, and I said, “What happened here? And been really, really looking forward to this. Thank you. what should we do next?” And I ofered to put the This can be our day. This should be our day. I would Internet Archive on the table. I said, “What is the say actually this has to be our day. People need us. Internet Archive for now? What should we be? How We now have a lot of informaton out there on the should we operate? What can we do that would do open Internet that isn’t true, that is specifcally not the maximum public good with the skills that we true, and people are looking for beter, solid infor- have?” There was a lot of conversaton through this maton out there. They need the libraries, they need and Katherine Maher, she’s the executve director publishers, they need authors, they need access to of Wikipedia, she said something that chilled me to materials in new and diferent ways to be able to go my spine. She said that she was worried that “truth and understand their world. It’s important to do and might fracture.” Truth might fracture. I said, “That it’s important to do now. sounds horrible. What does this mean?” She said Wikipedia is built on the idea that on any partcular Let me start with a story. Three years ago, there was subject a truth will emerge, true that consensus, at an electon, a presidental electon in the United least, that it will be pushes and shoves but it will stay States and no mater who you wanted to be presi- coherent and that there’s something that will evolve dent of the , how it all came down was to be a consensus of you on that partcular subject. a train wreck. We had all sorts of things that just She was worried that it might become two or three went really wrong, how the journalism system didn’t or four or this idea that you can have a consensus functon very well, for an interference, as injected idea of what’s going on might not work anymore. So, into the Internet, into the United States electon that would be bad and when I think about where do

Copyright of this contributon remains in the name of the author(s) Charleston Conference Proceedings 2019 7 htps://doi.org/10.5703/1288284317192 people turn for some concept of truth out there on replace them with links into the .” the open Internet and it’s probably Wikipedia, We It turns out that a webpage only lasts about 100 refer to it all the tme, millions of people every day days before it’s changed or it’s deleted; 100 days, so go and use this service and it’s a crowd source sys- we are building our culture on sand out there. It is tem and it’s got these sort of interestng characters constantly shifing, so it may not refect even what but it works very well. the author originally wanted to say or it might be completely gone, and I’d like to announce today that So, how can we go and reinforce Wikipedia? I asked we’ve achieved a milestone. We have now replaced her, “How does this work? And how would truth and fxed over 10 million broken links in Wikipedia. fracture?” She said, “Citaton wars.” I’d never heard That’s good, and we went in Wikipedia and did an that term before: citaton wars. Citaton wars. She analysis of where do people go from Wikipedia and said that behind the scenes on every Wikipedia page it turns out 6% of those people that visit a webpage there’s a debate going on and people are trying to in Wikipedia click on one of the footnotes, so 6% fgure out what are the assertons that should be of page views people want to know more, which is there and what shouldn’t be there and the way quite encouraging to me, and the most sites, the those debates happen is based on the weight of place that people go to most at this point is the Way- the citatons and the citatons, they have a rule in back Machine by a factor of three and that’s because Wikipedia that they bias toward things that you can we’ve gone and fxed so many broken links. The next click on and see, so that makes sense from a Wiki- is and then journal literature, so that is our pedia reader’s perspectve, you’d want to be able agenda. Let’s go and reinforce books and journal to click on a footnote and see why they think that literature and this is how people using books in a that is in fact true so you could fact check it or you very diferent way than going necessarily and buying could go deeper. Makes sense. But that means that a and reading it from one place to another. It we really leave out a lot of material from being cited would be just going in and reading and then coming in Wikipedia because it may not have ever been back out. digitzed. If it’s a book it may not have ever been digitzed. If it is it might just be snippets in I’m going to do something here that I’ve constantly world. It might not be available to a Web user at all. been advised against doing, which is I’m going to It might be in a Kindle version but it’s not in the Web do a live demo. Okay. So, here is the Martn Luther world. So, the books may not be there, the journal King page. Is it working? Yeah, score, okay. So, here’s literature may not be there, and the Web links might the Martn Luther King page, a very popular page not be there. So, I commited myself at that point in Wikipedia land, and it turns out it has about 100 and the Internet Archive to help reinforce Wikipedia, books at the end, if you scroll way down to the end that we were going to go and try to help Wikipedia it’s got 100 books that are there. We only had about become as good and solid an informaton resource 30, so we went and bought some more and we used going forward as it has been going backward. I said, this as sort of a proof of concept and if you go to the “Let’s weave millions of books and webpages into frst footnote, hover over it, then it’s a book. It’s all Wikipedia and the Web. Let’s go and take the best deliberate speed, refecton, and has a page number informaton we can and make it one click away from and if you click on the page number, then it opened people through Wikipedia.” right to the right page. Yay! It worked! You can only go one page forward and back and beyond that then Okay, that’s three years ago. Now, I’d like to report you have to go and log in and borrow the book from a litle bit on how we’re doing toward that and, the library or buy the book or go to your physical more importantly, how we all can work together library to get it but at least you get enough informa- going forward toward this and sort of similar goals ton to be able to understand, is this the right thing? of getng to digital learners. We had been collectng Is it correct? And what you can do. all of the out links from Wikipedia for about fve years before. We basically subscribed, if you will, via So, I was next door at my next‐ door neighbor’s house robots to go and fnd every tme a new author wrote when my next‐ door neighbor, Carmen Steele, she’s a link, we would instantly go and archive it and put 15 years old, and I was describing what I wanted it in the Wayback Machine. We knew we wanted to to do with Wikipedia. You click on it, you open the secure Wikipedia in the future and with this three page to just the right page, and she lit up. She said, years ago we said, “Okay, now, let’s go and make “I want that!” Okay, I don’t usually get a rise out of robots go through and fnd broken links and go and my 15‐ year‐ old neighbor, Carmen Steele, but she

8 Plenary said, “I want that,” and I said, “Okay, why?” And she book and where many people go to go and fnd a said, “In my school I’m not allowed to quote from physical book, you can go to the library but a lot Wikipedia.” Right? “I have to go and get—I have to of people turn to Amazon, so there was a study of quote from the real book and if I had that I could do Amazon of books by decade, one more tme so it’s it in the middle of the night.” So, I said, “Okay, now decade, decade, decade, goes up to 1923, crash. Cra- we’re on to something here.” That we actually have ters. Even books available do from Amazon—they’re something that we really should move forward on not in print and they’re not available from Amazon, and make this whole thing happen, so we’ve started so we’ve got a real problem out there that we don’t working much more closely with Wikipedia and so have access, very easy access, if it’s anyplace it’s we had writen this bot to go and fx the webpages within our libraries and our libraries in general have and then we wanted to go and weave in the books been quite nervous about how to go and make post‐ themselves, and we started working along with the 1923 books available respectully, and here there’s English Wikipedia group and not only did they say been an evoluton that has worked very well. It’s yes, please do go and make beter hypertext links. called controlled digital lending. It’s very library‐ like Moriel Schotlender said Wikipedia loves Internet and frankly a litle lame that you can basically go and Archive in this presentaton that they gave and they fnd and check out a book and if you have a physical gave us the best tool of the year award for impact in book, if it’s been digitzed then one reader at a tme the wiki mania community, so there’s a real can have access to that digital book and if somebody out there within the open online world to improving else wants that book they have to wait untl that the informaton that is available and to be able to book is returned and it’s protected with the same do that in a respectul way is absolutely critcal for protecton mechanisms that the author, that the everybody to work together on this. publishers use for their in‐ print stuf so our “dusty mustys,” our century of old books we’re going and This news went out about two weeks ago. It’s been protectng with the same sort of clunky interfaces to covered in Wired and a bunch of the online press go and make these digital versions available. So, this and there’s been generally “Hurrah!” Right? It’s sort has been up and running since the year 2011 and of, you know, what’s to argue with out there but this Public Library has been doing it for cook- is only the frst step and soon I’m going to be getng books and genealogies, lots of other libraries, and it’s to where everybody here can really help partcipate doing fairly well. There’s a positon paper and some because we don’t have the right books online yet. legal white papers now and in terms of how to argue We really just don’t. So, we started to go and analyze all of this and this sort of basic balance of having where are we? At the Internet Archive collectons, some level of access to these materials has been for instance, we’ve been digitzing books at about adopted by a very large number of organizatons. So, a thousand books a day for the last bunch of years, now we have not only a distributon system, Wiki‐ 15 years now, and working with libraries, we have a pedia, we now have a mechanism of going and mak- room inside the , it’s been crank- ing things available respectully in terms of copyright ing away and we went and did a study of the books to go and take the modern materials and make those by decade that we have on the Internet Archive and available sort of on our own terms as libraries in a if you look at that graph, it’s going great up to 1923 library‐ like way. and like in all these informaton graphs it’s supposed to contnue up exponentally but it doesn’t. It craters. The next key was to ramp up digitzaton. So how to It craters all the way through the 20th century and do this? Well, we’ve been digitzing books up a storm it doesn’t even get up to 1923 levels untl the end but we needed more books and we wanted to be of the 20th century so we’re missing a century of able to go much faster, so we started to work with books. So, those that are turning to the Internet libraries on not just in‐ library scanning but where Archive for informaton that is deeper than you can they would go and donate enormous quanttes of get through Google or Wikipedia are not getng books to the Internet Archive that we could cost‐ access to a large percentage of the materials that efectvely go and digitze. One of the frst on this was were published during the 20th century. Not good and Trent University was remodel- enough. It was a prety impactul century. I don’t ing one of their libraries and they were going from think we want to bring up a generaton not knowing 500,000 books down to 250,000 books because they about the 20th century. So, where do people go? If wanted to free up space for more student actvites you try to fgure out we know, okay, if it’s not in the and meetng rooms and the like and the students Internet Archive maybe it’s available as a physical weren’t using these so they basically took all of the

Charleston Conference Proceedings 2019 9 books that hadn’t been checked out in 10 years and Andover to make sure that not just those that come they wanted to deaccession them respectully, so to Andover can leverage the books instead of throwing them out or giving them to Bet- that are in our library.” So, we’ve digitzed all of those ter World Books they decided to donate them to the books and they are now available on the Internet Internet Archive. So, we went and we packed up all Archive site to the public so that somebody in the books and they’re nicely kept in boxes so they’re Oakland, , or anywhere can go and borrow not very accessible but they are preserved without these books in the same way that somebody can destroying the books so they are respectully kept, at Phillips Academy Andover. So, that’s really great and we’ve been digitzing them and there’s now where a library I think is the frst complete library 171,000 books that have been digitzed and made that has come forward and said, “Yes, let’s go com- available on the Internet and something that’s kind pletely online under our own name.” So, thank you of interestng to me is these books—Trenton Univer- very much to Phillips Academy Andover. sity hadn’t circulated them in 10 years or more but of these 171,000, 25,000 of them are checked out at But all this was to try to fgure out what books we this point so somebody wants these things. We just needed, so we started to do this study of the books have to fnd a new and diferent way to give a second that are actvely referenced on Wikipedia or they’re life to a lot of these books. in a lot of course catalogs or course syllabi or they were commonly held in libraries. We came up with Georgetown Law Library, they’ve been digitzing their a top list at 1.5 million but a more expanded list of modern books and then they’ve been weaving those 4 million books, and I’d say if we did the right 4 mil- books into their card catalogs themselves, so they’re lion books we would have a Yale, a Princeton, a Bos- using the same discovery mechanisms but they’re ton Public Library that would be available to all. That now just giving their patrons an alternatve. So, you will be tremendous or at least one copy of them and can go and see, all right, I want this book, Liquid then we would be able to work with other libraries so Assets, and I want to be able to see this book. I can they’d start to lend more copies on their own behalf. either go to the shelves and get the physical book or I can get a digital book but only one or the other is Where are we going to be able to get these books? available at any one tme, so there’s no more copies The libraries in general were fairly nervous about that are being circulated and this book has now been having modern books available though they’re checked out, I guess, 24 tmes or at least viewed 24 getng more bold on this front as I’ve been showing. tmes, which is more than probably that book has People have been donatng books and we went back seen in 10 years within the Georgetown Law Library. to our friends at Beter World Books. Beter World Books is a special bookstore. It is one of the three We’ve been working on our digitzaton technologies biggest used bookstores. They sell new and used to be able to take beter and beter pictures to really books in the United States. They mostly work with, update and upgrade the quality, so it really hopefully well, us, we libraries, where they take the deacces- only needs to be done once because it is painstak- sion books and they fnd new life for these books, ing. There’s people actually turning the one but they are also a B Corp, so when B Corps switch by one. We tried the robots but the robots didn’t to these benefcial corporatons when they were work very well. They were kind of expensive and being started, there were 29 inaugural classes, there they broke the books, so we went back to going and was the frst 29, they were one of those, they have turning the pages and it’s been working out very a mission to help and be not just a proft‐ seeking well, and we’re now digitzing over a thousand books organizaton and they have always been mission a day of modern books that have been donated or aligned with us. We basically went to them and over we’ve been working with. We just fnished a project the years they would be giving us thousands and with Phillips Academy Andover where they were thousands of books that we’ve been digitzing but remodeling their library so they had all of their books as part of this program we wanted to do millions of their shelves, and before they went and put them and we were ready for it. We knew what books we back on the shelves they said, “Let’s digitze all of wanted, we had the digitzaton equipment ready, them.” We worked with Phillips Academy Andover and we knew how to do the controlled digital lending and actually I think it’s completely great. This is and all of this, so we went to Beter World Books and one of the top prep schools in the United States, so we said, “Can we work together to get millions of a really elite collecton of books for this and they books?” and they said, “Brewster, we’d love to. We said, “It’s really important to us at Phillips Academy would absolutely love to, it’s within our mission, it’s

10 Plenary how we like to work, but we’ve got a problem out geto them t where they are needed most, and you there. Why don’t you go and make us more mission even give back money to literacy in libraries and edu- aligned? Why don’t you go and buy us?” and I said caton causes around the world. I’ve also heard, and that was not the conversaton I thought I was going I’ve heard this from many people in the room, that to be having. I said, “I don’t want to buy you. I want sometmes you wrap up your books in newspapers you to be Beter World Books. I want you, Beter and you put them in the dumpster or you meet at World Books, to be more Beter World Books,” but the library at midnight and you join your colleagues they said, “You can help us,” and so what we did is and you drive the books somewhere far out in the we set up a separate nonproft called Beter World county and you dump them down an abandoned well Libraries and we funded it out of my foundaton shaf, so I’m here today to tell you it’s—our program based on my Internet winnings, and we basically is going to get even beter. You’ve heard Brewster’s bought Beter World Libraries in such a way that now vision for weaving millions of books into Wikipedia it’s mission aligned with the Internet Archive and the and beyond, and Beter World Books is pleased to whole library world in a much more closed way, so play a role in fulflling that mission but this is not that’s the big announcement today. So, with Beter about us. This is about you making that happen. Col- World Books now part of I’d say closer into the whole lectvely, over the past 15 years, you all have sent 330 library ecosystem, we are coming up with mecha- million books to Beter World Books so that we can nisms of going and having books see all of their pos- fnd a beter use for those books and that’s why I’m itve atributes leveraged in the diferent parts of the here today to talk about the beter opton. So you’re lifecycle of books, and toward this I’d like to invite going to contnue to ship books to Beter World out Dustn Holland, the CEO of Beter World Books. Books as you always have, nothing changes there, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to be taking Dustn Holland: Thank you, Brewster. I can tell you the millions of books that we process at one of our we owe you a debt of grattude. Thank you for distributon centers and we’re going to be checking believing in us and thank you for investng in our those books against Internet Archive’s wish list, and mission. So, Brewster told you a litle bit about the we’ll be keeping those books and the books that we story of how it happened, but let me tell you how it were unable to resell out of the recycling stream, and really happened. Last fall Brewster came to us. He we’re going to be setng them aside for the Inter- shared his vision with us. Afer walking him through net Archive so they may preserve and digitze those the 330,000‐square ‐foot distributon center that we books and make those books universally accessible operate in Indiana. to all people and all generatons to come. So, I hope you agree that today is truly a historic day for readers Brewster Kahle: This is completely great! You have to around the world and for future readers that fol- go visit. It is acres and acres of books! low. Together we are preserving knowledge so that knowledge does not become extnct, and you can Dustn Holland: You are welcome to come; send rest assured that you’ll truly be maximizing the value us an e‐ mail or drop by anytme. Anyway, we told of every book that you send us. That’s why today is a Brewster about the 30 million books a year that we glorious day. Thank you so much. process at one of our four distributon centers and he told us about his mission and we wanted to help, so Brewster Kahle: Really, it’s been a delight to work we sat down in our conference room and he thanked with Beter World Books over the years and it is us for the hundreds of thousands of books that we really getng beter, so please change your buying had provided over the past decade or so and he told habits from another where you might be us, he kept throwing out the word “millions.” Millions buying your books to buying from Beter World of books, millions of books. So, we said, “Brewster, Books.com , please, and contnue to donate books I’ve got two optons for you. You can buy those books to them as that will keep it a vibrant ecosystem. It or you can buy the company,” so here we are today. is not easy to compete against Amazon. Amazon is Thank you. And I am so pleased to be here. Today is a juggernaut out there and I think that we in the truly a glorious day. For 15 years I’ve been coming to library world can and should work together more the Charleston Conference and many of you librarians concretely and beter to have a full lifecycle of books in the room have come up to me over the years and that refects our values that can go and support the told me our program is too good to be true. How can publishers and authors on the front end as libraries a company ofer such a great free service where you buy, I understand, about 20% of the whole book collect the books, you keep them out of landflls, you publishing industry goes to libraries, so that when it’s

Charleston Conference Proceedings 2019 11 tme to have fewer books on the shelves they can go American community through Densho, which is a to Beter World Books, those books can be digitzed, nonproft in Seatle, and they came up with the 500 physically preserved, and they can be injected, bits key books that represent the Japanese American and pieces of them, into the and experience and with funding from the Natonal Park read in a very diferent way than how you might’ve Service, went and digitzed these books and made read a history book by buying it and reading it all the them available on the Internet Archive to be able way through. It’s more the sort of in and out. I think to be borrowed. If you were to go and search for of it like newspapers are really designed for today’s them you’d be able to see No-No Boy and be able to readers like today and yesterday’s newspaper is fsh check that out and it looks like, oh, yeah, it’s actually wrap, but we know that there’s history in the news- already checked out, so you can check it out and be papers from other days but you read it in a very dif- able to see this generaton, this set of books for a ferent way. I believe that’s what we’re seeing on the generaton that is if it’s not online it is as if it doesn’t Internet Archive as we’ve been weaving these books exist. Right? Really. If it’s not online it’s as if it doesn’t into the Web, they’re being used in a fairly diferent exist and we know that the best we have to ofer is way but there’s also driving demand back up into not online. A lot of good stuf is online, but the best buying the books or getng them out of libraries. we have to ofer is not online, so we’re bringing up a generaton without access to the best materials and So, we’ve heard now about millions of books and that is going to give us the generaton we deserve how this whole thing could work but really the and I think we can upgrade this, but going and just whole thing comes down to people and supportng putng it on the Internet Archive wasn’t enough. We communites. I work with Wendy Hanamura. She’s a said, “Let’s go back to Wikipedia and go and take”— Japanese American and her mother and her grand- the key artcle on this was the Japanese internment parents were in a Japanese internment camp during of Japanese Americans and what I was amazed by World War II and she’s goten—she is fabulous and out of this was that Wikipedia, to their credit, they working with the Internet Archive, you’ll hear later go in and chart over the course of a year how many on our panel of Dustn and a bunch of us at 1:45, people have read this partcular page and on this please come, but she will be there but she’s dis- partcular page over 700,000 people went and read traught about how the Japanese internment expe- this page but for a lot of them they stopped there rience is being come to be understood out there. because they couldn’t go further. What we can do There was an artcle a few weeks ago in the together is to go and make it so that deeper informa- Times that showed that one of the physical Japanese ton, the controversies, not just the consensus view internment camp facilites was being used for the but the controversies around these are available migrant children that are coming over the borders to from these so that one click away from intern them there and that this confict and the sort that you can go and open a book to the right page, of idea that these camps are being used again and in but that is the type of thing that we can deliver to this way is sort of historically not a great thing from communites of all sorts based on the resources that the perspectve of the Japanese American com- are in our libraries, that our publishers go and make munity and beyond that, so there have been some sure that these stories come and are made avail- protests about this and the like but they’re startng able in high quality for the long‐ term, that authors to fnd that the Japanese internment program is are spending years of their lives making available startng to be apparently deliberately misremem- and are ofen not refected in the digital sphere. bered for what it was, that it even happened or that We can bridge that gap now by working together. it might have been good for the Japanese. That they Digital learners need us now. It is our chance. It is wanted to be in these internment camps. This is just our day. We have a mechanism of being able to pull not true but the people that were in those Japanese this of. We can pull this of at scale. Together we internment camps are startng to pass away and can complete the lifecycle of books from authors, when the last person dies who actually was involved to publishers, to libraries, to used book vendors, to in those, then history is needing to be goten from preservaton, digitzaton, reinserton of the poten- our books and other sources. tally just clips into the live Web and Wikipedia and what it becomes. Thank you very much. I really How are we going to keep this all alive? The Inter- appreciate your tme. net Archive has been working with the Japanese

12 Plenary