Reading the recent extensive interview with Julian Assange in ”Der Spiegel” I cannot help remembering ”The Sad Story of Librarians’ Uncritical Attitude Toward Governmental Information” (see BTS blog July 24, 2015). And vice versa: Anders’ blog-entry inevitably makes me think about WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, analyze them, promote them and obtain more. WikiLeaks has more than 10 million documents and associated analyses now,
notes Assange in the middle of the Spiegel interview. Well, what do we find in this ”giant library” of WikiLeaks, if not the digital equivalent of megatonnes of governmental information (sometimes bundled with corporate files and emails)? In The Library, however, the efforts that WikiLeaks has put in promoting these documents, although widely noted by the media and in governmental circles, have so far not been crowned with success. No, the librarians have showed a hypercritical—actually a more than critical—attitude; they have ignored and rejected the governmental information from WikiLeaks. (In some cases they have even actively blocked access to it through their libraries; click here for an example.)
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Biblioteket tar saka #librarycase 