Globalisation, Information and Libraries: The Implications of the World Trade Organisation's GATS and TRIPS Agreements

Citation

Sturges, P. (2005), "Globalisation, Information and Libraries: The Implications of the World Trade Organisation's GATS and TRIPS Agreements", The Electronic Library, Vol. 23 No. 4, pp. 500-501. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470510611571

For some years now Ruth Rikowski has been performing a valuable service to the library community by drawing its attention to the disturbing trends visible in various international agreements that have implications for library and information work. Although others share some of her sense of foreboding, she more than anyone else has laboured to give the issue the prominence it deserves. In this book she provides a great deal of detail that serves to illustrate why these trends are cause for anxiety.

The basic argument that troubles most of those who worry about these issues is this. Governments provide libraries so as to allow people access to information and ideas free of cost at the point of use. A distinctive library ethos has grown up around this and libraries can be seen as a key public sector service. Recent years have seen this ethos challenged by business concepts, and the intrusion of private sector funding and management. The GATS agreement on international trade in services and the TRIPS agreement on trade‐related intellectual property offer an agenda for the eventual extension of the intrusion of commercial values and practices into every corner of the library and information world. If this happens libraries, as we know them, could be gradually replaced by a more limited set of services, provided for profit by business corporations, with the user having to pay. Persuading governments that if they follow this line they will damage something essential to a just and democratic society thus becomes an important project for professionals.

Rikowski as an avowed Marxist frames this in ideological terms. As she frequently suggests, it is the transformation of library services and intellectual property into internationally tradable commodities that is her main concern. At this point her implacable hostility to what seems to be every aspect of the process becomes worrying. As an illustration of the problem, her book itself packages up her ideas as intellectual property, for which she is presumably not averse to drawing financial reward, even if some of the royalties come from overseas sales. The whole matter of globalisation and the commercialisation of life are more complex issues than her denunciations suggest. It is also no help that some passages, notably her account of the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000, are factually inaccurate and confused.

Unfortunately, not only does the book often fail to present the case convincingly, it is also badly written. It descends all too frequently into passages of autobiography, and the writing is clichéd and repetitive. There is also a problem with the way quotations from other writers are used. Quotation is valuable because it presents views that are authoritative, exceptionally well‐phrased, present valuable examples, or need to be disputed. Rikowski, however, often seems to quote just for support from someone else. This leads her to overload parts of the book with quotations from rather obscure publications. As a result of these weaknesses a book, that could have made an important contribution to thinking about the direction in which the library and information world is going, more often frustrates than it stimulates.