Peter Brantley (talking recently in an interview on the ATG Podcast) has been involved with the interaction between publishing and technology ever since studying sociology at university. For his dissertation, he looked at how established companies adapt to rapidly changing product development. For “companies” read “institutions”, and for “product development” read “scholarly publishing landscape”, and you can see the parallel. While still a child, the chance to try using an early mainframe computer changed him for life. He was fascinated by APL, a unique programming language from 1962 that didn’t use alphanumeric characters; plus, of course, he played Dungeons and Dragons with his friends. After teaching himself programming, he had a whole series of interesting roles. He worked on what became the Open Library, part of the Internet Archive, as well as with the New York Public Library, where as Director of Digital Development he helped develop a mobile reading platform. After this, he spent some time with Hypothesis, the open-source service supporting annotation of content – harking back to the idea of the Internet as a place for collaboration.
Currently he is Director of Online Strategy at UC Davis, which involves communicating research to a wider public, and building software tools to link researchers with policy makers. For Brantley, the library is not simply “a repackager or transmitter of information, but an active contributor to how information is developed and shaped and then promulgated to a broader audience.”
But Brantley is not simply an advocate for technology. At last year’s Charleston Conference, he pointed out some of the downsides, the perhaps less noticed consequences of the genAI revolution. One as yet unmet challenge with AI is the need to democratizing not only access to information, but also the ability to form new insights and develop new ways of understanding with the tools. This, emphasizes Peter, is a role for the library: not just as the source of content, but to influence the way that content is delivered to users. Working in a public university, the University of California, means that there is a mission to make the institution’s research available to the broadest public. By taking a role in the production of information, the library can be fundamentally a radical actor in society. That role of libraries extends to the production, evangelisation, and management of OERs, open educational resources.
To achieve all this, librarianship cannot be a static discipline, but must continually evolve, as we learn new ways of creating, managing and delivering information and knowledge. Ultimately, libraries can emphasise the act of publication, which can be described as “an individual consensus of what have we learned, and how can we present that knowledge to others”.
It’s an inspiring interview, and a well-argued and passionate justification for a technically adept library being actively involved with AI tools, with OERs, and with Open Science.
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