We need to consider the public good in this

[Noyonhasan630]

From her home in rural Minnesota, Fister (who is “not a fan of Zoom/Skype/etc”) and I corresponded by email. “Honestly, I was surprised,” Barbara wrote. “When I started poking around the National Emergency Library I did a vanity search and—hey, look at that! I had to tweet that my books were there, because it made me happy. Then I started looking for things I would check out of my academic library if it were open, and many of those books were there, too. It’s very gratifying to have that access.”

As Fister sees it, “Regardless of the legal issues, I think the Internet Archive has the moral high ground in launching the National Emergency Library. There’s no way people who already contributed to paying for access to books through taxes or tuition can individually purchase every book they might want to consult while the libraries they relied on (and helped to fund) are closed. crisis.”


Throughout her career, Fister has been a prolific writer of both fiction europe cell phone number list and non-fiction. “I’ve been able to indulge my curiosity in everything from women’s literature from the Majority World (formerly known as the Third World) to how students learn about how information works to popular literacy practices, to the impact of technology on society, to the critical analysis of crime fiction. Basically, it’s the ‘oh look, a butterfly!’ approach to scholarship.” she explained. “I also have enjoyed reading crime fiction so much that I started writing it, and was lucky enough to find an agent and publisher. I was tickled to find two of my mysteries available in the National Emergency Library.”


One reason Fister is “tickled” is because her novels, published in 2008 and 2010, are hard to find, even in libraries. “They were published a while ago, so a lot of public libraries have no doubt weeded them to make room for more recent titles, which is totally understandable,” Fister explained. “I have worried a bit about the disappearance of non-academic books from the public cultural record. There was a time scholars could rediscover overlooked women writers long after their books went out of print, because they were on the shelves of academic libraries. In recent decades, however, academic book budgets have been strained and very few libraries purchase and retain popular literature.” She believes this “gradual forgetting of the popular” makes a shared digital collection like the Internet Archive’s even more valuable. “Even without a pandemic, it’s a need that I’m happy the Internet Archive is tackling.”