THE BOOK WORM HAS TURNED

(from Schnews.org.uk, Issue 524)

One of the many things under threat from planned liberalisation and expansion of international trade in services as negotiated behind closed doors in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is libraries. ’Globalisation, Information and Libraries’, a new book by Ruth Rikowski, examines the implications for the world’s state-funded libraries of the WTO’s most infamous treaties - GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services – see SchNEWS 378) and TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - see SchNEWS 420).

GATS is a set of trade rules whereby WTO member countries must open up their service sectors to the global market. Assurances made by the UK government, the European Commission and the WTO, that all public services such as health, education, water, housing, and libraries are exempt from GATS are in fact bogus. There has been a steady process of commercialisation and private sector involvement in all the above listed public services over the last decade.

So, state-funded libraries in the UK and across the world will be forced, in time, to turn into profit-making enterprises that will open the door to long-term privatisation. Brighton already has its multi million pound PFI library. (See www.roughmusic.org.uk/#four) Although the UK (under the EU) has not so far committed its Library Service to the GATS, this could easily change in future negotiations, succumbing to private companies searching for ripe opportunities.

TRIPS, meanwhile, is about the trading of intellectual rights, including copyright, trade marks, geographical indications, patents, industrial designs and trade secrets. Rikowski shows that TRIPS is not concerned with moral and humane issues in regard to intellectual property, but instead allows corporations to appropriate, patent and then profit from the traditional knowledge of indigenous populations in the poorest developing countries without giving due recompense.

So GATS and TRIPS will continue transforming services and intellectual property rights into internationally tradable commodities, to be sold in the market-place for profit. As Rikowski says, “In Britain today we already have examples of private companies running public library services (e.g. in the London Borough of Haringey), and many examples of public-private partnerships building new libraries. Coupled with the growing pressures on libraries to generate income and operate more like private companies rather than public good providers, the ‘commercialisation by stealth’ of British libraries and information is an everyday reality. When a country signs up its Library Service to GATS it means that foreign corporations must be allowed the right to compete with local authorities and domestic firms for the provision of public library services. This will open up the way for privatisation which could threaten the British public library free at the point of use.”

* The book’s full snappy title is: Globalisation, Information and Libraries: the Implications of the World Trade Organisation’s GATS and TRIPS Agreements (Chandos) or check out www.libr.org/ISC/articles/19-R.Rikowski-1.html