Shadow Libraries by Karaganis Joe;

Author:Karaganis, Joe;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Libraries; access; education; students; educational resources; knowledge; university; publishing; information; piracy; Brazil; Poland; South Africa; Argentina; Uruguay; India; United States; Sci-Hub; open access
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2018-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

6

Poland: Where the State Ends, the Hamster Begins

Mirosław Filiciak and Alek Tarkowski

In Poland, student and faculty strategies for getting the books and other materials they need have been shaped by the transformation of the academic system since 1989 and by the broader political, economic, and linguistic legacies that shape post-communist Polish society. They have also been largely absent from academic and educational policy discussions—neither a subject of mainstream debate nor addressed in the numerous governmental reforms of the system. Even significant institutional developments, such as the introduction of digital, online libraries and the promotion of open access models, have been marginal forces in a process of structural change driven by the rapid expansion of higher education, integration with Europe, and competition for students and research funds. For these reasons, and unlike in some of the other countries examined in this book, there have been no grassroots initiatives focused on the provision of academic content. Academic publishing has never been seen as a political issue, or tied to such values as freedom of expression. Instead, it has been treated as a primarily technical aspect of the higher education system.

For the same reasons, academic shadow libraries have never been the subject of public debate, which over the years has nonetheless given considerable attention to broader issues of content “piracy.” The informal collection and circulation of academic content has operated in a gray zone, partly due to the unclear legal status of such activities (which potentially fall under copyright exceptions) and partly due to the lack of sufficient legal awareness among key academic stakeholders. These informal practices nonetheless play a significant role in Polish higher education—albeit in ways that are often hard to distinguish from the broader informal circulation of audio, visual, and other media content.

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