As the digital revolution fundamentally reshapes how we live our lives, libraries are grappling with how to reinvent themselves in a world in which they are no longer a primary gatekeeper to knowledge. As I wrote in 2014 for the Knight Foundation’s blog, “perhaps the future of libraries lies in a return to their roots, not as museums of physical artifacts for rental, but as conveners of information and those who can understand and translate that information to the needs of an innovative world.” …
… As my collaborations over the last three years with the Internet Archive illustrate, mining its web, books and television holdings, the digital era offers an incredible opportunity for libraries to reinvent themselves as a data-rich nexus of innovation that unlocks the vast wealth of societal knowledge they hold and to bring together scholars, citizens and journalists to use all of this data to reimagine how we understand our global world.