Custodians of Knowledge.

Last week a friend posted the following, and I thought it was worth sharing:

I got a query from a High School student who was working on an essay. It was a good question, and I thought I'd share it and my answer.

Query: "do we need custodians of knowledge?"

Answer: I'm a writer with a modest following (how your dad knows me), and I certainly understand the instinct that people have that writing can extend knowledge, from personal experience to hard-won scholarship which synthesizes different threads of knowledge. I have tried to do that in my writing career.

     But I was also a conservator of rare books and documents for 30 years, and in that time I was dedicated to preserving the physical documents which contain knowledge. Today we tend to think that anything we might want to know is readily available online, perhaps with a little searching.

     But that isn't true. I have done conservation work on countless one-of-a-kind books/documents which will probably never be scanned, or written about, or shared with the broader world. Does that mean those items are unworthy of protection?

     Hardly. It is impossible for us to know what will be important to people in the future. It might be a herbal that someone's grandmother wrote that winds up containing a description of a plant that can cure some illness not yet seen. Or a prisoner's account of life in a P.O.W. camp where the prisoners composed a symphony that is found and performed to great acclaim, changing the course of music history.

     These things happen. I've seen it. But they can only happen if that knowledge has been protected.
     In this way, "custodians" can be different from "gatekeepers". The former are the scholars and librarians and teachers and conservators who protect the sources of knowledge from whatever threat. The latter are those to manipulate knowledge to their own ends. There's a huge difference.

This triggered some thoughts for me as well.

I don't think of "gatekeepers" as only those who manipulate and limit knowledge.  Certainly if you are a gatekeeper, and limit who can enter, you have that ability.  But I also see the gatekeepers as the ones who open the gates to possibilities, to reading, to new vistas of knowledge.

To me, "custodians" are the ones who keep the knowledge safe.  They are the ones who ensure the knowledge is there so people have access.  They repair (as my friend noted), they clean, they treasure.  They ensure the environment remains dry, or at the right humidity, and light enough, and the correct temperature.  They also share the knowledge, but their work is also to repair damaged containers of knowledge, whether books or papyrus scrolls or hard drives.  Absolutely we need these people, they are critical to making information available and keeping it available for the future.

Gatekeepers have a choice.  They can allow you in, or not.  Or they can allow some people in, or not.  The problem to which my friend refers comes when the gatekeepers want to keep all people out.  These people are not just gatekeepers, they are censors.  They decide what they want to read, and don't want others to have access to different information or sources.

There is a great series of comics where a child says they have to return a book checked out from the library because their teacher said it is above their reading level.  The librarian says the child should keep the book and try reading it.  The teacher then comes and scolds the librarian, who responds that the teacher doesn't know the book is beyond the child's abilities to read or understand, and shouldn't the child be given a chance to find out for their ownself?

What happens when a child (or anybody) reads something they don't understand?  They ask questions - and often those are not the ones that adults around the child want to answer.  Or they find they cannot answer, which embarrasses the adult.  They (child and/or adult) can start investigating, reading other things, checking a dictionary or encyclopedia or asking other people, to obtain the answer to the question.  This can lead to new discoveries, and new learning.

Gatekeepers who open the gates to this type of learning - librarians, and teachers, and similar people - enable exploration and support curiosity and allow the spread of information and knowledge.  This is what should happen.  I know there are people who think young children cannot handle all kinds of information, and I agree - but don't restrict all information from all ages.

Censors cut off the investigation, and block access to knowledge.  They want to keep people uninformed and uncurious.  They are afraid of information and don't want others to have access to it.  Those are the people who scare me, because they try to close off the world into their own box, and to mold people into the type of person they want to be.  Often other people don't conform, and this is where violence - whether overt and physical, or covert and psychological - takes place.

We need to have (and be) custodians of knowledge, and the type of gatekeepers who make the knowledge available to others.  Like many, I do have problems with making available some of the rhetoric that passes for information, but I also believe that having it available so people can understand why some people believe that way, and so it can be studied to see the source material, is important.  When we limit ourselves to a small amount of information, we limit our knowledge of the world.  Even if we don't agree with everything available (and I agree that some of the outright biased and hateful information should be restricted because of how much damage it does), knowing it is there helps us to understand others.*

Going back to the original question, I believe that everybody should be custodians of knowledge.  Keep the information safe, make it available to others, just don't decide what they can or should read, whether by reading level or content.  And be ready to answer questions.

Image of the library at Alexandria, borrowed from Britannica.

* I am the type of person who sees a meme or claim on social media or elsewhere, and starts asking for the source material.  Where are the studies, the original article?  Does the source have a known bias?  Are there countering or conflicting reports?  Some people don't like it when I question them, and I see those people are gatekeepers of the limiting variety.  Why not give me the information from which to make my own assessments and decisions?  Simply saying "you have a search engine; use it" isn't satisfactory to me, because it suggests the person doesn't really have a source for their comment, they are simply handing along something they received.  Search engines can be biased, and may show a person the type of information or source they prefer to see, thus locking somebody into narrow pockets of search results.  Be willing to share your sources, if you have them - and don't trust GenAI.