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Podcast: Commonwealth Club of California Podcast
Episode: Brewster Kahle: Public Libraries and American Democracy
Description: Since 18th century and pre-Constitution America, libraries have been a public space, a central repository where books could be borrowed, read and returned—a long defended democratic ideal of the public library. The nonprofit Internet Archive, founded in 1996, was built to be both the library of the Internet and the library on the Internet—a grand repository of knowledge. Its mission: universal access to all knowledge through the networked reach of the Internet, which allows the Archive to serve as a locÂÂÂal library for users with a browser anywhere.During the global COVID pandemic closures of public librar...