When the World Trade Organization met in Seattle in early December, library groups were among the more than 700 nongovernmental organizations in attendance. The library representatives were frustrated in getting their views across to the negotiators, but they were not alone in their disappointment: Although the aim of the conference was to set the agenda for future international trade talks, the negotiations collapsed in discord.
Rick Weingarten, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy, said that the Association’s interest in the WTO “was originally piqued by concerns about intellectual property,” noting that publishers who had failed to get legislation passed strengthening intellectual-property rights “were seeking to go to the trade arena.”
Vancouver (B.C.) Public Library’s Brian Campbell attended the conference on behalf of the Canadian Library Association, which is apprehensive about the effect of global trade agreements on the provision of library services. Paul Whitney of the Burnaby (B.C.) Public Library represented the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, hoping “to remind people that libraries are there and that libraries are affected” by global trade.
Posted December 13, 1999.